A Forgotten Weird and Horrific Fairy Tale from the Oldest Collection of European Fairy Tales

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:01][music] [music] >> Hello everyone and welcome to another video by Falling Down the Rabbit Hole.

[00:00:19]Today we're going to be taking a look at a story in the Pentamerone.

[00:00:24]The Pentamerone is considered the first collection of fairy tales from Europe.

[00:00:31]Of course there had been literary fairy tales before, but this is the first collection dedicated solely to fairy tales and it is of course by Giambattista Basile. Was published in 1634 and then the second part in 1636.

[00:00:50]Of course this collection includes some of the oldest versions of some of our most beloved fairy tales including Cinderella, Rapunzel, Puss in Boots, Sleeping Beauty and Hansel and Gretel. But I'm not going to be looking at any of those today. Today I'm going to be looking at the first fairy tale in this collection which is not the first fairy tale in the actual full collection and that is The Myrtle. The Myrtle is actually the second tale of the first day. This is broken up just like The Decameron into days and each tale there's the first tale of the first day and the second tale of the first day and so on and so forth. This is the second tale of the first day and probably one of my favorites in this book. So a couple have been trying for a child for quite a long time and it doesn't work out. So the they both pray for children and the woman prays specifically that she would be so happy to have any type of child even if it was just a sprig of myrtle which is a type of plant of course and she says this so often that eventually the heavens cannot ignore her and she does indeed get pregnant and she gives birth to a sprig of myrtle which she then proceeds to plant. She puts it in a pot and takes very good care of it.

[00:02:22]She loves this myrtle plant as if it was her daughter because it is. One day a prince is riding by and he spots the myrtle in the window and he goes and tries to buy this myrtle from the woman.

[00:02:39]Of course she does not want to sell the myrtle, but he pushes and pushes and pushes until she can no longer resist. I mean this is a prince. It's hard to say no to the prince of your land. So she gives in and gives him the myrtle begging him to take care of it because it is like a daughter to her. Of course it is her daughter much more than like, but she says to the prince it's like a daughter. So the prince takes it back to his castle and he does love it and he takes care of it and he waters it and and really does love it. Then one night he's sleeping and suddenly he hears footsteps in his room and he's terrified that he is being robbed, but he lays in bed just to see what it is and eventually he hears footsteps coming across the room towards him in his bed and he reaches out and he encounters the softest touch he's ever felt and this person, whoever this is, starts to caress him and they become romantically involved and they do [snorts] this for like seven days straight. But eventually he kind of tires of her disappearing in the morning which she always does. So he ties some of her hair one night around his wrist and they fall asleep and when she tries to get up in the morning she cannot leave because her hair is tied around his wrist and he wakes up and beholds her and she is the most beautiful beautiful human he has ever seen in his life. He is absolutely in love with her and the description of this is really gorgeous. This is the translation I read this in. I'll [snorts] get into that in just a minute when I'm done telling the story.

[00:04:36]Um but it's yeah, two pages of just really lovely lovely text talking about how beautiful she is and how he falls in love with her and he's very happy and they spend more time together, but then a few months later he's invited to a wild boar hunt and he really can't turn it down. So he decides to ask the myrtle to become the myrtle again and stay in the pot until he returns and the myrtle agrees. She says, "Okay, I'll yeah, I'll do that."

[00:05:11]But the myrtle says, "What I want you to do is tie a little bell to the top of the plant here and when you are back ring the bell and I will come out to meet you." And he says, "That's great."

[00:05:23]So he does all that. He ties a little bell to the top of the myrtle plant and leaves to go on this hunt.

[00:05:30]At this point we are introduced to the fact that he has a harem of seven women that are have been very very jealous ever since he stopped coming around because he's been so obsessed with this myrtle, but they do not know about the myrtle. So they decide they need to figure out what's going on and they trick some men into digging a tunnel from their house all the way to the prince's room and they force their way into the room and Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot one thing. Before he leaves he tells his servant, "You must take care of this myrtle plant and if one leaf is missing you will be fired forever. I will never let you work here again." So anyway, these women push their way into the room and they don't see anything. They don't see another woman there or anything. So they're very confused. So they all start taking leaves from this myrtle except for the youngest who takes leaves from the the top of the plant and it rings this bell and the fairy woman comes out expecting to greet her prince and instead is facing these seven jealous women. I'm going to stop here just to give you a chance if you'd like to read this story.

[00:06:52]There is a I think a penguin version or Everyman's Classic or there is a modern print of the Pentamerone that you can get if you want to read this and it I think it's online as well. So yeah, if you'd like to read this give it a read because this next part is when the real horror of this tale kicks in and it is insane. These early tales really went to darker places than than you know, Disney fairy tales.

[00:07:24]All right, back to it. The minute that these seven women see the fairy woman that has come out of the myrtle, they go nuts.

[00:07:37]And at first it's described in such a way as them tearing apart a plant, but it very quickly turns gory. They tear this woman to pieces. They shred her into little bits and it is described pretty intensely, but that the the most intense part of the description I think comes from the cleanup that the servant has to do.

[00:08:11]>> [snorts] >> After some time the servant came in to make the bed and water the flower pot according to his master's instructions and when he found the havoc he nearly died of fright.

[00:08:22]Wringing his hands he set to work to gather up the fragments of flesh and bones and washing the blood from the floor put the heap of what was left of her back into the flower pot. He then watered it, made the bed, shut the door and putting the key under it left the country as fast as his legs could carry him.

[00:08:46]Yeah, really dark stuff. He basically collects all these pieces of this woman stuffs [snorts] them in the the the flower pot, waters it like he's supposed to and then leaves the country because he knows he's going to be absolutely killed by the prince when the prince returns.

[00:09:07]And of course the prince does return and when he does he at first doesn't realize what's going on. He rings the bell and she won't come out and he keeps watering the plant and that's the interesting thing about this story is the analogy of tearing up a myrtle plant and tearing up a human being.

[00:09:31]It it goes kind of back and forth between those. It's really interesting.

[00:09:35]But he is devastated and he doesn't eat, he doesn't sleep, he is in complete depression wasting away, but he still makes sure to water the myrtle every day and it starts to grow back and eventually the woman comes out again once she's grown a bit and it says, "Hey, I'm here. Like don't be sad anymore, and he is completely ecstatic and asks his father if he can marry the fairy, and his father says yes, and they get married. And at their banquet, of course, we come to the time of punishment, which is when these tales get really dark, and we come to a fairy tale trope that happens a lot, and that is the the perpetrator of the crime sentencing themselves to their demise.

[00:10:26]Uh and in this case, he makes sure that the seven women are invited to the banquet, and he goes around the table, and he points to his lovely fairy wife that grew from a myrtle and says, "What would What should the punishment be for anybody that dares to harm any any part of this woman?" And everybody's like, "Death. You got to put him to death.

[00:10:50]That's intense." And then when it comes to the seven ladies who obviously are not enjoying this conversation, they say, "Well, they should be buried alive in sewage."

[00:11:03]And [snorts] he says, "Okay, you have just handed down your own sentence." And uh they are all thrown into this. And the way it's described in the book is they're thrown into this sewage cave and live a horrible existence. So, I don't know if they live, but uh the servant is brought back because it wasn't his fault. And the youngest of the seven who didn't tear the woman apart Oh, I don't think I remember to tell you this.

[00:11:35]I'm sorry. When they were all tearing the woman apart, the youngest, the one that accidentally rang the bell, she only takes some of the hair from the the fairy's head. She doesn't tear her body apart like the six other women do. So, she is married to the servant and and gets to to live while the other six go to this sewer cave.

[00:11:59]Um yeah, this is a really strong start.

[00:12:04]I keep saying start. So, like I said, the version I read it in, this was translated by uh Benedetto Croce. I don't know if I'm saying his name right. Uh it was a more modern translation. It was first translated, and I have to be really careful opening this uh book. This is a very uh old 1850 edition of the first English translation of the Pentamerone. And this is a second edition. The first edition was 1849.

[00:12:34]This is 1850.

[00:12:37]And this one has um art by George Cruikshank. Uh and I I show off this art in another video. I'll link it down below. Uh but it was first translated The first time it was translated into English was by John Edward Taylor. And in this book, this is the first story.

[00:12:56]But most versions that you get of the Pentamerone are best ofs. They're not the entire thing. This is the entire thing. So, any modern copy you get are is going to be one of these best ofs.

[00:13:12]And it always starts with the myrtle, even though it's the second story in this one. Uh here we see again this this mix of fairy tale and horror. The two things were indistinguishable before, and I think that fairy tales in a lot of ways are the horror stories of the past, and this is no exception. The insane destruction of this fairy is wild to read now, really truly, but so so worth it. And uh yeah, I feel like uh anybody that loves fairy tales would love this story and probably doesn't know it very well. Uh so yeah, this is kind of an introduction to what you can find in the Pentamerone. It's a wonderful wonderful collection, one of the earliest uh the oldest some of the oldest versions of very popular fairy tales are in this. Uh and I do plan to cover more in the future. All right, thank you very much for watching, and I will see you on the next one.

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