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The king searches for a bride.

Article Excerpt
Translator's Introduction

Antonio de Trueba (1819-1889), a nineteenth-century Spanish storyteller, did much to give written form to the oral tradition in Spain, and his "The Adventures of a Tailor" and "The King's Son-in-Law" have appeared in Marvels & Tales (for biographical data and information on his work and books, see my introduction to the former tale in volume 12 [1998]: 351-54). A number of his fairy tales, like a number of those of his contemporary Cecilia Bohl de Faber (Fernan Caballero), offer parallels to tales of the Brothers Grimm, which is the case with "The King Searches for a Bride" ("El rey en busca de novia"), a variation on their "Spindle, Shuttle, and Needle" (ATU 585).

The woman of the house, the good woman of the house, exhibited traits and skills that redounded to the benefit of a man, a good man, and none of the skills was more basic, more vital than spinning, perhaps more than weaving, sewing, and cooking, for the distaff gave rise to the metonym "distaff side" to refer to women, just as the spear used by hunters and fishermen gave rise to the "spear side" to refer to men. And the distaff serves Rosa, Trueba's fifteen-year-old orphaned heroine, as well as it does the maiden of the Grimms' tale.

The premise of both stories is the same: a young male royal goes in search of a bride who is to be both the "poorest and richest" he can find--the poorest in material wealth and richest in spiritual munificence. There are differences: in Grimm the royal is a prince, in Trueba a king; there are marvelous happenings in Grimm (a spindle that jumps out of the maiden's hand and dances across the fields; a shuttle that jumps out of her hand and weaves a carpet; a needle that jumps out of her hand and in a trice covers chairs with velvet and walls with silk curtains), none in Trueba; the Grimms' prince...

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