The Dragon

The Dragon is an Italian literary fairy tale, included in Giambattista Basile's Pentamerone (Tale IV.5), first published 1635. In the English language, the tale was a selection in Thomas Keightley's Fairy Mythology (1828), and later appeared in John Edward Taylor (fl. 1840–1855)'s translation of the entire work, The Pentamerone, or, The Story of Stories, Fun for the Little Ones (1848). The tale has been classed as a version of Aarne–Thompson type 462 "the outcast queens and the ogress queen", rather than as "the dragon-slayer" (type 300). It exhibits folklore motif K873, "fatal deception by giving narcotic." Synopsis A king of High-Shore (or High Marina, "Rè d'Auta Marina"), owing to his tyrannical and cruel conduct, has lost his throne during his absence, usurped by a sorceress (la maga). The king consults his oracular wooden statue to learn that he would gain back his kingdom when the sorceress loses her sight. But agents sent to do his bidding are foiled by the well-guarded sorceress, who instantly detected any harm-seeking intruder and meted out "dog justice" upon them. The frustrated king compensates by ravishing any women he could lay his hands on and murdering them afterwards. Hundreds of victims later, the turn comes for the maiden Porziella (var. Portiella), her beauty described in poetic metaphor. The king raises his dagger ( or "poniard") intending to kill her like the rest, but just at that moment, a bird flies by and drops a root on his arm, causing him to tremble and drop the weapon. This bird was a fairy (fata), who had been saved from a satyr's lecherous mischief thanks to Porziella who awoke her in time. The king decides to seal Porziella up in the garret or attic. Here the tale actually gives description of the king's mindset in reaching this decision: "it wasn't necessary to bathe the instrument of death with the same blood with which he had bathed the instrument of life" though this passage has been bowdlerized in Keightley and Taylor's translations. Porziella begins to starve, and the bird brings her a knife to drill into the corner of the floor, and breach a hole to the kitchen below for the bird to bring nourishment. Porziella then gives birth to a son, raised in the sealed chamber, until as a grown boy he is surreptitiously lowered down by rope to the kitchen below. The boy (who was named Miuccio) is discovered by the cook, and soon employed as the king's page.