Once more, we bring you an excerpt from Julie Jaquith’s The Three Suitors: A Dozen and One Dooms, Drolls, and Dreads, which is an eclectic and fascinating collection of decidedly un-bowdlerized original fairy tales and folk stories.
Our selection for today’s issue of The Florilegium is, we think, undeniably one of the less wholesome of these tales, but we think you’ll agree it has a certain edifying didactic value…
—T. J. Quaine
Once upon a time, there lived a fair prince in a fair kingdom, and the prince was wont to hunt in the great forest beside the clear blue mountain lake in the center of the kingdom.
The prince cared for hunting so much that he seemed to give not a whit for the many fair ladies and princesses who put themselves hopefully in his way. But he was young and very handsome, and the king and queen knew that some day the fair young prince would find his own true love, and she would bear him offspring to continue the royal line.
For that is the way of things, you know.
Well, it so happened that one day, as the young prince was hunting in the forest, he happened upon the most magnificent marble mausoleum in the midst of a wondrous cool and open glade, and the mausoleum was fast beside a clear mountain stream, and verily it shone like a radiant star of beauty in the slanting light of the midday sun. And the prince did marvel exceedingly at so singular a thing to find hidden away in the very middle of the great wood, whose ways and mysteries he thought he knew so well.
In sooth, the prince thought it was so marvelous a thing, that he entered into the mausoleum straightway, for the prince was withal a curious young lad, and impulsive besides. And the interior of the mausoleum was even more wonderful than its exterior, for the circular walls of it were wrought so cunningly into the shapes and figures of animals and men, and the latter cleverly fitted with instruments and accouterments of gold and silver, that the prince verily believed for a moment that there was a great host foregathered within the mausoleum, paying homage to the occupant of the single crystal tomb in the midst among them all.
For there was—wondrous to say!—a great crystal tomb in the center of the mausoleum, and the sun’s light poured through the oculus in the roof, and smote the crystal tomb in a wash of gold, and broke into a million scintillant fragments of light. And the prince—who trembled for very awe—stole quietly up to the crystal tomb, and he beheld a beautiful young princess lying within it! And he knew she was a princess, for so beautiful was she, that she could not be otherwise.
And her skin was so fresh and red, and her hair so black and rich, and her lips so full and tender, and her clothes so bright and new, and her face so sweet and beaming, that the prince could well believe that she was merely sleeping—were it not that her breast ne’er once did rise and fall, nor her lips part, nor her eyes flutter, nor her fingers twitch. And the fair prince knew that the fair princess slept the utter Sleep of Death.
And inscribed in letters of gilt upon the crystal tomb was the name DESIRE.
Now, it is not too much to say that the fair prince fell utterly in love with the princess on the instant, and from that moment on he had no other wish than to be ever by her side. The prince forgot all about hunting and riding and slaying and all those exhilarating pursuits of the chase that had preoccupied him aforetime; he even forgot to drink and to eat, until the king and queen bade that food and drink be brought to his side, lest he perish for their want.
And for months and months and the weeks between the fair prince remained ever beside the crystal tomb of the beautiful princess, gazing always upon her holy face, and wishing…oh, so wishing that she were alive, to companion him in life as a good and faithful wife.
Alas, there came a day when an evil thought crept into the fair prince’s mind. It was a thought that repelled the prince, at first, but as he sat ever by her side, staring at her beauty and the wonder of her, the evil thought stole back into his mind time after time. And the fair prince grew accustomed to the evil thought, as to an old friend, and even began to wonder whether it were really so evil after all? For the prince grew very bitter and wroth indeed with Fate, that had so evilly trifled with him—to make him fall in love with a beautiful princess long dead.
And the fair prince so longed for the beautiful princess!
At last, he could not put the evil thought from his mind, for it had settled into his heart, wherefrom such desires may only be ejected with the greatest difficulty; and so the prince decided that his passion for the princess—which tormented him day and night—could not be thwarted any longer.
One night, the fair prince removed the crystal cover from the crystal tomb that inhumed the fair princess. And when he finally beheld her without the obscuring medium of the crystal tomb for a veil, he saw that verily she was even more beautiful than he had dreamed—and he bent down to kiss the fair dead princess on the lips.
And the prince stole into the crystal tomb, and he lay with the fair princess. And when his evil business was done, the prince slunk out of the crystal tomb, even as a thief, and replaced the crystal lid atop it. Whereafter, the prince quit the mausoleum, ashamed at his perfidy, and resumed his life at the court of the king and the queen. But even so, everyone noticed that the prince was often sad and haunted—for was he not consumed by guilt and disgust, and were not his troubled thoughts ever with the fair dead princess whom he had so ill-handled?
Shortly thereafter, the fair prince married a princess of uncommon attractiveness—but though fair to look upon, and of a sweet disposition, she could not at all compare to the beautiful dead princess in the crystal tomb in the marble mausoleum in the wood. So the prince would steal away once a month, and make a solitary pilgrimage to the marble mausoleum, where he would sit and pray before the dead beauty in the tomb.
But, lo!, the prince noticed that her beauty had begun to fade. Her skin grew pale, her cheeks sallow and sunken, her lips shrunken and taut. Gradually, the hand of decay seemed to touch the beauty in the crystal tomb. Her eyes sank back into her skull, and once, when the prince visited her, the eyelids had slipped from them, and they bulged and stared awfully at him—with reproach, he thought—through the crystal tomb. And her skin grew gray and dry, and crinkled and cracked as paper, and shrunk round the bones of her body.
And the prince noted one other transformation about the fair princess in the crystal tomb. As her skin shrank and her eyes sank and the place grew rank with the reek of decay, her belly waxed larger and rounder with each visit. And the prince became fearful, and wondered greatly at the change, and in very fear he ceased to visit the marble mausoleum in the wood.
But one day, three quarters of a year after he had given way to the evil urging in his heart, the prince conceived a sudden, nagging wish to look upon the princess in the crystal tomb, who had once been so beautiful to see. He was afraid to do it, and there was a part of him—indeed, the greatest part of him—that did not really want to go at all; but one day he stole through the forest just the same, and wended his wary way to the glade with the marble mausoleum.
And it seemed now that the sun’s light never shone upon the glade and the mausoleum as it had aforetime, and all was dank and gloomy in that part of the forest. The prince felt a sinking in his heart as he approached the steps of the mausoleum, and his very soul quivered within him.
And when he set foot upon the steps leading to the entrance of the mausoleum, lo!, there came a strange and terrible Voice out of the air, and the Voice said, “Enter, prince, and behold what thou hast wrought.”
And the prince did shrink within him for very fear, but his legs compelled him on as though animated by some force beyond him. And when he entered into the mausoleum, he beheld the fair princess in the crystal tomb had decayed and rotted into a mass of foul and putrescent corruption, and then out of her belly there clambered a dark and monstrous Shape of Evil, that shattered the crystal tomb, and devoured the prince in an instant.
And it was the Beast that men calleth SIN.
The Beast tore the marble mausoleum to pieces, and it ravaged throughout the forest and the country and the kingdom. It devoured every soul it met with, which was very many indeed, and though all the gallant knights of the kingdom strove against it with might and main, they could not prevail against the Beast.
Whereat, the rumor noised abroad, far and wide, that a Beast was loose in that kingdom, which had once been the very fairest in the realm. And people shunned that kingdom, for the terror that stalked it, and the clear and beautiful mountain lake became a dark and dreadly mountain swamp, and the forest a black wood rank with evil and the goblins and bogles and ghosts and revenants that inhabit all the dark places of the earth. And only the Beast reigned in that land, where no human soul dared to go, and it lurked within the ruins of the marble mausoleum wherein once a beautiful princess lay dead and unspoilt for all the world to marvel at.
And the Beast remains there for a reminder to men—to permit the dead to lie in peace, and to teach us that the unhealthy fixations of men do bear an awful fruit.
[Textual Note and Commentary]
THE PRINCESS IN THE MARBLE MAUSOLEUM (France)
Source:—From De Casibus Scelestorum (Quinquaginta Fabulae), anon., ca. 1150, folio 56 of the Codex Tolosanus in the Special Collections of the University Library, Edinburgh University. No. 47, “De fructu quem mortui pariunt,” from the Fifty Fables. A variant of “Sleeping Beauty.” AT 410, AT 883 B. Motifs: tabu: sexual intercourse in sacred precinct (C11.6.); offspring of living and dead person (E474.1.); devastating monster (G346); man falls in love on seeing dead body of beautiful girl (T16.2.), necrophilism: sexual intercourse with dead human body (T466), miraculous birth (T540).
This nasty little piece derives from that curious compound of Monkish Latinity and grim religiosity that only the Middle Ages could produce with anything like the requisite sincerity. It was gathered in the so-called Fifty Fables, a Latin compendium of Medieval religious allegories, parables, and apologues, which was committed to manuscript form by an anonymous Toulousienne during the middle of the 12th Century. Although traditionally assumed to have been written within the monkish milieu of Southern France, recent interpretations and re-readings have suggested a more likely origin is to be sought within the Albigenses, adherents to the Gnostic, Catharist “heresy” that erupted less than a century later into that religious crisis that occasioned the so-called Albigensian Crusade of Innocent III.
Many of the fairy tales, for example, display a prominent dualism, as does the tale reproduced here; at least one fable (a dialogue between God and Satan) seems to be a thinly-veiled allegory about the Demiurge and the Deus Alienus. In any case, it is likely that many of these tales were adapted from local folklore; the present tale, for instance, bears many points of comparison to the classic “Sleeping Beauty in the Wood” (“La belle au bois dormant,” Charles Perrault, 1697) and “Sun, Moon, and Talia” (“Sole, Luna e Talia,” Giambattista Basile, 1634). Perhaps most intriguing, however, is its great similarity to a curious story related by the itinerant English knight Sir John Mandeville some two centuries later, which bears retelling in its quaint Middle English idiom:
“…and the Cytee was clept Cathaillye: the whiche Cytee and Lond was lost, thorghe Folye of a zonge Man. For he had a fayr Damysele, that he loved wel, to his Paramour; and sche dyed sodeynly, and was don in a Tombe of Marble: and for the grete Lust, that he had to hire, he wente in the Nyghte unto hire Tombe and opened it, and went in and lay be hire, and wente his wey. And whan it came to the ende of nine Monethes, there com a Voys to him, and seyde, Go to the Tombe of that Woman, and open it and beholde what thou hast begoten on hire; and zif thou lette to go, thou schalt have a gret harm. And he zede and opened the Tombe; and there fleyghe out an Eddere [serpent, dragon] righte hidous to see; the whiche als swythe fleighe aboute the Cytee and the Contree; and sone aftre the Cytee sank down.” (pp. 26–7, The Voiage and Travaile of Sir John Maundeville, Kt.)
On the theme of necrophilia in folklore and fairy tales, see Dr. Susan Cinaed’s excellent study The Loved Dead: Necrophilia and Posthumous Pregnancy in European Folklore (1983).
—Julie Jaquith
[In the next installment of The Florilegium of Phantasy, we explore a far-future dystopia in which love is outlawed, and passion is a crime punishable by death…]