Pirus incantata
The Enchanted Pear Tree
Note: This is the second of three stories about married women competing to see who can torment their husband the most, told in sequence by the sage Machidas in the Storia di Stefano (R). It follows Tergi and is followed by Caupona.
A woman takes her husband to a meadow to eat lunch under a magnificent pear tree. Once they have eaten, the wife climbs the tree. Once she is aloft in its branches, she cries out, shouting down that her husband is unfaithful. She cries that she cannot believe her husband brought his mistress out to the meadow, or that he dares to have sex with her right in front of his own wife. The husband, astonished, has no idea what she is talking about. When the wife descends from the branches, furiously demanding where the woman had gone, the husband insists there was no other woman. The wife concludes that the pear tree must be enchanted. She encourages his husband to climb the tree to test the enchantment, and once he is high in the branches, she quitely calls to her lover, who had been hidden in the bushes nearby. The two have sex, while the husband watches, agast. Once he begins to climb down, the lover sneaks away, and the husband and wife agree the enchantment on the pear tree is strange indeed.
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Nishimura notes the following: Motifs and Types: TMI K1518 = ATU 1423: The enchanted pear tree. K1518.1: Husband who has surprised wife and paramour is made to believe that he saw an illusion. K1545: Wives wager as to who can best fool her husband. ATU 1406: The three clever Wives’ Wager. TU2708: Husband sees double. Analogues: Dhammapada Aṭṭakathā, 11.6. Seventy Tales of a Parrot, Textus ornatior 37, Textus simplicior 28. King Shah Bakht and his Wazir Al-Rahwan, 12.i. ‘Tale of the Simpleton Husband’. Rumi, The Mathvavi (according to Irwin, The Arabian Night. A Companion, p. 135). Altdeutsches Decamerone, 9.9 ‘Das Liebespaar auf der Linde’. Decameron, 7.9 (for the first half, see the reference story in ‘121. tentamina’). The second story in La Fontaine’s Contes, 2.7 ‘La Gageure des trois commères’. Espinosa, Cuentos Populares Españoles, 61 ‘The Adulterous Tree’ (original story 198). Tohoku Ensho Ukiyo Banashi, pp. 77-78, ‘Overlapping (1)(2)’. For the stories of the blind husband who is suddenly able to see when he realizes his wife’s infidelity, and the wife who defiantly says, I was told this would cure your eyes, see: Tantrakhyayka, 3.8 = Panchatantra, (Textus simplicior) 4.7 ‘The easily deceived Husband’ = (Textus ornatior. Purnabhadra) 3.12 = Hitopadesha, 3.6 = Kalila and Dimna, 4.7 = Anwar-i-Suhaili, 4.10 ‘The Carpenter who was cajoled by his Wife’ = Johannis de Capua, Directorium Humanae Vitae, 64 ‘Le chapentier, sa jolie femme et l’amant’. And Panchatantra, (Textus simplicior) 5.12 ‘The Princess with Three Breasts = (Textus ornatior. Purnabhadra) 5.10 = Nakhshabi, Tales of a Parrot, 42 ‘The Tale of the Girl with three Breasts’; Steinhöwel, Äsop, ‘Alphonsi Extract’ 12; Caxton, Fables of Aesop, ‘Alphons Extract’ 12; Rosen, Das Papageienbuch, Night 26 ‘Geschichte von der schlauen Schehr-Arâm’ and Night 27 ‘The Story of the Blind Man and the Unfaithful Wife’; Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, ‘The Merchant’; Afanasjew, Russian Ridiculous Tales, 28 ‘The Blind Husband’s Wife’; Espinosa, Cuentos Populares Españoles, 7 (original story 34) ‘The Blind Shoemaker’; Dostoevsky, ‘The Married Woman and Her Husband Under the Bed. Other stories include Perry, Aesopica 661 ‘Wife and Paramour’ (cleverly saying that what the eye sees is not always true); Fabliau MR 61, ‘Du Prestre ki abevete [The peeping Priest]’ (peeping through a doorway); Jacques de Vitry, Exempla, 251 ‘A husband discovered his wife with her lover,…’ (one person appears in two persons at the same period of the day = Wesselski, Mönchslatein, 103); Hagen, Gesamtabenteuer, 38 ‘Weiberlist’ (eating certain vegetables); Wickram, Das Rollwagenbüchlin, 45 ‘Ein maeder fand…’ (by the hour); Sachs, nr.4223, nr.54, ‘Der bawer mit dem plerr [The Peasant Who Saw Things in Two]’ (If you go out before sunrise); Nihon Mukashibanashi Tsukan, 28 ‘Type Index’, 658 ‘A Roofer and the Wife’ (If you climb up on the roof); Okayama no Ensho-tan, 48 ‘Two People in a Mosquito Net’ (If you see into the net from the outside); Choi In Hak, A Study on Korean Folktales…, 683 (Carrying a bale of charcoal on your back); Karukuchi Kaidangi, vol. 2, ‘Teishu no Sorame (The misperception of the husband)’ (Looking from the second floor. According to Muto Sadao, Edo Kobanashi Ruiwa Jiten, p. 299 (3), ‘Mippu (An Adulterer)’ in Fukuju-so (Looking from the second floor). References: Bible, ‘Song of Solomon’, 8.5 (“Under the apple tree / I will call thee"), and ‘Hosea’ 4.12 (“My people seek their oracles in the tree and receive instruction from its branches. They are deceived by the spirit of lewdness, and they go away from God and indulge in whoredoms”). Bibliography: Chauvin VIII69, 159, IX34. Hagen, II, pp. xxvi-xxxv. Minakata Kumagusu, ‘The Tale of the Old Man of the Giant Tree’. Kanazeki Takeo, Wooden Horse and Stone Ox, ‘The Tale of the Lewd Tree’. Ishii Mikiko, Chusei no Shokutaku kara [From the dining table in the Middle Ages], pp.179-187. Schwarzbaum, XXII, pp.340-342. Nihon Mukashibanashi Tsukan, ‘Kenkyu-hen 2’, 658. My translation of Disciplina Clericalis, pp. 372-373. Marzolph, 52. |
| Critical Literature |
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| Nishimura (2001), Rajna (1878), Rajna (1880), Marzolph and van Leeuwen (2004) |
| Pirus incantata appears in the following versions and secondary versions |
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| Pirus incantata is narrated in the following occurrences | ||||
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| Pirus incantata appears in the following manuscripts |
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| This inset story appears in no manuscripts of the database |