Catalan tales

**Catalan tales** is the common denomination given to the tales collected in the northeastern corner of Spain, that includes Catalonia and Valencia, and the Balearic Islands, usually written in Catalan or some of its dialects like Majorcan.

## History

### 19th Century

Unlike the rest of Spain, Catalan folktales started to be collected as soon as the 1850s, where the deemed as the first Catalan folktales where published in in 1853 in the book *Observaciones sobre la poesía popular* by Manuel Milá y Fontanals (1818-1884). The book contained nine tales: a version of ATU 480 *The Kind and Unkind Girls* (*Las dos niñas*), ATU 516 *Trusty John* (*El buen compañero*), ATU 780 *The Singing Bone* (*La caña del riu de arenas*), ATU 480 *The Three Oranges* (*Las tres naranjas del amor*), ATU 923 *The Daughter Who Loved Her Father Like Salt* (*La hija menor*), ATU 510A *Cinderella* (*La cenicienta*), ATU 327B *The Brothers and the Ogre* (*El hijo menor*), ATU 709 *Snow White* (*La hermosa hijastra*) and an Animal Bridegroom tale (*El hijo del rey, desencantado*). Despite that fact, the first important collection of Catalan folktales written in Catalan won't appear until the 1870s, the decade in which Francesc Maspons i Labrós (1840-1901) published the three volume collection *Lo Rondallayre: Quentos Populars Catalans*, whose first volumen was published in 1871, the second in 1872 and the third in 1875. Almost all but one of the tales collected by Milá y Fontanals where included in the first two volumes: in the first one *La caña del riu arenas*, *La hija menor*, *Las tres naranjas del amor* and *La cenicienta*, retitled as *La flor del penical*, *La Fustots*, *Las tres taronjas del amor* and *La ventafochs* respectively; menwhile in the second volume *El hijo menor*, *La hermosa hijastra*, *Las dos niñas* and *El hijo del rey, desencantado* were included, being retitled *Le noy petit*, *La hermosa fillastra*, *Las germanastras* and *Lo fill del rey, desencantat*. The rest of the tales included in the collection were collected by Maspons i Labrós, and among them we can find versions of the ATU 510B *Donkey Skin* (*La gavia d'or*, *La pell d'ase*), ATU 425C *Beauty and the Beast* (*Lo trist*), ATU 313 *The Magic Flight* (*Lo castell del sol*, *Blancaflor*, *Xixarandoneta*), ATU 310 *Rapunzel* (*La noya dels cabells d'or*), ATU 303 *The Twin Brothers* (*Lo castell d'irás y no'n tornarás*), ATU 301 *The Three Underground Princesses* (*La perera*), ATU 480 *The Kind and Unkind Girls* (*La fillastra*), ATU 707 *The Dancing Water, the Singing Tree and the Speaking Bird* (*Lo castell de irás y no hi veurás*, *Lo taronjer*), ATU 402 *The Animal Bride* (*La princesa encantada*) and ATU 533\* *Biancabella and the Snake* (*La serpeta*). After the third volume of *Lo Rondallayre* Maspons kept collecting more tales, that were published in the collection *Cuentos populars catalans* in 1885, that inlcuded tales such as *Sanch-y-neu*, *Lo romaní*, *La noya peix*, *Lo lleó* and a new version of ATU 707, the third one he collected, *L'aygua de la vida*.

Meanwhile in the island of Majorca the Archduke Ludwig Salvatore of Austria published in 1896 a collection of Majorcan tales written in German, titled *Märchen aus Mallorca*. But the master collection of Majorcan tales was done by a clergyman called Antoni Maria Alcover (1862-1932), who collected and published Majorcan folktales under the pen-name Jordi d'es Raco in the thirteen-volume collection *Aplech de Rondayes Mallorquines*, whose first volume was published the same year that Salvatore's. The collection includes versions of ATU 709 *Snow White* (*Na Magraneta*), ATU 510A *Cinderella* (*N'Estel d'or*), ATU 510B *Donkey Skin* (N'Espirafocs), ATU 555 *The Fisherman and his Wife* (*Juanet of the Pitcher*) ATU 451 *The Maiden Seeks Her Brothers* (*The Seven Deers*), ATU 402 *The Animal Bride* (*Es Granotet*) and ATU 706 *The Girl Without Hands* (*The Armless Countess*).

### 20th Century

After Maspons many folklorists kept collecting more Catalan folk tales in the 20th Century. Clergyman Jacint Verdaguer (1845-1922) published in 1905 his collection simply titled *Rondalles*, that included forty eight stories from oral tradition, included a variant of ATU 555 *The Fisherman and his Wife* (*The Talking Eel*). Pau Bertran i Bros (1853-1891) had his collection, *Lo rondallari catalan*, posthumously published in 1909, and that included variants of such tale types as *Snow White* (La filla de l'hostalera). One of the most important in the first half of the century that published their tales while they were still alive was Valeri Serra i Boldú (1875-1938), whose four-volume collection *Rondalles populars* was published in the 1930s and included version of ATU 554 *The Grateful Animals* (La princesa de la mel), ATU 403 *The White Bride and the Black Bride* (La noia que plorava perles), ATU 425A *The Search for the Lost Husband* (L'ós blanc) and ATU 461 *The Devil's Three Hairs* (Els tres pèls del dimoni). Joan Amades (1890-1959) was a self-taught folklorist, who wrote a three-volume inventory of all kinds of folklore from Catalonia titled Folklore de Catalunya. Its first volume, published in 1950 and subtitled *Rondallística*, centered around the folktales, including a total of 533, that we can divide into two groups. The first one consists in the tales already collected by Milá y Fontanals, Maspons i Labrós, Alcover and Serra i Boldú, that were slightly rewritten and changed by Amades. The second consists in the tales that Amades collected himself. To this last group belongs such tales as *Les maduixes*, *Els dotze mesos*, *La flor del Ricardell* and *El castell de les set torres*. During his last years he tried to create an index to classify all folktales collected in Catalan speaking areas following the Aarne-Thompson classification system, but he died before he could finish it.

Meanwhile in Valencia Enric Valor i Vives (1911-2000), famous for his studies about the Valencian dialect, collected 36 Valencian folktales and published them in th three volume collection *Rondalles valencianes*, whose first volume was published in 1951 and the last in 1958. After Valor's collection interest in the Valencian oral tradition started to raise, with new folktale collections being published. Among those new collectors we should mention Joaquim Gonzàlez i Caturla, who in 1985 published *Rondalles de l'Alicantí*, a collection of folktales from his hometown of Alicante. Also a native from Alicante who collected folktales, Chimo Lanuza Ortuño published in 1989 his collection *Conte contat: Contes i retals*.

In the 1980s artist Roser Capdevilla create *The Triplets*, a series of picture books starring three sisters named after Capdevilla's own daughters who travelled to different fairy tales. The first book was published in 1983, and in 1985 Capdevilla introduced the character of the Bruixa Avorrida (**tr.** Bored Witch), a witch that sent the girls to the tales everythime they missbehave, with the intention to teach them a lesson. The books became so popular that in 1997 a cartoon based on Capdevilla's characters and concept premiered on TV3. The episodes presented updated versions of the fairy tales, like the one based on *The Three Little Pigs*, in which the wolf was reimagined as a greedy developer that doesn't wanna eat the pigs, but get rid of them so he can build a new urbanization.

### 21th Century

Folklorists Carme Oriol and Josep M. Pujol took up Amades' project to classify every folktale collected in Catalan speaking areas according to the Aarne-Thompson Index, and in 2003 they published *Ìndex tipològic de la rondalla catalana*.