Peruonto is an Italian literary fairy tale written by Giambattista Basile in his 1634 work, the Pentamerone.
Despite its origins as a literary tale, variants are recorded from oral tradition across Europe, in the Americas, and even in Asia.
Synopsis
A widow named Ceccarella had a stupid son named Peruonto, as ugly as an ogre. One day, she sent him to gather wood. He saw three men sleeping in the sunlight and made them a shelter of branches. They woke, and being the sons of a fairy, gave him a charm that whatever he asked for would be done. As he was carrying the wood back, he wished that it would carry him, and he rode it back like a horse. The king's daughter Vastolla, who never laughed, saw it and burst out laughing. Peruonto wished she would marry him and he would cure her of her laughing.
A marriage was arranged for Vastolla with a prince, but Vastolla refused, because she would marry only the man who rode the wood. The king proposed putting her to death. His councilors advised him to go after the man instead. The king had a banquet with all the nobles and lords, thinking Vastolla would betray which man it was, but she did not recognize any of them. The king would have put her to death at once, but the councillors advised a banquet for those still lower in birth. Peruonto's mother urged him to go, he went, and Vastolla recognized him at once and exclaimed. The king had her and Peruonto shut up in a cask and thrown into the sea. Vastolla wormed the story out of Peruonto, and told him to turn the cask to a ship. Then she had him turn it to a castle, and then she had him turn himself into a handsome and well-mannered man. They married and lived happily for years.
Her father grew old and sad. His councillors encouraged him to hunt to cheer him up. One day, he came to a castle and found only two little boys who welcomed him and brought him to a magical banquet. In the morning, he wished to thank them, but not only the boys but their mother and father—Vastolla and Peruonto—appeared. They were reconciled, and the king brought them back to his castle where the feast of celebration lasted nine days.
Analysis
Tale type
The tale is classified in the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as type ATU 675, "The Lazy Boy".
Mythological parallels
Austrian consul and folktale collector Johann Georg von Hahn saw a parallel between the miraculous birth of the princess's child and their banishment to the sea in a casket and the Greek legend of Danae and her son, the hero Perseus. A similar, yet unique ("found nowhere else in Greece") story is narrated by geographer Pausanias in his Description of Greece: after giving birth to her semi-divine son, Dionysus, fathered by Zeus, human princess Semele was banished from the realm by her father Cadmus. Their sentence was to be put into a chest or a box (larnax) and cast in the sea. Luckily, the casket they were in washed up by the waves at Prasiae. However, it has been suggested that this tale might have been a borrowing from the story of Danaë and Perseus.
Another parallel lies in the legend of Breton saint Budoc and his mother Azénor: Azénor was still pregnant when cast into the sea in a box by her husband, but an angel led her to safety and she gave birth to future Breton saint Budoc.
The "half-man" hero
Professors Michael Meraklis and Nicole Belmont remarked that, in some Greek and French variants of the tale type, the hero is a half-man son, born due to a hasty wish from his mother. At the end of the tale, the hero assumes a complete human body after he wishes to become a handsome nobleman.
Variants
The tale type of ATU 675 is "told all over Europe" and, argued Stith Thompson, "disseminated rather evenly" over the continent. While noticing its dissemination throughout Europe, Paul Delarue stated that the tale type can be found in Turkey, and "here and there in the rest of Asia" (including Vietnam).
19th century Portuguese folklorist Consiglieri Pedroso claimed that the tale type is "popular everywhere", but specially "in the East of Europe". This seemed to be confirmed by Jack Haney, who observed that the tale is "common throughout the Eastern Slavic world".
Historian William Reginald Halliday suggested an origin in Middle East, instead of Western Europe, since the Half-Man or Half-Boy hero appears in Persian tales.
Literary variants
Other European literary tales of the tale type are Straparola's "Peter The Fool" (Night Three, Fable One) and Madame d'Aulnoy's The Dolphin.