So, if you interest yourself in fairy tales and their origins, you might have come across the assertion that the first instance of Hänsel and Gretel, as for so many folk tales, comes from the Pentameron. In it, we have the tale of Nennillo e Nennella, either the 7th or 8th story of the V day (depending on the edition), in which the titular children are left in the woods by their father Jannuccio, after the wishes of their stepmother Pasciozza, due to their poverty. On their first trip, the father leaves a trail of ash, which the children follow home, but on the second he just leaves breadcrumbs, a donkey eats these, and the kids are lost to the forest. But there is an even older example offered, Das Erdkühlein, "the little earth cow", from Martin Montanus' Gartengesellschaft (the garden company), from 1560. Here we have two sisters, Maidlein (a nickname of Margarete, like Gretel) and Annelein, a wicked stepmother and a plan to abandon a stepchild in the forest, first foiled by trails of sawdust and chaff, but that takes place after the girl uses linen seeds, which are picked by birds.
So far so good, right? These tales present close similarities to both Hänsel and Gretel and its predecessor, Perrault's Little Tumbling, so it makes sense to consider these two stories as the influences for the more famous ones. Except the way the older tales continue does not match Grimm or Perrault at all! Neither Nennillo, Nennella or Maidlein meet a child-eating monster, that they have to outwit to survive, nor is their return home a grand happy ending. The chidlren in Basile are separated, Nennillo raised by a prince, and Nennella taken by pirates and swallowed by a magic fish, only to be saved by her brother, and the prince punishing their stepmother; Maidlein meets the titular earth cow, a magic animal that keeps her well-fed, until her stepmother and jealous sister kill it and take her home to continue their abuse. While Grimms' and Perrault's stories are categorized as two subtypes of ATU 327 ("The children and the Witch", and "the dwarf and the giant"), the two older examples follow different structures. The little earth cow is an instance of ATU 511 ("One-eye, two-ey, three-eye), a type of story more closely related to Cinderella (the one giving Maidlein her trails back home is in fact her godmother). So it might be more correct to see the older tales as the first cases of this fairy tale BEGINNING, not of the tale types themselves. But then what is the model Nennillo and Nennella is following?
Luckily, we don't need to search much for ourselves. Italo Calvino already identified which italian folk tale Basile was working off of. In his Italian folktales, he does not associate Ninnillo e Nennella with Pulcino (an apulian version of Petit Poucet), but with Belmiele e Belsole, a swapped bride sort of tale. In this story from Rome, the brother Belmiele works for a foreign king, who falls in love with the sister Belsole, after seeing her portrait. On the journey for the wedding, Belsole's nursemaid throws her off the ship, where the girl is swallowed by a whale, and puts her own daughter in her stead. The king, believing to have been scammed by Belmiele, sentences him to be a duck guardian. When Belmiele reaches the seashore, Belsole convinces the whale to loosen her chains on her, to talk to her brother. After the king also witnesses this miracle, him and Belmiele work together to free Belsole, and the family is reunited and happy.
IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 1980 cover by Emanuele Luzzati of "Belmiele e Belsole - Cicco Petrillo" adapted by Antonio Virgilio Savona for "I dischi dello Zodiaco".
The image depicts Belmiele herding his ducks, Belsole rising from the ocean, and the king witnessing this wonder.
So here we have the separation of the siblings, the sister being swallowed by a sea beast (in other versions it's also a shark or a mermaid), and the king and brother seeing her from the seashore and freeing her from bondage. But there's more. Calvino notes how in Italy, this tale (ATU 403, "The Black and White bride") often overlaps with ATU 450, "Little Brother and Little Sister". Here, the evil nursemaid or stepmother, who wants her own daughter to become queen, also transforms the brother into an animal and plans to butcher and eat him. And here we find another reconnection to Basile's tale. Look at the rhyme the enchanted brothersings to his sister, imprisoned in the sharkfish, from the sicilian tale The calf with the golden horns (Il vitellino con le corna d'oro):
O sorella, mia sorella,
Qui già arrotan le coltella,
Già preparano il bacile
Per il sangue mio gentile!
The brother sings of the knives being sharpened for the slaughter. The sister answers:
Le tue lagrime son vane,
Sono in bocca al pescecane!
Telling him she's stuck inside the shark. Now, look at what Nennella sings from inside the magic fish:
Frate, mio frate,
li cortielle so’ ammolate,
le tavole apparecchiate
ed a me la vita ’ncresce
senza te dintro a sto pesce!
Again, the sister tells her brother she's stuck inside the fish, but she also starts the rhyme commenting on the sharpening of the knives! In the Pentameron's case, it's because the prince is setting up a banquet at the sea shore. It seems Basile decided to cut for whatever reason the animal transformation of Nennello, and found an alternate reason for the mention of knives.
Between the '70s and '80s, Roberto de Simone compiled an anthology of folk tales collected in the region of Campania (i.e. the region that Basile was born and lived in). And lo and behold, there are two instances of ATU 450 (n. 6 Aniello e Anella, and n. 60 Mamma Sirena), in which the story starts with the stepmother sending the children (called in both versions Aniello and Anella) out into the mountains, in the first one leaving a trail of sawdust that she wipes away, in the second a trail of ash and a trail of bran. The brother also turns in both of these tales into a sheep, "pecuriello" (giving his name a double meaning, as Aniello means lamb). And in Mamma Sirena, the rhymes go:
Cara sorella mia sorella,
Mò s'ammolano 'e ccurtelle,
'E ccurtelle so' ammulate,
Na vaiassa cannaruta
Ne vo' le celevrèlle.
Caro fratello mio fratello
Stongo 'ncuorpo a Pescecane,
Nun te pozzo cchiù aiuta'.
Getting really close to the rhyme Nennella sings in the Pentameron. So yeah, it appears that in Campania the introduction through the abandoned children and the lost trail is just collected to a different sort of tale, which Basile was adapting. Though, it is always a delicate issue with campanian folk tales, whether they represent a continuation of the folklore Basile collected from, or his work was what influenced them.
IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Anella on the shore, chained to Mamma Sirena (Mother Mermaid). From the exhibition "Tradizione in azione - un percorso d'arte tra tradizione e contemporaneità", by the Scuotto brothers. Complesso Monumentale di San Lorenzo Maggiore in Piazza San Gaetano, Napoli, 2009
