It’s that time of year again, when countless innocent pumpkins, their one night of jack-o-lantern glory past and gone, are unceremoniously dumped into the compost bin. Ah, the melancholy…
I can’t help but be reminded of the pumpkin shards littering the road as Cinderella limps home, one glass slipper still left on her foot, supremely indifferent to her dress that hangs in rags on her or the rain that streams down her head, as she is still lost in happy memories of the ball and the prince. In both of the Disney films the pumpkin comes to a quite spectacular end, splattering to pieces under the hooves of the palace guard in frantic pursuit of the mysterious princess.
Interestingly enough, I didn’t encounter the pumpkin in the Cinderella tale until I came to Canada and watched the Disney cartoon, which is modelled on Perrault’s telling of the story. The Grimms’ version of “Cinderella”, which is what I grew up with, hasn’t got a pumpkin in it; Aschenputtel gets to the ball on foot. She’s a much more independent sort than Perrault’s French court lady. There also isn’t a fairy godmother, not really. Aschenputtel’s fairy, umm, god-creatures are a pair of turtle doves that live in the tree on her mother’s grave (and peck out the stepsisters’ eyes during the grand finale – yeah, there might be a reason Disney went with the Perrault version).
Pumpkins aren’t too prolific in fairy tale land, but Perrault is by no means the only one who uses them. Another tale that brings in pumpkins, in an interesting juxtaposition with roses, no less, is Clemens Brentano’s “The Legend of Rosepetal”. Brentano was a contemporary of the Brothers Grimm, one of the chief members of German Romanticism. He wrote various fairy tale collections, and his tales are cited as prime examples of the literary fairy tale. However, his Italian Fairy Tales, of which “The Legend of Rose Petal” is one, are actually adaptations of Giambattista Basile’s Pentamerone – in other words, Brentano didn’t “write” them, per se, but took existing tales and retold them. Basile’s version of “The Legend of Rosepetal” is called “La schiavottella”, “The Kitchen Maid” – but Brentano expanded the tale, and, what’s of greater interest to us here, added pumpkins.
The story comes in two parts. Part One begins with the Duke of Rosmital, whose beautiful sister Rosalina is only interested in roses and having her hair combed. Prince Foreverandever wants to marry Rosalina, but she’s having none of it – “That’d be like a rose marrying a pumpkin!” Ouch.
But the prince isn’t so easily put off. He goes to an enchantress, who works things so he becomes a rose bush, which she presents to the princess as a seedling stuck inside a pumpkin to keep fresh. The princess, of course, wants the rose bush to plant in front of her window. But first, the enchantress makes her eat a few spoonsful of pumpkin seed and promise to do a monthly game of “Jump Over the Rose Bush”. The princess agrees to anything, no matter how weird, just to get a hold of that rose bush. Of course, during her very first game, she knocks a rose petal off the bush, which she quickly catches hold of and swallows. Ooops!
“Now you’ve done it,” says the enchantress. “You’ve swallowed pumpkin and rose – so now you’re married to Prince Foreverandever. See ya!” And off she goes. Rosalina passes out from shock, and the next night she dreams she has a rose bush growing from her mouth.
The next month, when the bush has another rose blooming, the princess isn’t feeling so good. By the third month, she keeps having dreams of turning into a pumpkin, which become more and more intrusive, until finally, by month nine, she is convinced she’s a pumpkin, and that she’s going to die! (Yeah, that’s one way of describing it…) What do you know, when she wakes up, beside her bed there’s half a pumpkin, in which lies a beautiful baby girl whom she names Rosepetal.
Part Two: We’ll skip over a few things. Suffice to say, this is where the story turns “Snow White”, “Bluebeard”, and “Cinderella” at once. Little Rosepetal grows up. Mommy gets jealous of her, and in her rage accidentally kills her kid by stabbing her in the head with a comb. Oh dear. She has the girl put in a glass coffin and kept in a spare bedroom, and then she and the rose bush at her window both die from grief.
Rosalina’s brother (the duke from the beginning of the story) marries a nasty woman. One day, she opens the door of the forbidden chamber and finds the girl in the glass coffin. She takes out the comb and wakes the girl, Snow-White-style, and then goes all Cinderella and makes the girl her slave, making her do dirty work and abusing her. Eventually, to carry on the Cinderella theme, Rose Petal asks the duke to bring her a gift from the market.
The gift (a little doll) is the instrument of the duke’s finding out the truth about his niece and his wife. He kicks out the wife, finds a princely husband for Rosepetal, and in the end, Rosepetal even sees her parents, Rosalina and Prince Foreverandever-the-Rosebush. She gets their blessings on a life of Happily Ever After, and they waft off into the ether. Shortly thereafter, a little prince is born, and he, Brentano says, told this story to him for nothing more than a piece of gingerbread. The End.
Cute, isn’t it? Basile’s version is very similar, but without the pumpkin. And presumably the gingerbread at the end.
Personally, I like this version. However, I’ll skip the gingerbread, but I’ll make a pie out of my leftover jack-o-lantern. Pumpkin pie is really easy to make. Here’s how:
Fail-Safe Pumpkin Pie
Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C).
Ingredients:
1 single unbaked 10″ pie crust
2 c cooked, mashed pumpkin (chop up jack-o-lantern, put in pot, cover with water, boil until soft, cool, peel, mash)
2 eggs
3/4 c brown sugar
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp allspice
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/4 c creamMethod:
Whiz all and sundry in food processor, dump into crust, bake for 45-55 minutes or until filling puffs evenly all the way to the center.
Remove from oven, cool on rack, serve with whipped cream.Observe minute of silence for memory of jack-o-lantern or of Prince Foreverandever.
