A sourced illustration has not yet been added. This gap is included in the coverage record.

Overview

After killing the blood-feeding fairy and marrying the rescued princess, the eldest brother investigates a dense fog and reaches a mountain palace. Two beautiful women invite him to play chess. When he loses, they turn him, his dog and his horse into marble statues in a garden already filled with such victims. The narrative explicitly identifies these women as the dead fairy’s sisters. Their appearance and chess-based trap are separate from her cloudlike body and blood-feeding.

The second brother meets the same fate. The third receives advice and two pawns from an old man, then plays under terms granting the winner power over the loser. After he wins, the sisters beg for life. He requires them to restore every statue; they touch the figures with a wand, returning them to life. The revived captives immediately kill the two women. Although the third brother grants a conditional reprieve, the ending does not spare them, and their restored victims are not described as their children.

Explicit sisters of the cloud fairyChess contest entrapmentPetrify people and animalsWand reverses petrification
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Origins & earliest records

Crane, Italian Popular Tales (1885), VI: The Cloud, printed pp. 30–35. The story list identifies Domenico Comparetti, No.32, La Nuvolaccia, from Pisa. The full selected English tale has been used; no individual oral narrator is named in that presentation.

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Records & interpretation

The selected tale provides this figure’s stated form, speech or supernatural action and its narrative outcome. Crane’s preface acknowledges changes of tense and omitted repetitions; this English presentation is distinguished from independently inspecting its underlying regional collection.

Selected bibliography

Documented works and useful reading. This is not a list of every appearance.

  1. 01

    Italian Popular Tales, VI: The Cloud, pp. 30–35

    Thomas Frederick Crane, translator/compiler; source Domenico Comparetti, No.32, La Nuvolaccia, from Pisa · 1885 English edition

    Complete selected tale, including its final resolution; nearby editorial comparisons remain separate.

Family, evolution & connections

The Cloud’s three fairy sisters — Pisa account

Crane VI, pp. 30–35, a selected English presentation after Comparetti no. 32 from Pisa.

Explicit sibling identification on p. 34, following the complete tale. The two avenging sisters are unnamed. This is a sibling group, not an invented common-parent genealogy. The seven-headed tigress contains the external-life egg but is not called a relative. Captive maidens’ Mamma address is not biological parentage.

Thomas Frederick Crane, Italian Popular Tales (1885), VI, The Cloud, pp. 30–35; after Comparetti no. 32, Pisa

References

Sources supporting this profile. Linked pages have their own scope and editorial standards.

  1. Primary textCrane1885: VI: The Cloud, story list and prefaceResearch access: 2026-10-05

Image credits

A sourced illustration has not yet been added. This gap is included in the coverage record.

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