Fairy of the Wooden Dress in Pedroso’s Tale

Overview

A little old woman repeatedly appears while a princess grieves at her father’s demand that she marry him. She first advises three delaying requests for richly coloured dresses. When the king satisfies them all, she recommends a carpenter-made wooden dress and flight to another ruler’s palace, where a duck-tending servant is wanted. The disguise is clothing enclosing a human woman, not a change into a wooden organism.

The helper is later explicitly called a fairy and credited with giving the princess a wand. With it the fugitive summons a royal carriage and attends three festivities in her concealed fine dresses, returning to her servant disguise afterwards. Following recognition and marriage to the second king, he invites the old woman to live in the palace. She declines because she is a fairy. The narrator does not supply another reason for that refusal, her personal name or a relationship to the princess’s dead mother.

Origins & earliest records

Consiglieri Pedroso, Portuguese Folk-Tales, translated from the original manuscript by Henriqueta Monteiro, London: Elliot Stock for the Folk-Lore Society, 1882; tale XVI, The Princess who would not Marry her Father, pp. 66–72. No individual narrator or collecting locality is identified.

Records & interpretation

The located 1882 English translation presents this figure within a complete collected narrative. Pedroso’s introductory pp. 1–2 describe the thirty published selections from his larger collection.

Selected bibliography

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

1. 01

   Portuguese Folk-Tales XVI: The Princess who would not Marry her Father, pp. 66–72

   Collected by Consiglieri Pedroso; translated by Henriqueta Monteiro · 1882

   Complete tale read through its final recognition, marriage or helper’s refusal. The translator’s narrative is kept distinct from introductory comparative commentary.

Family & connections

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References

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

1. Primary textPortuguese Folk-Tales, original 1882 edition scan and transcriptionResearch access: 2026-10-05

Image credits

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