The Orange and Citron Princess (), also The Story of the Orange and Citron Princess, is an Iranian folktale published by Emily Lorimer and David Lockhart Robertson Lorimer in their collection Persian Tales, in 1919. It is classified as tale type ATU 408, "The Love for Three Oranges", of the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index. As with The Three Oranges, the tale deals with a prince's search for a bride that lives inside a fruit, who is replaced by a false bride and goes through a cycle of incarnations, until she regains physical form again.
Sources The Lorimer couple sourced the tale from Kermānī. German scholar sourced it from Kermān.Marzolph, Ulrich. Typologie des persischen Volksmärchens. Beirut: Orient-Inst. der Deutschen Morgenländischen Ges.; Wiesbaden: Steiner [in Komm.], 1984. pp. 79-80, 82 (entry nr. 18).
Summary A prince learns of "The Daughter of the Orange and the Golden Citron" from his school's mullah, and forcefully questions his mother about her location: he learns that he has to wear down seven pairs of iron shoes and travel for seven years until he finds a well with a div-woman inside who can help him if he salutes her. The prince begins his quest and reaches the div-woman's well after a year. The creature welcomes him and promises to point the way to the Daughter of the Orange and the Golden Citron, and in exchange he must marry the div and turn the Orange Princess as her slave. The div-woman then agrees to hide the prince from her seven sons when they return, so she turns him into a needle. After her sons leave, the div-woman sends the prince with a letter to her even elder div-sisters, who live in their respective wells.
After seven years, the prince reaches the last div-woman's dwelling, and is given a reed, a piece of glass, a needle, a knife, some salt, some charcoal, and some sea foam, which have been blessed by the div-woman. Finally, she advises the prince to walk a certain road until he reaches a garden where a gardener lives, whom he is to bribe to be let into the garden; he will find an orange tree in the middle of the garden, so he must pluck and cut each fruit and take only the one that shouts "Ah!", which is where the princess is; but warns him that the Peris and Divs are in love with the princess and will stop at nothing to get the fruit back.
The prince does as instructed and steals the fruit with the princess. The div and peris chase after him, but he throws behind the objects to create obstacles in the desert to hinder the pursuit, invoking the name of Prophet Suleman: the reed becomes a reed-brake, the glass a place of glass, the needle a needle grove, the knife a place of knives, the salt a salt marsh, the charcoal a place of fire and the sea foam a sea. At a safe distance, the prince peels the orange and releases a beautiful naked maiden whom he places atop a tree, while he goes back home to return with clothes and a retinue.
While the prince is away, a black slave woman is sent to draw water from the stream, sees the Orange Princess's visage in water and mistakes it for her own. She makes the same mistake twice more in-between chores, including almost killing a baby in the stream, when the Orange Princess shouts at her. The slave woman notices the Orange Princess atop the tree, who tells her everything, then delivers the baby to her mistress and returns to talk to the naked maiden. The Orange Princess ropes the slave woman atop the tree with her braids, and the slave woman cuts the princess's throat, tosses her body in the stream and replaces her atop the tree. However, a drop of blood of the Orange Princess falls to the ground and creates a fragrant rose tree.
The prince returns to the tree and finds a different woman atop it. The slave woman lies that she is the Orange Princess, only that the sunshine darkened her skin, the crows pecked at her face and created pock-marks, and her strange manner of speech is due to trying to shoo the crows. Still, the prince takes her as his bride, but notices the rose-tree. The prince marries the slave woman, but dotes on the rose tree he brings to the garden. The slave woman has a son and, jealous of this attention, orders some carpenters to cut the rose tree and make a cradle of it. It happens thus, but, as soon as the slave woman places her son in the cradle, the baby has a convulsion and faints. The slave woman then tosses the cradle in the fire.
An old woman neighbour goes to the royal kitchen to borrow some coals and brings home some of the remaining wood to make a rosewood box. At home, she notices her house is tidied up and decides to investigate: after three days, she finds the Orange Princess, who tells her everything and becomes her adopted daughter. Back to the prince, after the burning of the rose tree, he falls into a emaciated state. One day, he takes a stroll on the palace roofs and sights the girl at the old woman's house, recognizing her as the true Daughter of the Orange and the Golden Citron, then faints. He wakes up and sends for the old woman, who tells him about the girl she adopted, and he goes to meet her. He reunites with his true bride, who reveals about the slavewoman's deception. The prince then orders the slavewoman and her son to be tied to horses and sent loose in the wilderness, and marries the Orange and Citron Princess.
Analysis Tale type The tale is classified in the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as tale type ATU 408, "The Three Oranges".Aarne, Antti; Thompson, Stith. The types of the folktale: a classification and bibliography. Folklore Fellows Communications FFC no. 184. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1961. pp. 135-137.Marzolph, Ulrich. Typologie des persischen Volksmärchens. Beirut: Orient-Inst. der Deutschen Morgenländischen Ges.; Wiesbaden: Steiner [in Komm.], 1984. pp. 79-80, 82 (entry nr. 18). In an article in Enzyklopädie des Märchens, scholar Christine Shojaei Kawan separated the tale type into six sections, and stated that parts 3 to 5 represented the "core" of the story: Accessed 2023-06-20.
(1) A prince is cursed by an old woman to seek the fruit princess; (2) The prince finds helpers that guide him to the princess's location; (3) The prince finds the fruits (usually three), releases the maidens inside, but only the third survives; (4) The prince leaves the princess up a tree near a spring or stream, and a slave or servant sees the princess's reflection in the water; (5) The slave or servant replaces the princess (transformation sequence); (6) The fruit princess and the prince reunite, and the false bride is punished.
Motifs The maiden's appearance According to the tale description in the international index, the maiden may appear out of the titular citrus fruits, like oranges and lemons. However, she may also come out of pomegranates or other species of fruits, and even eggs.Aarne, Antti; Thompson, Stith. The types of the folktale: a classification and bibliography. Folklore Fellows Communications FFC no. 184. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1961. p. 135. According to Walter Anderson's unpublished manuscript, variants with eggs instead of fruits appear in Southeastern Europe.Ranke, Kurt. Folktales of Germany. Routledge & K. Paul. 1966. p. 209. . In addition, Christine Shojaei-Kawan located the motif of the heroine emerging from the eggs in Slavic texts. Accessed 2024-07-03.
In the Iranian tales, the fruit maidens appear out of apples, pomegranates, bitter oranges, or some other type of fruit from a tree guarded by evil creatures (in some tales, the divs). The fruit maidens also go through a death and rebirth cycle.
The transformations and the false bride The tale type is characterized by the substitution of the fairy wife for a false bride. The usual occurrence is when the false bride (a witch or a slave) sticks a magical pin into the maiden's head or hair and she becomes a dove. In some tales, the fruit maiden regains her human form and must bribe the false bride for three nights with her beloved.Gulyás Judit (2010). "Henszlmann Imre bírálata Arany János Rózsa és Ibolya című művéről". In: Balogh Balázs (főszerk). Ethno-Lore XXVII. Az MTA Neprajzi Kutatóintezetenek évkönyve. Budapest, MTA Neprajzi Kutatóintezete (Sajtó aatt). pp. 250-253.
In other variants, the maiden goes through a series of transformations after her liberation from the fruit and regains a physical body. In that regard, according to Christine Shojaei-Kawan's article, Christine Goldberg divided the tale type into two forms. In the first subtype, indexed as AaTh 408A, the fruit maiden suffers the cycle of metamorphosis (fish-tree-human) - a motif Goldberg locates "from the Middle East to Italy and France" (especifically, it appears in Greece and Eastern Europe). In the second subtype, AaTh 408B, the girl is transformed into a dove by the needle.
Separated from her husband, she goes to the palace (alone or with other maidens) to tell tales to the king. She shares her story with the audience and is recognized by him.Angelopoulos, Anna and Kaplanoglou, Marianthi. "Greek Magic Tales: aspects of research in Folklore Studies and Anthropology". In: FF Network. 2013; Vol. 43. p. 15.
In the Iranian story of "نارنج و ترنج" ("The Orange and the Bergamot"), type 408 ("بن مایه : ۴۰۸", in the original), a prince travels afar in search of the tree of Orange and Bergamot, plucks the fruits and releases a naked maiden he takes back with him, but lets her up a tree while he goes back home for clothes; an ugly maidservant kills the fruit maiden and replaces her, but the heroine's blood falls next to a river and creates an orange tree, whose wood the heroine still inhabits; the maidservant fears the tree and asks for it to be felled down and made into a cradle, but the cradle still contains the heroine's voice; the heroine eventually returns to human form and marries the prince.
Variants According to a study by Russian scholar Vladimir Minorsky, the tale type appears in Iran as Nâranj o Toronj, wherein the prince searches for the "Orange (Pomegranate) Princess". Later, German scholar , in his catalogue of Persian folktales (published in 1984), located 23 variants of the tale type in Iran, which is listed as Die Orangenprinzessin ("The Orange Princess").Marzolph, Ulrich. Typologie des persischen Volksmärchens. Beirut: Orient-Inst. der Deutschen Morgenländischen Ges.; Wiesbaden: Steiner [in Komm.], 1984. pp. 79-82.
The Pomerance Girl (Osmanov)