This story is—well. It’s really something. It’s Polish; I read it in Andrew Lang’s Yellow Fairy Book, but I did double check the origin through other sources, as Lang is not always accurate in his attributions.
It’s like if you started with a standard enchanted bridegroom story, and then just took out everything that made it make sense.
We start where we often do, with three beautiful princesses, the youngest of whom is the kindest. (Though we see no indication that the others aren’t also kind.) One day she comes across an injured crow, who tells her that he's an enchanted prince, and if she leaves everyone and everything she knows and loves to live in an abandoned castle with him, she can save him. There’s only one livable room in the castle, and it’s haunted, or demon-possessed, or something, and if she makes any noise when the monsters try to torture her all night, the crow’s suffering will double.
So naturally she goes with him.
Honey, why?
You have no evidence that he’s telling the truth. You have a loving, wealthy family; you’re not trying to get away from or provide for them. No one has threatened your father’s life. This is a Bad Move.
(In the enchanted palace, strange beings try to boil her alive in a giant cauldron.)
So, like, you know the thing you get in stories like Cupid and Psyche, where the heroine’s evil older sisters visit and try to screw everything up for her?
One of our girl’s sisters visits. She does not try to screw things up. Despite the fact that in this case I am begging someone to screw things up and get this poor girl out of this deeply concerning situation. She sleeps over for one night, and she screams, understandably, when the boiling starts. This of course causes the crow to suffer, so the princess sends her home.
She stays in this torture chamber for two years. Two. Years. Then the crow tells her he’s got one year left on his enchantment (it’s a seven year curse, the breaking of which doesn’t actually seem to be contingent on her presence in the castle), which means that she must go out into the world and become a maidservant. Apparently this (UNLIKE HER TIME IN THE TORTURE CASTLE) is necessary for him to become human again. Why? He doesn’t tell us.
I just. Like. This is—this is a standard step in the enchanted bridegroom plot. Girl goes into the world, works, and suffers. But usually there’s a reason for it. Just like there’s usually a reason for her going with the beast in the first place. Usually her sister visiting the palace would have led to her going out and suffering, but this story frames these two events as completely unrelated. The sister’s visit seems to have been toward the beginning of the two years.
Why is this happening? I want to know why this is happening.
So she spends a year working, and gets treated pretty badly throughout, until suddenly a handsome dude appears and claims to be the crow. They go back to the castle, which is no longer abandoned or haunted, and live happily together for a hundred years.
It doesn’t make sense. It’s like someone just looked at the outline of an enchanted bridegroom story, identified the key events, and somehow failed to realize that they’re supposed to be connected somehow.
Things don’t just happen. That’s not a story. There’s no reason for anything that happens. No stakes. No motivations. No explanations.
Why did the crow need someone to live in his palace and be tortured? Why did she agree? Why did the crow need her to be a maid for a year? Why did she agree? Why did her father the king not at any point interfere in this mess?
This is just…I don’t know what this. Girls, if a talking crow invites you back to his haunted castle, just say no.
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