Most ‘frog’ folktales involve a frog prince or at the very least a male frog. However, in this story from Italy, a female frog makes friends with a young man and helps him keep his mother happy as he searches for a wife. Little does the young man know that his perfect woman is sitting on a rock beside him. Three possible morals: 1) Sometimes we don’t appreciate those around us enough; 2) Often the thing we are looking for is right under our noses; 3) Or how about the English idiom beauty is only (frog) skin deep.
Our source for the story was The Violet Fairy Book, one of a series of twelve collections of folk and fairy tales for children edited by Andrew Lang. This is the seventh book in the series, and was first published in 1901. Lang does not cite his source other than commenting “from the Italian”. Although I have been unable to find an earlier version of the whole story, the section at the end (where three witches are cured of various maladies and reward the couple) does appear in other European folktales of the time – albeit in some cases with the witches swapped for fairies.
Original Text / PDF (1,366 words)