KidLit Forum

Similarities :
A beautiful and stupid girl.
A boy hideous like a monster.
They meets in the wood and the boy promises to make her intelligent, if in one year she marries him. She agrees.

Differences
Bernard, Mademoiselle Catherine,“Ricky of the Tuft,” In Inès de Cordoue. 1696

A girl is so stupid that her natural beauty only makes her more distasteful. On a walk she meets Riquet with the Tuft, a man so hideous that he might be a monster emerged from the ground. He promises to make her intelligent if, after a year, she marries him. With her new intelligence she is much admired by men who vie for her attention. After a year, worrying about losing her lover because of her promise, she walks in the wood where she meets Riquet again. He gives her a choice, to be ugly and smart or once again beautiful and stupid, if she should refuse to marry him, or both smart and beautiful if she carries out her promise. After the marriage she contacts her lover. So Riquet places a curse upon her whereby she is ugly by day, beautiful by night. So she sleeps all day and at night drugs Riquet by placing a leaf over his nose and goes to her lover. But a servant removes the leaf while she is gone and Riquet knows his bad luck. So this time he touches the lover with a wand thereby making him as ugly as Riquet himself. Thus the woman lives with two husbands instead of one, never knowing whom she should address her lamentations to for fear of mistaking the object of her hatred for the object of her love. But the moral is that “in the long run lovers become husbands anyway.”

Perrault, Charles. “Riquet à la Houppe” [“Ricky of the Tuft”]. In Histoires ou Contes du Tempes Passé, Paris, 1697, with the alternate title Contes de Ma Mere l’Oye.
A woman gives birth to a creature so ugly and misshapen the people doubt that he is human. He is named Riquet with the tuft. In a neighboring kingdom a queen gives birth to two daughters, one beautiful but stupid, the other ugly but smart. The beautiful girl is a social embarrassment and is scorned because of her awkwardness. She goes into the wood where she meets Riquet who proposes that he can make her intelligent if she will agree to marry him at the end of one year. She agrees and becomes the hit of society. Men vie for her hand in marriage, but her father leaves the choice to her. She, having forgotten about Riquet, goes into the wood to decide which handsome man to choose where she meets Riquet, dressed like a prince about to be married. She tries to talk him out of the promise. But Riquet convinces her that marriage to him will make him the most pleasing of men, so she consents. Riquet gave her the intelligence she wanted but he also gave her the power to render handsome any man who pleases her. So the marriage takes place and she no longer sees his deformities and ugliness. The moral is that even beauty cannot move the heart as much as charm.