"All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered."

― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

The She-Bear

On day 2 of Giambattista Basile‘s 1634 Tale of Tales, also known as The Pentameron, the sixth tale features a story that’s close to “Allerleirauh” by the Grimm Brothers and features some typical tropes in folklore, including shapeshifting through a magical object.
Henriette-Julie de Murat, a XVII Century aristocratic French writer, uses this same device for a circumstance that’s strikingly close to the one in the tale.
Ruth Manning-Sanders included a version of the tale in her 1969 A Book of Princes and Princesses.

The fairy tale is called She-Bear and features a Princess who transforms to escape her father.
You can read about it on my Patreon.
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