Three Wishes

[steepholm]

There's an interesting discussion going on on the child_lit listserv at the moment, about when the idea first emerged of Aladdin's lamp (or the genie therein) being allowed to dispense three wishes only, rather than the unlimited number available in 1001 Nights. The earliest linking of three wishes to a genie currently stands at 1940, with the Sabu film The Thief of Baghdad - though that of course is not about Aladdin.

I wonder whether the answer may lie in panto, but don't know enough about its history to be sure. Anyway, I thought this learned flist might have a few ideas...

Comments

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Oh no it doesn't! :o)

The granting of three wishes appears in a great deal of traditional folk song. I suspect that numerology has somthing to do with it as seven and nine (like three, thought to be auspicious numbers) also make numerous appearances in folk song.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I think the three-wishes topos has quite a long history in Western folk tale, so maybe a crossover to the Arab material was natural enough, but I'm not sure when it first happened.

The structuralist in me would add...

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

On the number 3 in folk tales and jokes, I've always assumed that, apart from any mystical associations it has, it also happens to be the smallest number necessary to set up the common pattern of Event-Repetition-Variation. You need two to create an expectation in the reader/hearer, and the third to frustrate it. In the case of wishes, two might be wasted and the third used wisely, for example.

Re: The structuralist in me would add...

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

I think you are right about this pattern effect. It appears in jokes too.

[a-d-medievalist.livejournal.com]

I wonder also if it's mixed up in some sort of tradition from the British Isles. Or even continental Europe.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I suspect that's true.

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

Charles Perrault has three in The Ridiculous Wishes, presumably late seventeenth century, though they're granted by Jupiter rather than a genie.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

If you have no genie, then Jupiter will do!

[papersky.livejournal.com]

If you haven't got a Jupiter, then Thor bless you!

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Celtic stuff is full of threes, and there are leprechaun stories with three wishes, though I don't offhand know their dates. There's the sausage/nose thing, which relies on three. I think it was a Celtic wish pattern getting put onto the source -- folk tradition in action.