The Horse-Devil and the Witch or The Horse-Dew and the WitchKúnos, Ignaz. Forty-four Turkish Fairy Tales. George G. Harrap & Co. London. 1913. pp. 70-76. is a Turkish fairy tale first collected by Hungarian Turkologist Ignác Kúnos in the late 19th century. The story deals about a princess who marries a youth under an animal disguise, loses him due to her breaking his trust, and goes after him at his mother's home, where she is forced to perform hard tasks for her.
The tale belongs to the international cycle of the Animal as Bridegroom or The Search for the Lost Husband, wherein a human princess marries a supernatural husband, loses him, and goes on a quest to find him. According to scholars and local folktale catalogues, the supernatural husband may appear in the shape of a horse in Turkey and nearby regions.
Sources The story was first published by folklorist Ignác Kúnos in Turkish as Az ló-ördög, in Hungarian as A ló-ördög és a boszorkány, and in German as Der Ross-Dew und die Hexe.
Translations The tale also appears in German as Der Dew in Rossgestalt ("The Horse-Shaped Dev").Agcagül, Sevgi; Ragagnin, Elisabetta. Türkische Volksmärchen. München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 2008. pp. 131-138.
The tale was also translated into English as The Horse and the She-Devil,Brockett, Eleanor. Turkish Fairy Tales. Muller, 1963. pp. 42ff. . and The Princess, the Horse and the She-Devil.Mayo, Margaret; Ambrus, Victor G. The Book of magical horses. New York: Hastings House, 1977. pp. 12-20.
Spanish translator translated the tale as El Caballo del Genio y el Látigo ("The Djinn Horse and the Whip").
The tale was also translated to French as Le Cheval enchanté et la Sorcière ("The Enchanted Horse and the Sorceress").
Summary
Before he travels afar, the padishah orders his daughters to groom his favorite horse. The eldest daughters are rebuffed by the animal, and only the third daughter is able to groom and feed it. Her father notices their approximation and marries her to the animal, while the elder sisters are married to the Vezir and to the Sheik-ul-Islam. The youngest princess moves out to the stables, and discovers the horse is actually a human at night, promising to be quiet about it.
When her father organizes a tournament, the horse husband takes off his horse skin and joins it as a rider, eventually defeating and unhorsing his brothers-in-law. This repeats for the second day of the tournament. On both occasions, the elder sisters admire their respective husbands' bravery, mocking their cadette for her marriage to the horse-husband. On the third day, the horse husband gives her three strands of his hair to his wife to summon him whenever she may need help. He goes to the tournament. Proud of his deed and cajoled by her sisters' endless mockery, the princess betrays his secret and he disappears.
She seeks him out on a long quest and reaches a mountain. She burns one of the hairs he gave her and he appears. They embrace and he tells her this mountain is the abode of his witch mother and the creature may kill her. So, to protect her, he transforms her into an apple to hide her inside his mother's house. The horse-husband brings her in, but his ogress mother senses a human smell nearby. The horse-husband makes his mother promise on the egg not to harm, and introduces his wife to her.
At first, the ogress mother assigns her simple tasks, but, wanting to take her revenge on the human princess, orders her to sweep and not sweep. The princess burns her husband's hairs and he appears with advice: she is to sweep the room and not sweep the courtyard. After doing so, the ogress suspects her son had his hand in teaching her how to pass the task. Next, the ogress orders the princess to fill three vases with her tears; once again, she burns her husband's hair and he appears with guidance: fill the vases with water and sprinkle some salt on them.
Thirdly, the ogress orders the princess to prepare some pancakes for her, but she cannot find any ingredients. At this moment, the horse-husband is away, but he appears suddenly and says his mother will stop at nothing to destroy them. Thus, they make their escape from the witch by transforming into objects: first, they change into a swimming bath (the princess) and a bath attendant (him), then into a spring (her) and a person drawing water (him), and finally into a tree (the princess) and a serpent coiled around it (the horse prince). The ogress mother reaches the pair and realizes she cannot attack the tree without harming her son, but requests that her son shows her his wife's little finger, so she can let them be. The princess shows her little finger, which is swallowed down by the ogress mother. The creature leaves them be, and they return to the princess's kingdom, where they celebrate a wedding, the Dew-son's talisman being destroyed.
Analysis Tale type The tale belongs to the cycle of stories classified in the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as ATU 425, "The Search for the Lost Husband", and subtypes related to the Animal as Bridegroom cycle.Dollerup, Cay; Holbek, Bengt; Reventlow, Iven and Rosenberg Hansen, Carsten. "The Ontological Status, the Formative Elements, the “Filters” and Existences of Folktales". In: Fabula 25, no. 3-4 (1984): 243. https://doi.org/10.1515/fabl.1984.25.3-4.241
Motifs The horse husband According to Richard McGillivray Dawkins, variants with the horse as the animal husband were found in the Balkans, in Turkey and among the Romani from Bulgaria.Dawkins, Richard McGillivray. Modern Greek folktales. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1953. p. 62. Likewise, scholar asserted that the animal or supernatural husband appears as a horse in tale type 425A (see footnote "a") "in the Orient".Swahn, Jan Öjvind. The Tale of Cupid and Psyche. Lund, C.W.K. Gleerup. 1955. p. 230. In addition, Swahn identified a motif he named "favourite horse desires the king's daughter", which he associated with his type A (see below),Swahn, Jan Öjvind. The Tale of Cupid and Psyche. Lund, C.W.K. Gleerup. 1955. p. 212. and which Greek folklorist , in his study, noted to be "traditional" in Turkey regarding subtype A (see below).Megas, Georgios A. Das Märchen von Amor und Psyche in der griechischen Volksüberlieferung. Πραγματειαι της Ακαδημιας Αθηνων, Volume 30. Athens: Grapheion Dēmosieumatōn tēs Akadēmias Athēnōn, 1971. p. 71.
Turkologist Iya Vasilyevna Stebleva, by comparing Turkish tales Çember-Tiyar and Bileiz, suggests a mythic approximation between the horse and the deva (Turkish: div).Васильевна Стеблева, Ия. Очерки турецкой мифологии: по материалам волшебной сказки. Восточная литература РАН, 2002. pp. 36ff. .
The heroes' Magic Flight According to Christine Goldberg, some variants of the type show as a closing episode "The Magic Flight" sequence, a combination that appears "sporadically in Europe", but "traditionally in Turkey".See footnote 20 in As their final transformation to deceive the ogress mother, the princess becomes a tree and her supernatural husband becomes a snake coiled around it.Eberhard, Wolfram; Boratav, Pertev Nailî. Typen türkischer Volksmärchen. Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1953. p. 113. Although this episode is more characteristic of tale type ATU 313, "The Magic Flight", some variants of type ATU 425B also show it as a closing episode. German literary critic Walter Puchner argues that the motif attached itself to type 425B, as a Wandermotiv ("Wandering motif").Puchner, Walter. "Magische Flucht (AaTh 313 sqq.)". In: Enzyklopädie des Märchens Band 9: Magica-Literatur – Neẓāmi. Edited by Rudolf Wilhelm Brednich; Hermann Bausinger; Wolfgang Brückner; Helge Gerndt; Lutz Röhrich; Klaus Roth. De Gruyter, 2016 . pp. 13-14. . https://www.degruyter.com/database/EMO/entry/emo.9.003/html
Variants Turkey In the Typen türkischer Volksmärchen ("Turkish Folktale Catalogue"), by Wolfram Eberhard and Pertev Naili Boratav, both scholars listed the variants with the horse husband under one type: TTV 98, "Der Pferdemann" ("The Horse Man"), which corresponded in the international classification to tale type AaTh 425. In a later book, Boratav stated that the Catalogue registered 25 variants, but six more had been collected since its publication.Boratav, Pertev Nailî. Türkische Volksmärchen. Akademie-Verlag, 1970. p. 348.
In most of the variants collected, the supernatural husband is a horse, followed by a man with a donkey's head and a camel. In other tales, he may be a snake, a frog or even Turkish hero Kaloghlan.Eberhard, Wolfram; Boratav, Pertev Nailî. Typen türkischer Volksmärchen. Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1953. pp. 113-114.
Çember-Tiyar Folklorist Pertev Boratav collected a Turkish tale titled Çember-Tiyar, translated to German as Tschember-Tiyar and to Russian as "Чембер-Тияр". In this tale, a sultan with three daughters marries the two elders to human princes. As the youngest is still single, she is the only one to give grapes to their favorite horse and the only one he responds to affectionately. The sultan marries his third daughter to the horse, who is an enchanted prince. She promises to keep his secret. On a tournament, the horse prince appears in red vestments on a red horse and defeats his brothers-in-law, and on the next day on white garments. She betrays the secret and burns the horse skin. The enchanted prince becomes a dove and flies away. The princess follows after him and reaches the house of an ogress (a dev), his mother, who orders her to perform difficult tasks for her, including sweeping and not sweeping the floor, getting a sieve from a distant neighbour, filling a teapot with her tears and filling mattresses with bird feathers. Finally, Çember-Tiyar's mother betroths him to another girl; on the wedding day the ogress mother ties the princess to a pole and places ten wax candles on her fingers and one on her head. As she begins to be set on fire, Çember-Tiyar replaces her for his bride and the couple escape in a "Magic Flight"-type sequence, by throwing objects behind them, and lastly, by turning themselves into a tree (the princess) and into a snake coiled around it (Çember-Tiyar).Dollerup, Cay; Holbek, Bengt; Reventlow, Iven and Rosenberg Hansen, Carsten. "The Ontological Status, the Formative Elements, the “Filters” and Existences of Folktales". In: Fabula 25, no. 3-4 (1984): 243-244. https://doi.org/10.1515/fabl.1984.25.3-4.241Стеблева, Ия Васильевна. Турецкие сказки. Сост., пер. с турецк., вступит. статья и примеч. И.В. Стеблевой. Moskva: Наука, 1986. pp. 105-109 (Russian translation), 380-381 (source for tale nr. 27), 393 (classification). (In Russian)Boratav, Pertev Nailî. Türkische Volksmärchen. Akademie-Verlag Berlin, 1968. pp. 57-63. .
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