The Prince and the Gypsy Woman () is a Ukrainian fairy tale, first collected and published by Ukrainian writer and folklorist Panteleimon Kulish in 1847.
The tale is a local form of tale type ATU 408, "The Love for Three Oranges", of the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index. As with The Three Oranges, the tale deals with a prince's search for a bride that lives in an egg, who is replaced by a false bride and goes through a cycle of incarnations, until she regains physical form again. According to scholarship, among the East Slavic languages, variants of the tale type are only found in Ukraine.
Summary
A prince wishes to marry, but cannot find a bride. One day, a gypsy woman advises him to climb up a willow tree by the river and fetch three eggs, from where he will find his bride. The prince does as instructed and fetches the three eggs from the nest. On the road back home, he notices he is carrying three eggs and questions himself why he is carrying them. He then accidentally breaks open one egg, releasing a beautiful maiden that asks for water. The prince forgets to fulfill her request, and she dies. He keeps journeying and releases a second maiden from the second egg, who asks the same request that the prince forgets to fulfill. Finally, he accidentally cracks open the third egg and releases a third maiden, to whom he gives some water to drink in a hat. The maiden then climbs up a willow tree and bids the prince return with a carriage.
While the prince is away, the same gypsy woman appears to check her reflection in the water to see if she is beautiful and finds the egg maiden's reflection besides her own. She notices the egg maiden atop the tree and draws her close, drowns her, then puts on her clothes to pass herself off as the egg maiden to trick the prince.
As for the egg maiden, she turns into a fish with silver and golden scales and fins. The prince captures the fish and brings it home to be cooked, but the false bride, who knows the fish is the true egg maiden, lies that the fish is dangerous and must be disposed of. The prince throws the fish in the orchard where an apple tree sprouts, with silver and golden leaves and yielding silver and golden apples. The prince wishes to pluck the apples and eat them, but the gypsy woman tells him the fruits are poisonous and the tree must be cut down.
An old man brings home part of the apple tree to make a comb for him and his wife, and then leaves home. When he returns, the food is prepared and the chores are done. The old couple discover the egg maiden comes out of the wooden comb and adopt her as their daughter. One day, the prince notices the old couple, who lived at his court, now have a third member in their family, and asks the man about the girl. The old man answers their adoptive daughter came out of the wooden comb. The prince finally recognizes the old couple's daughter as the girl from the willow tree and marries her, expelling the gypsy woman and ordering her to be fed to the pigs.
Analysis Tale type The tale is classified in the East Slavic Folktale Classification () as type SUS 408, : the hero finds three oranges, releases three maidens and marries the third one; a false bride replaces the fruit maiden, but the couple reunite at the end.Barag, Lev. "Сравнительный указатель сюжетов. Восточнославянская сказка". Leningrad: НАУКА, 1979. p. 134. The East Slavic type corresponds, in the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index, to tale type ATU 408, "The Three Oranges".Aarne, Antti; Thompson, Stith. The types of the folktale: a classification and bibliography. Folklore Fellows Communications FFC no. 184. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1961. pp. 135-137.
In an article in Enzyklopädie des Märchens, scholar Christine Shojaei Kawan separated the tale type into six sections, and stated that parts 3 to 5 represented the "core" of the story:Kawan, Christine Shojaei. "Orangen: Die drei Orangen (AaTh 408)" [Three Oranges (ATU 408)]. In: Enzyklopädie des Märchens Online, edited by Rolf Wilhelm Brednich, Heidrun Alzheimer, Hermann Bausinger, Wolfgang Brückner, Daniel Drascek, Helge Gerndt, Ines Köhler-Zülch, Klaus Roth and Hans-Jörg Uther. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2016 . p. 347. https://www-degruyter-com.wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org/database/EMO/entry/emo.10.063/html. Accessed 2023-06-20.
(1) A prince is cursed by an old woman to seek the fruit princess; (2) The prince finds helpers that guide him to the princess's location; (3) The prince finds the fruits (usually three), releases the maidens inside, but only the third survives; (4) The prince leaves the princess up a tree near a spring or stream, and a slave or servant sees the princess's reflection in the water; (5) The slave or servant replaces the princess (transformation sequence); (6) The fruit princess and the prince reunite, and the false bride is punished.
Motifs The maiden's appearance According to the tale description in the international index, the maiden may appear out of the titular citrus fruits, like oranges and lemons. However, she may also come out of pomegranates or other species of fruits, and even eggs.Aarne, Antti; Thompson, Stith. The types of the folktale: a classification and bibliography. Folklore Fellows Communications FFC no. 184. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1961. p. 135. According to Walter Anderson's unpublished manuscript, variants with eggs instead of fruits appear in Southeastern Europe.Ranke, Kurt. Folktales of Germany. Routledge & K. Paul. 1966. p. 209. . In addition, Christine Shojaei-Kawan located the motif of the heroine emerging from the eggs in Slavic texts.Kawan, Christine Shojaei. "Orangen: Die drei Orangen (AaTh 408)" [Three Oranges (ATU 408)]. In: Enzyklopädie des Märchens Online, edited by Rolf Wilhelm Brednich, Heidrun Alzheimer, Hermann Bausinger, Wolfgang Brückner, Daniel Drascek, Helge Gerndt, Ines Köhler-Zülch, Klaus Roth and Hans-Jörg Uther. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2016 . p. 350. https://www-degruyter-com.wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org/database/EMO/entry/emo.10.063/html. Accessed 2024-07-03.
The transformations and the false bride The tale type is characterized by the substitution of the fairy wife for a false bride. The usual occurrence is when the false bride (a witch or a slave) sticks a magical pin into the maiden's head or hair and she becomes a dove. In some tales, the fruit maiden regains her human form and must bribe the false bride for three nights with her beloved.Gulyás Judit (2010). "Henszlmann Imre bírálata Arany János Rózsa és Ibolya című művéről". In: Balogh Balázs (főszerk). Ethno-Lore XXVII. Az MTA Neprajzi Kutatóintezetenek évkönyve. Budapest, MTA Neprajzi Kutatóintezete (Sajtó aatt). pp. 250-253.
In other variants, the maiden goes through a series of transformations after her liberation from the fruit and regains a physical body. In that regard, according to Christine Shojaei-Kawan's article, Christine Goldberg divided the tale type into two forms. In the first subtype, indexed as AaTh 408A, the fruit maiden suffers the cycle of metamorphosis (fish-tree-human) - a motif Goldberg locates "from the Middle East to Italy and France"Goldberg, Christine. "Imagery and Cohesion in the Tale of the Three Oranges (AT 408)". In: Folk-Narrative and World View. Vortage des 10. Kongresses der Internationalen Gesellschaft fur Volkserzahlungsforschung (ISFNR) - Innsbruck 1992. I. Schneider and P. Streng (ed.). Vol. I, 1996. p. 211. (especifically, it appears in Greece and Eastern Europe). In the second subtype, AaTh 408B, the girl is transformed into a dove by the needle.Shojaei-Kawan, Christine (2004). "Reflections on International Narrative Research on the Example of the Tale of the Three Oranges (AT 408)". In: Folklore (Electronic Journal of Folklore), XXVII, p. 35.
Separated from her husband, she goes to the palace (alone or with other maidens) to tell tales to the king. She shares her story with the audience and is recognized by him.Angelopoulos, Anna and Kaplanoglou, Marianthi. "Greek Magic Tales: aspects of research in Folklore Studies and Anthropology". In: FF Network. 2013; Vol. 43. p. 15.
Variants Professor noted that the tale type 408, "Любовь к трем апельсинам" or "The Love for Three Oranges", showed 7 variants in Ukraine. The tale type is also thought by scholarship to not exist either in the Russian or Belarusian tale corpus,Köhler-Zülch, Ines. "Slavic Tales". In: The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Folktales and Fairy Tales. Volume Three: Q-Z. Edited by Donald Haase. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2008. p. 873. . since the East Slavic Folktale Catalogue, last updated in 1979 by , only registers Ukrainian variants.Barag, Lev. "Сравнительный указатель сюжетов. Восточнославянская сказка". Leningrad: НАУКА, 1979. p. 130.
By Ivan Manzhura In a Ukrainian tale collected by Ukrainian poet with the title "Тры Крашаночкы" ("Three Little Beauties"), a prince named Ivan Tsarevich wants to get married, but no maiden he meets suffices. Despondent, he takes a walk in the market, when an old woman notices the prince's sadness. She barters with Ivan that, if she is paid three hundred rubles, she will give the prince three Крашаночкы ("krashanochky") that will release three maidens he can choose from. Ivan buys the three krashanochky and goes to the steppes. He cracks oepn the first krashanochky and releases a maiden that asks for water. Since there is not a water source nearby, the maiden dies. Ivan journeys on and cracks open the second krashanochky, releasing yet another maiden that asks for water, but dies for not drinking any. Lastly, Ivan decides to release the final maiden near a water source: he reaches a well and gives water to the egg maiden. She notices her nakedness and goes up a willow tree to wait for Ivan, while he goes to fetch some clothes. After the prince leaves, a gypsy woman from a nearby tent goes to the well to draw some water and sees the maiden's reflection in the water, then spots the girl up a tree. The gypsy woman returns to the tent with the pitcher, then goes to talk to the maiden on the tree. She asks everything about the girl, then shoves her down the well and puts on her clothes. The prince comes back and notices his bride does not look like herself, and the gypsy spins a story that the sun darkened her skin and the wind tousled her hair. In the well, the maiden turns into a fish which they bring home for the cook to prepare. A scale remains and is washed away to a place where an apple tree sprouts. The gypsy orders the tree to be felled down and turned into a bed. It is done so. However, at night, the bed begins to talk and interrupt the gypsy's sleep, so she orders the bed destroyed. A splinter survives the fire and turns back into the maiden. The wedding between the prince and the gypsy is arranged, and the maiden attends. During the ceremony, she releases a dove that coos and reveals the gypsy is the false bride, while the real one is by the porch. Ivan Tsarevich takes notice of the dove's words and realizes the truth, reunites with his true bride and punishes the gypsy by tying her to some horses."Сказки, пословицы и т. п., записанные в Екатеринославской п Харьковской губ". Сб. Харьк. ист.-филол. о-ва. Т. II, вып. 2. Харьков, 1890. pp. 47-48.
By Mykola Levchenko