The Tale of Aftab (Azerbaijani: Aftabın nağılı) is an Azerbaijani fairy tale, about a maiden that marries a man in a snakeskin disguise, reveals the secret about his identity and has to search for him, eventually finding him at his mother's house, where she is forced to perform difficult tasks for her.
The tale is related to the international cycle of the Animal as Bridegroom or The Search for the Lost Husband, in that a heroine marries a supernatural husband in animal shape, loses him, and has to seek him out. It is also classified in the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as tale type 425B, "Son of the Witch", thus distantly related to the Graeco-Roman myth of Cupid and Psyche.
Source The tale was collected from an informant named Savalan Süleymanov, from Siyaqut village, in Şərur rayonu."Azərbaycan Folklor Külliyyatı". Vol. IX: Nagillar. Bakı: Nurlan nesriyyati, 2008. p. 388 (In Azerbaijani).
Summary A brother and his sister, named Pəri, live together, with him hunting while she stays home. One day, he hunts some game and prepares its heart, when a snake appears, coils itself around the heart and demands the man's sister Pəri as his bride, or prepare to die. The snake makes it plain that the youth cannot avoid his threat even if he hides in the depths of the earth or up in the sky. He returns home and explains the situation to Pəri, who decides to go with the snake to save her brother. Pəri's brother delivers her to the snake by a spring. Ten days later, the youth pays a visit to his sister by the fountain, and enters the snake's castle. Pəri welcomes him and says Aftab is a human being under the snakeskin, so her brother asks her how can they destroy his snakeskin. He calls for other brothers and sisters and they prepare the tandoor to burn the animal disguise, but Aftab appears and warns them not to do it, since she will regret it. Aftab leaves for a month and Pəri's family burns the snakeskin in a tandoor. Aftab discovers the deed and admonishes his wife, saying that she will only find him again by wearing iron shoes and walking with an iron scepter.
Pəri follows after her husband in iron garments, and wanders the world until she reaches a spring, where a maidservant is fetching water. The maidservant explains she is bringing water to Aftab, since he fell in love with a human and now his body is burning after they burned his snakeskin. Pəri drops her ring into the jug, which the maidservant brings to Aftab. Aftab goes to drink water and finds the ring, then asks his mother if a human was to come to their house, would she devour them? His mother promises not to do it, and Aftab orders the maidservant to bring the person at the spring. It happens thus, and Aftab recognizes his human wife, Pəri. Despite his mother promising not to harm her, she devises ways to kill the girl: first, she gives Pəri a pair of scissors that do not cut and orders her to deliver it down the mountain. Aftab intercepts his wife and tells her to drop the scissors there, fetch some clothes and rush back up the mountain. Pəri does as instructed, steals the clothes and makes her way up the mountain, with some voices echoing threats at her. Aftab's mother suspects the task was not Pəri's doing, but her son's, and gives her an ax with an order to go into the forest and bring back forty camel loads of firewood. Aftab tells Pəri to enter the forest and shout that Aftab is getting married, and needs forty loads of firewood in camels. Pəri does as instructed and forty camels come from the forest carrying bundles of firewood on their backs.
Thirdly, Aftab's mother tells Pəri to go to her sister and ask for the dastarkhan ("dəstərxanı") and the frying pan ("tavasını") for the wedding. Aftab intercepts Pəri and advises her how to proceed: pass by a thornbush and compliment it, compliment a river of white water, compliment a pool of black water by saying she would bathe and swim in it, reach his aunt's house and ask for the dastarkhan and the pan; while she goes to another room to sharpen her teeth, Pəri is to steal the objects and rush back. Pəri follows his instructions to the letter and steals the dartarkhan and the pan, as his aunt commands her servants to stop the girl, to no avail. Finally, Aftab's mother arranges his wedding to his cousin, and places candles on Pəri's slippers, for the girl to illuminate the wedding couple. Pəri suffers for the burning on her feet, when Aftab beheads his cousin and throws her head across the room, takes his human wife and both escape from his mother's house. The next morning, Aftab's mother finds her niece dead and the couple gone, and sends her daughters after their brother. On the road, Aftab and Pəri transform themselves to trick their pursuers: first, into a chicken (him) with its chicks (her); then, into a Mollah (him) and a house (her); lastly, into a melon patch (her) and a garden keeper (him)."Azərbaycan Folklor Külliyyatı". Vol. IX: Nagillar. Bakı: Nurlan nesriyyati, 2008. pp. 295-299 (text), 393 (classification) (In Azerbaijani).Naxçivan Folkloru I. Naxçivan: 2009. pp. 280-284 (text).
Analysis Tale type Azerbaijani scholarship indexes the tale as the Azerbaijani tale type 428, "Div qarısının qulluğunda" ("In the service of the Div woman"). In the Azeri type, the heroine marries a snake who is a human youth underneath it; convinced by her sisters, she burns his snakeskin and he vanishes; she dons iron shoes and goes after him, eventually finding him at the house of the Div woman, to whom she has to perform difficult tasks; with her husband's help, the heroine fulfills the tasks, then both flee in a transformation sequence, their third transformation a flower (the heroine) and a snake coiled around it (the snake husband).
In the Azerbaijani Folktale Index, Azeri type 428 corresponds to Turkish tale type 98. In the Typen türkischer Volksmärchen ("Turkish Folktale Catalogue"), by Wolfram Eberhard and Pertev Naili Boratav, Turkish type TTV 98, "Der Pferdemann" ("The Horse Man"), corresponded in the international classification to tale type AaTh 425.
In his monograph about Cupid and Psyche, Swedish scholar acknowledged that Turkish type 98 was subtype 425A of his analysis, that is, "Cupid and Psyche", being the "oldest" and containing the episode of the witch's tasks.Swahn, Jan Öjvind. The Tale of Cupid and Psyche. Lund, C.W.K. Gleerup. 1955. p. 23. In the international index, however, Swahn's typing is indexed as type ATU 425B, "The Son of the Witch":Aarne, Antti; Thompson, Stith. The types of the folktale: a classification and bibliography. Third Printing. Folklore Fellows Communications FFC no. 184. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1973 . p. 142 (footnote nr. 1). the heroine marries a man in animal shape, betrays his secret and seeks his out; after a long journey, she finds him at his mother's house, where she is forced to perform difficult tasks for her, which she accomplishes with her husband's secret help.Aarne, Antti; Thompson, Stith. The types of the folktale: a classification and bibliography. Third Printing. Folklore Fellows Communications FFC no. 184. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1973 . p. 142 (footnote nr. 1).
Combinations According to the Azerbaijani Folktale Index, Azeri type 428 can be found in combination with another type, Azeri type 433*, "Şahzadə qıza aşiq olmuş ilan" ("A snake in love with a princess"): a poor man finds an egg in a tree that hatches a snake; the snake is adopted by the man and fulfills the king's suitor's tasks; the snake marries the princess and removes his snakeskin at night, becoming a handsome youth.
Motifs According to Swedish scholar 's study on Animal as Bridegroom tales, a characteristic motif that occurs in the "Indo-Persian" area is the heroine using a ring to signal her arrival to her husband, when she finds his location.
According to Turkish scholarship, the snake is the second most common animal in tales of the Turkic-speaking world featuring the marriage between a human person and an animal. In the tales, a person marries a snake due to a threat to themselves or to a relative, like a father, a mother or a sibling. However, the snake is usually the cursed form of a person.
The heroes' Magic Flight According to Christine Goldberg, some variants of the type 425B show as a closing episode "The Magic Flight" sequence, a combination that appears "sporadically in Europe", but "traditionally in Turkey".Goldberg, Christine. (2000). "Gretel's Duck: The Escape from the Ogre in AaTh 327". In: Fabula 41: 47 (footnote nr. 20). 10.1515/fabl.2000.41.1-2.42. 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 Tales with snakes Shamsi-Kamar Azerbaijani folklorist Hanafi Zeynalli published an Azeri tale titled "Шамси-Камар" ("Shamsi-Kamar" or "Sun-Moon").Зейналлы, Ханефи; Багрий, Александр Васильевич. "Азербайджанские тюркские сказки" [Fairy Tales of the Azerbaijani Turks]. Academia, 1935. p. 662. In this tale, three daughters of a king arrange for their marriages: they should cast three arrows at random, see where they land and marry the man that lives wherever the arrows land on. The two elders marry the son of a vizier and the son of a "vekila", while the youngest's arrow lands on a bush, where she waits next to. A snake comes out of it and invites her to a house, where he takes out his snakeskin to reveal he is a human named Shamsi-Kamar, also warning she must not tell anyone his secret, lest she will have to wear down a pair of iron shoes and walk with an iron cane until she finds him again. Upon a visit from her family, the princess tells her mother about the snakeskin, which her mother burns in a fire. Shamsi-Kamar enters the room, admonishes his wife and disappears. The princess follows his instructions and wanders the world for seven years, until her pair of iron shoes is worn out. Nearby, she sees some servant girls fetching water for their master, Shamsi-Kamar. The princess drops her ring on a jug that is taken to her husband, and he notices it. He brings her home on the pretense of having her as a maid. His father, then, orders her to fetch firewood in the forest. Her husband teaches her how to perform it: she must go to the woods and shout out that Shamsi-Kamar has died, and the firewood is for his pyre. That night, his father marries Shamsi-Kamar to another girl, but the prince goes to the kitchen, heats up two cauldrons of water, takes them and pours the scalding hot water on his second wife. He and the princess then escape on horses back to her kingdom. At the end of the tale, his family runs after them, but, on not finding them, return home empty-handed.Зейналлы, Ханефи; Багрий, Александр Васильевич. "Азербайджанские тюркские сказки" [Fairy Tales of the Azerbaijani Turks]. Academia, 1935. pp. 216-221. The compiler classified the tale as type 425, and located its source as collected in 1930, in Nakhkray (Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic).Зейналлы, Ханефи; Багрий, Александр Васильевич. "Азербайджанские тюркские сказки" [Fairy Tales of the Azerbaijani Turks]. Academia, 1935. p. 636. The tale was also republised in Azerbaijan language as Şəmsi Qəmər and to Turkish as Şemsi Kamer.
The Woodcutter's Daughter