The Pomegranate Girl (, ; , ) is an Azerbaijani folktale published by Azeri folklorist Hanafi Zeynalli. It is classified as 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 inside a fruit, who is replaced by a false bride and goes through a cycle of incarnations, until she regains physical form again. Variants are collected across Azerbaijan.
Source According to Azeri folklorist Hanafi Zeynalli, the tale was collected in 1930 from an informant in Nakhkray (Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic) with the name Novruz Kaitanov.Зейналлы, Ханефи; Багрий, Александр Васильевич. "Азербайджанские тюркские сказки" [Fairy Tales of the Azerbaijani Turks]. Academia, 1935. pp. 631-632.
Summary A prince has a dream about the pomegranate girl. When he wakes up, he calls his vizier and orders him to bring the pomegranate girl. However, the vizier warns that the girl is among the divs, so the prince sends the vizier to the land of the divs. The vizier meets three Div-women with large lips that reach the ground and the sky, and the creatures say that they are hungry and plan to eat the vizier, but he throws some resin for them to chew on. By doing this, the creatures offer to help him by transforming him into an objects (the first turns him into an awl, the second into a carpet, and the third turns him into a fly) to hide him from their sons. The sons arrive and smell human flesh, but the Div-women lie that it is the smell of the flesh they devoured. The following morning, after the sons leave, the Div-women restore the vizier and point him to the west. The third Div-woman explains to the vizier that the pomegranate girl is in an unreachable place and the divs will devour him, but the vizier insists on his quest. Thus, the third div-woman points him to a pomegranate tree in a garden guarded by divs, and the vizier must pluck three fruits from the tree without the divs knowing. The vizier goes to the garden, utters a prayer to turn into a gnat, and checks to see the garden. At midnight, the div-guardians are sleeping, so the vizier enters the garden, steals three pomegranates, and leaves.
On the road back to his homeland, he opens up the first pomegranate, which releases nothing. He opens the second pomegranate, and still nothing. He open the third fruit, and out comes a fifteen-year-old maiden of peerless beauty. The vizier wants to take her to the prince at once, but the maiden asks to be given clothes first, so the vizier guides her up a plane tree, while he goes to inform the prince. As the vizier leaves, one of his maidservants go to draw water from a well near the plane tree, sees the maiden's visage in water, and spots her atop the tree. The maidservant climbs the plane tree, talks to the pomegranate maiden, then shoves her down the well and replaces her atop the tree. As for the pomegranate maiden, she turns into a rosebush near the well.
The vizier brings the prince, the vekil and a large retine to welcome the pomegranate maiden, but they find a dark-skinned girl atop the tree. The vizier tries to explain that the pomegranate maiden sat in the sun, so her skin has darkened. They bring the black maidservant home and celebrate her wedding to the prince. The vizier also takes the rosebush with him and gives it to the prince's wife. The false wife throws the roses out of the window; where they fall, a plane tree sprouts. A year later, the false bride has a child with the prince and asks for the plane tree to be felled down and made into a cradle. The prince agrees, and the tree is cut down. An old woman goes and fetches one of the remaining woodchips to bring home with her.
The old woman works by carding wool and selling. When she brings home some wool from the market and leaves home, the pomegranate maiden comes out of the woodchip, sweeps the room, breathes to create rice and butter which she uses to cook some pilaf, combs and cards the wool, then returns to the woodchip. The old woman returns home and sees that everything was done for her, so she decides to investigate and discovers the pomegranate maiden, whom she welcomes to live with her.
One day, the prince wants to go to Mecca, and distributes horses for the people to look after for an entire month in return for a large sum of money. The pomegranate maiden learns of this and asks the old woman to bring her one of the horses. The old woman notices that they do not have anything to feed the horse with, but the pomegranate maiden assures she can take care of everything. The old woman is given an emaciated horse which she brings home. The pomegranate maiden breathes out and creates a stable and barley and hay for the horse. After a month passes, the prince asks for the horses back, but he dislikes the shape they are in. When he sends for the horse left with the old woman, the horse does not budge. The pomegranate maiden dons a carpet to hide her face and guides the horse out of the stable.
Later, the prince is going to Mecca, and it was customary for them to don a garment embroidered with peals and beads, so he sends for any available woman skilled enough to come and embroider his clothes. The pomegranate girl joins the other woman in the activity, and sings a song while embroidering, telling her how she is the pomegranate maiden and how the maidservant killed her. The prince's false wife listens to the verses and fears she will discovered, while the prince overhears the song by his window. The vizier also listens to the girl's song and realizes she was the one he released from the pomegranate, and goes to report to the prince. The prince dismisses the other women and meets the pomegranate maiden, who admits she is the one from the fruit and his true bride. The prince and the pomegranate maiden marry in a forty day and forty night celebration, and the maidservant is tied to a wild horse and let loose, being torn apart at the rocks.
Analysis Tale type Azerbaijani scholarship classifies tale type 408 in Azerbaijan as Azeri type 408, "Əməmxiyar qızı". In the Azeri type, an old woman curses the prince to search for the girl from a fruit (e.g., pomegranate) or a vegetable (e.g., cucumber), or the prince has a dream about the fruit maiden; the prince searches for the three vegetables or fruits and opens them: either he finds nothing, save on the third one, or the first two release maidens that ask for food; the prince leaves the fruit maiden atop a tree and leaves; another girl shoves the fruit maiden in a well and replaces her as the prince's false bride; the fruit maiden goes through a cycle of reincarnations, then regains human form; she then goes to a gathering and reveals her story through the use of a patience stone, or her clothes tell the story in form of a song. The fruit maiden is restored and the false bride punished.Зейналлы, Ханефи; Багрий, Александр Васильевич. "Азербайджанские тюркские сказки" [Fairy Tales of the Azerbaijani Turks]. Academia, 1935. pp. 631-632. The Azerbaijani 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.
A prince is cursed by an old woman to seek the fruit princess; The prince finds helpers that guide him to the princess's location; The prince finds the fruits (usually three), releases the maidens inside, but only the third survives; 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; The slave or servant replaces the princess (transformation sequence); 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