The Boys with the Golden Stars

The Boys with the Golden Stars (Romanian: Doi feți cu stea în frunte) is a Romanian fairy tale collected in Rumänische Märchen.[1] Andrew Lang included it in The Violet Fairy Book.[1] An alternate title to the tale is The Twins with the Golden Star.[2]

The Boys with the Golden Stars
The boys with the golden stars, by Ford, H. J., in Andrew Lang's The Violet Fairy Book (1901).
Folk tale
NameThe Boys with the Golden Stars
Also known asDoi feți cu stea în frunte
The Twins with the Golden Star
Data
Aarne-Thompson groupingATU 707 (The Dancing Water, the Singing Apple, and the Speaking Bird; The Bird of Truth, or The Three Golden Children, or The Three Golden Sons)
RegionRomania,[1] Eastern Europe
RelatedThe Dancing Water, the Singing Apple, and the Speaking Bird; Ancilotto, King of Provino; Princess Belle-Étoile and Prince Chéri; The Tale of Tsar Saltan; A String of Pearls Twined with Golden Flowers

Synopsis

A herdsman had three daughters. The youngest was the most beautiful. One day, the emperor was passing with attendants. The oldest daughter said that if he married her, she would bake him a loaf of bread that would make him young and brave forever; the second one said, if one married her, she would make him a shirt that would protect him in any fight, even with a dragon, and against heat and water; the youngest one said that she would bear him twin sons with stars on their foreheads. The emperor married the youngest, and two of his friends married the other two.

The emperor's stepmother had wanted him to marry her daughter and so hated his new wife. She got her brother to declare war on him, to get him away from her, and when the empress gave birth in his absence, killed and buried the twins in the corner of the garden and put puppies in their place. The emperor punished his wife to show what happened to those who deceived the emperor.

Two aspens grew from the grave, putting on years' growth in hours. The stepmother wanted to chop them down, but the emperor forbade it. Finally, she convinced him, on the condition that she had beds made from the wood, one for him and one for her. In the night, the beds began to talk to each other. The stepmother had two new beds made, and burned the originals. While they were burning, the two brightest sparks flew off and fell into the river. They became two golden fish. When fishermen caught them, they wanted to take them alive to the emperor. The fish told them to let them swim in dew instead, and then dry them out in the sun. When they did this, the fish turned back into babies, maturing in days.

Wearing lambskin caps that covered their hair and stars, they went to their father's castle and forced their way in. Despite their refusal to take off their caps, the emperor listened to their story, only then removing their caps. The emperor executed his stepmother and took back his wife.

Analysis

The birth of the wonder-children

Most versions of The Boys With Golden Stars[3] begin with the birth of male twins, but very rarely there are fraternal twins, a boy and a girl. When they transform into human babies again, the siblings grow up at an impossibly fast rate and hide their supernatural trait under a hood or a cap. Soon after, they show up in their father's court or house to reveal the truth through a riddle or through a ballad.[4]

The motif of a woman's babies, born with wonderful attributes after she claimed she could bear such children, but stolen from her, is a common fairy tale motif; see "The Dancing Water, the Singing Apple, and the Speaking Bird", "The Tale of Tsar Saltan", "The Three Little Birds", "The Wicked Sisters", "Ancilotto, King of Provino", and "Princess Belle-Etoile". Some of these variants feature an evil stepmother. But the transformation chase where the stepmother is unable to prevent the children's reappearance is unusual, although it appears in "A String of Pearls Twined with Golden Flowers" and in "The Count's Evil Mother" (O grofu i njegovoj zloj materi), a Croatian tale from the Karlovac area,[5] in the Kajkavian dialect.[6] "The Pretty Little Calf" also has the child reappear, transformed after being murdered, but only has the transformation to an animal form and back to human.

The reincarnation motif

Daiva Vaitkevičienė suggested that the transformation sequence in the tale format (from human babies, to trees, to lambs/goats and finally to humans again) may be underlying a theme of reincarnation, metempsychosis or related to a life-death-rebirth cycle.[7] This motif is shared by other tale types, and does not belong exclusively to the ATU 707.

A similar occurrence of the tree reincarnation is attested in Bengal folktale The Seven Brothers who were turned into Champa Trees.[8]

India-born author Maive Stokes noted the resurrective motif of the murdered children, and found parallels among European tales published during that time.[9] Austrian consul Johann Georg von Hahn also remarked on a similar transformation sequence present in a Greek tale from Asia Minor, Die Zederzitrone, a variant of The Love for Three Oranges (ATU 408).[10]

A similar series of transformations is found in "Beauty and Pock Face" and "The Story of Tam and Cam".

Variants

The format of the story The Boys With The Golden Stars seems to concentrate around Eastern Europe: in Romenia;[11][12] a version in Belarus;[13] in Serbia;[14][15] in the Bukovina region;[16] in Croatia;[17][18] Bosnia,[19] Poland, Ukraine, Czech Republic and Slovakia.[20][21][22]

A version of the tale, collected in the Wallachia region, from a Mihaila Poppowitsch, has an evil maid who murders the children, but at the end of the tale their father exiles the murderess instead of executing her.[23] Another Romanian variant, Sirte-Margarita, can be found in Doĭne: Or, the National Songs and Legends of Roumania, by Eustace Clare Grenville Murray, and published in 1854.[24]

Hungary

Hungarian scholarship classify the ATU 707 tale under the banner of "The Golden-Haired Twins" (Hungarian: Az aranyhajú ikrek).[25]

In the tale A mostoha királyfiakat gyilkoltat, the step-parent asks for the organs of the twin children to eat. They are killed, their bodies are buried in the garden and from their grave two apple trees sprout.[26]

In the tale A mosolygó alma ("The Smiling Apple"), a king sends his page to pluck some fragant scented apples in a distant garden. When the page arrives at the garden, a dishevelled old man appears and takes him into his house, where the old man's three young daughters live. The daughters comment among themselves their marriage wishes: the third wishes to marry the king and give him two golden-haired children, one with a "comet star" on the forehead and another with a sun. The rest of the story follows The Boys with the Golden Star format.[27]

Other Magyar variant is Die zwei goldhaarigen Kinder (Hungarian: "A két aranyhajú gyermek";[28] English: "The Two Children with Golden Hair").[29]

Adaptations

A Hungarian variant of the tale was adapted into an episode of the Hungarian television series Magyar népmesék ("Hungarian Folk Tales") (hu), with the title A két aranyhajú fiú ("The Two Sons With Golden Hair").

References
  1. Andrew Lang, The Violet Fairy Book, "The Boys with the Golden Stars"
  2. Kremnitz, Mite; Mary J Safford. Roumanian Fairy Tales. New York: H. Holt and company. 1885. pp. 30-41.
  3. A Companion to the Fairy Tale. Edited by Hilda Ellis Davidson and Anna Chaudhri. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer. 2003. p. 43. ISBN 0-85991-784-3
  4. "The Golden Twins". Ispirescu, Petre. The foundling prince, & other tales. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 1917. pp. 65-84.
  5. Vrkić, Jozo (1997). Hrvatske bajke. Glagol, Zagreb.. The tale was first published in written form by Rudolf Strohal.
  6. "Vom Grafen und seiner bösen Mütter". In: Berneker, Erich Karl. Slavische Chrestomathie mit Glossaren. Strassburg K.J. Trübner. 1902. pp. 226-229.
  7. Vaitkevičienė, Daiva (2013). "Paukštė, kylanti iš pelenų: pomirtinis persikūnijimas pasakose" [The Bird Rising from the Ashes: Posthumous Transformations in Folktales]. Tautosakos darbai (in Lithuanian) (XLVI): 71–106. ISSN 1392-2831. Archived from the original on June 7, 2020.
  8. Bradley-Birt, Francis Bradley; and Abanindranath Tagore. Bengal Fairy Tales. London: John Lane, 1920. pp. 150-152.
  9. Stokes, Maive. Indian fairy tales, collected and tr. by M. Stokes; with notes by Mary Stokes. London: Ellis and White. 1880. pp. 250-251.
  10. Hahn, Johann Georg von. Griechische und Albanesische Märchen 1-2. München/Berlin: Georg Müller. 1918 [1864]. pp. 404.
  11. "A String of Pearls Twined with Golden Flowers". In: Ispirescu, Petre. The foundling prince, & other tales. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 1917. pp. 65-84.
  12. Pop-Reteganul, Ion. Cei doi copii cu părul de aur  (in Romanian) – via Wikisource.
  13. The Wonderful Boys, or The Wondrous Lads. In: Wratislaw, Albert Henry. Sixty Folk-Tales from Exclusively Slavonic Sources. London: Elliot Stock. 1889.
  14. The Golden-haired Twins. In: Mijatovich, Elodie Lawton & Denton, William. London: W. Isbister & Co. 1874. pp. 238-247.
  15. "The Golden-Haired Twins". In: Petrovitch, Woislav M.; Karadzhic, Vuk Stefanovic. Hero tales and legends of the Serbians. New York: Frederick A. Stokes company. [1915] pp. 353-361
  16. Groome, Francis Hindes (1899). "It all comes to light". Gypsy folk-tales. London: Hurst and Blackett. pp. 67–70.
  17. "The Count's Evil Mother" (O grofu i njegovoj zloj materi), a Croatian tale from the Karlovac area, collected by Jozo Vrkić, in Hrvatske bajke. Zabreg: Glagol, 1997. The tale first published in written form by Rudolf Strohal.
  18. "Vom Grafen und seiner bösen Mütter". In: Berneker, Erich Karl. Slavische Chrestomathie mit Glossaren. Strassburg K.J. Trübner. 1902. pp. 226-229.
  19. "Tri Sultanije i Sultan". In: Buturovic, Djenana i Lada. Antologija usmene price iz BiH/ novi izbor. SA: Svjetlost, 1997.
  20. "Zlati Bratkovia". In: Dobšinský, Pavol. Prostonárodnie slovenské povesti. Sešit 2. Turč. Sv. Martin: Tlačou kníhtlač. účast. spolku. - Nákladom vydavatelovým. 1880. pp. 64-70.
  21. "Zlati Bratkovia". In: Dobšinský, Pavol. Prostonárodnie slovenské povesti. Sešit 5. Turč. Sv. Martin: Tlačou kníhtlač. účast. spolku. - Nákladom vydavatelovým. 1881. pp. 35-40.
  22. The Complete Folktales of A. N. Afanas'ev, Volume II, Volume 2. Edited by Jack V. Haney. University Press of Mississippi. 2015. ISBN 978-1-62846-094-0 Notes on tale nr. 287.
  23. Die goldenen kinder. In: Walachische Märchen. Arthur und Albert Schott. Stuttgart und Tübingen: J. C. Cotta'scher Verlag. 1845. pp. 121-125.
  24. Sirte-Margarita. In: Murray, Eustace Clare Grenville. Doĭne: Or, the National Songs and Legends of Roumania. Smith, Elder. 1854. pp. 106-110.
  25. Bódis, Zoltán. Storytelling: Performance, Presentations and Sacral Communication. In: Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics 7 (2). Estonian Literary Museum, Estonian National Museum, University of Tartu. 2013. pp. 22. ISSN 2228-0987 (online)
  26. Arnold Ipolyi. Ipolyi Arnold népmesegyüjteménye (Népköltési gyüjtemény 13. kötet). Budapest: Az Athenaeum Részvénytársualt Tulajdona. 1914. pp. 274-276.
  27. János Erdélyi. Magyar népmesék. Pest: Heckenast Gusztáv Sajátja. 1855. pp. 42-47.
  28. Antal Horger. Hétfalusi csángó népmesék (Népköltési gyüjtemény 10. kötet). Budapest: Az Athenaeum Részvénytársulat Tulajdona. 1908. pp. 112-116.
  29. Róna-Sklarek, Elisabet. Ungarische Volksmärchen. Neue Folge. Leipzig: Dieterich. 1909. pp. 82-86.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.