Lovely Ilonka

Lovely Ilonka (Schön-Ilonka) is a Hungarian fairy tale collected in Ungarische Märchen by Elisabet Róna-Sklarek.[1] Andrew Lang included it in The Crimson Fairy Book.

Synopsis

A prince wanted to marry, but his father told him to wait, saying that he had not been allowed until he had won the golden sword he carried.

One day he met an old woman and asked her about the three bulrushes. She asked him to stay the night and in the morning, she summoned all the crows in the world, but they had not heard. Then he met an old man, who also had him stay the night. In the morning, all the ravens in the world had not heard. He met another old woman, and she told him it was well that he greeted her, or he would have suffered a horrible death. In the morning, she summoned magpies, and a crippled magpie led him to a great wall behind which were the three bulrushes.

He started to take them home, but one broke open. A lovely maiden flew out, asked for water, and flew off when he had none. He split the second, and the same thing happened. He took great care of the third, not splitting it until he had reached a well. With the water, she stayed, and they agreed to marry.

He took her to his father's country, where he left her with a swineherd while he went to get a carriage. The swineherd threw her into a well and dressed up his daughter in her clothing. The prince was distressed but brought back the swineherd's daughter, married her, and received a crown, becoming a king.

One day, he sent a coachman to the well where Ilonka had been drowned. He saw a white duck, and then the duck vanished and a dirty woman appeared before him. This woman got a place as a housemaid in the castle. When she was not working, she spun: her distaff and spindle turned on their own, and she was never out of flax to spin. The queen, the swineherd's daughter wanted the distaff, but she would sell it only for a night in the king's chamber. The queen agreed and gave her husband a sleeping draught. Ilonka spoke to the king, but he did not respond, and she thought he was ashamed of her. Then the queen wanted the spindle, Ilonka decided to try again, but again the king slept.

The third time, the queen made the same agreement for the flax, but two of the king's servants warned him, he refused everything, and when Ilonka appealed to him, he heard her. He had the swineherd, his wife, and his daughter hung and married Ilonka.

Analysis

The tale is related to type ATU 408, "The Love for Three Oranges" or Die Drei Citronenjungfrauen ("The Three Maidens in the Citron Fruits").[2]

The motif of the heroine or maiden buying or bribing her way to her husband's chamber for three nights from the false bride harks back to variants of general tale type ATU 425, "The Search for the Lost Husband", and ATU 425A, "The Animal as Bridegroom".[3]

Scholar Linda Dégh suggested a common origin for tale types ATU 403 ("The Black and the White Bride"), ATU 408 ("The Three Oranges"), ATU 425 ("The Search for the Lost Husband"), ATU 706 ("The Maiden Without Hands") and ATU 707 ("The Three Golden Sons"), since "their variants cross each other constantly and because their blendings are more common than their keeping to their separate type outlines" and even influence each other.[4]

Variants

Hungary

Variants of the tale type (ATU 408, "The Three Oranges"), in Hungary, usually show the fairy maiden coming out of a plant ("növényből").[5] Scholar Hans-Jörg Uther remarks that the tale type is "quite popular" in this country, with 79 variants registered.[6]

One tale was collected by László Merényi with the title A nádszál kisasszony[7] and translated by Jeremiah Curtin as The Reed Maiden.[8] In this story, a prince marries a princess, the older sister of the Reed Maiden, but his brother only wants to marry "the most lovely, world-beautiful maiden". The prince asks his sister-in-law who this person could be, and she answers it is her elder sister, hidden with her two ladies-in-waiting in three reeds in a distant land. He releases the two ladies-in-waiting, but forgets to give them water. The prince finally releases the Reed Maiden and gives her the water. Later, before the Reed Maiden is married to the prince, a gypsy comes and replaces her.

In another variant by Elisabeth Rona-Sklárek, Das Waldfräulein ("The Maiden in the Woods"), a lazy prince strolls through the woods and sights a beautiful "Staude" (a perennial plant). He uses his knife to cut some of the plant and releases a maiden. Stunned by her beauty, he cannot fulfill her request for water and she disappears. The same thing happens again. In the third time, he gives some water to the fairy maiden and marries her. The fairy woman gives birth to twins, but the evil queen mother substitutes them for puppies. The babies, however, are rescued a pair of two blue woodpeckers and taken to the woods. When the king returns from war and sees the two animals, he banishes his wife to the woods.[9]

Antal Hoger collected the tale A háromágú tölgyfa tündére ("The Fairy from Three-Branched Oak Tree"). A king goes hunting in the woods, but three animals plead for their lives (a deer, a hare and a fox). All three animals point to a magical oak tree with three branches and say, if the king break each of the branches, a maiden shall appear and request water to drink. With the first two branches, the maidens die, but the king gives water to the third one and decides to marry her. They both walk towards the castle and the king says the fairy maiden should wait on the tree. A witch sees the maiden, tricks her and tosses her deep in a well; she replaces the fairy maiden with her own daughter.[10] He also cited two other variants: A tündérkisasszony és a czigányleány ("The Fairy Princess and the Gypsy Girl"), by Laszló Arányi, and A három pomarancs ("The Three Bitter Oranges"), by Jánós Érdelyi.[11]

German philologist Heinrich Christoph Gottlieb Stier (de) collected a Hungarian variant from Münster titled Die drei Pomeranzen ("The Three Bitter Oranges"): an old lady gives three princely brothers a bitter orange each and warns them to crack open the fruit near a body of water. The first two princes disobey and inadvertently kill the maiden that comes out of the orange. Only the youngest prince opens near a city fountain and saves the fairy maiden. Later, a gypsy woman replaces the fairy maiden, who turns into a fish and a tree and later hides in a piece of wood.[12] The tale was translated and published into English as The Three Oranges.[13]

In the tale A gallyból gyött királykisasszony ("The Princess from the Tree Branch"), a prince that was hunting breaks three tree branches in the forest and a maiden appears. The prince takes her to a well to wait for him to return with his royal retinue. An ugly gypsy woman approaches the girl and throws her down the well, where she becomes a goldfish.[14]

In a different variaton of the tale type, A griffmadár leánya ("The Daughter of the Griffin Bird"), a prince asks his father for money to use on his journey, and the monarch tells his son he is not to return until he is married to the daughter of the griffin bird. The prince meets an old man in the woods who directs him to a griffin's nest, with five eggs. The prince grabs all five eggs and cracks open each of them, a girl in a beautiful dress appearing out of each one. Only the last maiden survives because the prince gave her water to drink. He tells the maiden to wait by the well, but a gypsy girl arrives and, seeing the egg girl, throws her in the well and takes her place. The maiden becomes a goldfish and later a tree.[15]

English scholar A. H. Wratislaw collected the tale The Three Lemons from a Hungarian-Slovenish source and published it in his Sixty Folk-Tales from Exclusively Slavonic Sources. In this tale, the prince goes on a quest for three lemons on a glass hill and is helped by three old Jezibabas on his way. When he finds the lemons and cracks open each one, a maiden comes out and asks if the prince has prepared a meal for her and a pretty dress for her to wear. When he saves the third maiden, she is replaced by a gypsy maidservant who sticks a golden pin in her hair and transforms the fruit maiden into a dove.[16]

Adaptations

Another 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 háromágú tölgyfa tündére ("The Fairy from the Oak Tree").

See also

Bibliography
  • Ashliman, D. L. (1987). A guide to folktales in the English language. Greenwood Press. ISBN 978-0-313-25961-6.
  • Aberdeen University Review. 22–23. 1934.
  • Lang, Andrew. The Crimson Fairy Book. United Holdings Group. ISBN 978-1-61298-317-2.

References
  1. Sklarek, Elisabet. Ungarische Volksmärchen. Einl. A. Schullerus. Leipzig: Dieterich. 1901. pp. 68-74.
  2. Sklarek, Elisabet. Ungarische Volksmärchen. Einl. A. Schullerus. Leipzig: Dieterich. 1901. pp. 289-290.
  3. Sklarek, Elisabet. Ungarische Volksmärchen. Einl. A. Schullerus. Leipzig: Dieterich. 1901. pp. 289-290.
  4. Dégh, Linda. Narratives in Society: A Performer-Centered Study of Narration. FF Communications 255. Pieksämäki: Finnish Academy of Science and Letters, 1995. p. 41.
  5. Arnold Ipolyi. Ipolyi Arnold népmesegyüjteménye (Népköltési gyüjtemény 13. kötet). Budapest: az Athenaeum Részvénytársulat Tulajdona. 1914. p. 521.
  6. Uther, Hans-Jörg. "Indexing Folktales: A Critical Survey". In: Journal of Folklore Research 34, no. 3 (1997): 213. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3814887.
  7. Merényi László. Eredeti Népmesék. Masódik Rész. Pest: Kiadja Heckenast Gusztáv. 1861. pp. 35-64.
  8. Curtin, Jeremiah. Myths and Folk-tales of the Russians, Western Slavs, and Magyars. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company. 1890. pp. 457-476.
  9. Sklarek, Elisabet. Ungarische Volksmärchen. Einl. A. Schullerus. Leipzig: Dieterich 1901. pp. 74-79.
  10. Antal Horger. Hétfalusi csángó népmesék (Népköltési gyüjtemény 10. kötet). Budapest: Az Athenaeum Részvénytársulat Tulajdona. 1908. pp. 96-103.
  11. Antal Horger. Hétfalusi csángó népmesék (Népköltési gyüjtemény 10. kötet). Budapest: Az Athenaeum Részvénytársulat Tulajdona. 1908. p. 456.
  12. Stier, G. Ungarische Sagen und Märchen. Berlin: Ferdinand Dümmlers Buchhandlung, 1850. pp. 83-91.
  13. Jones, W. Henry; Kropf, Lajos L.; Kriza, János. The folk-tales of the Magyars. London: Pub. for the Folk-lore society by E. Stock. 1889. pp. 133-136.
  14. János Berze Nagy. Népmesék Heves- és Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok-megyébol (Népköltési gyüjtemény 9. kötet). Budapest: Az Athenaeum Részvény-Társulát Tulajdona. 1907. pp. 213-216.
  15. Arnold Ipolyi. Ipolyi Arnold népmesegyüjteménye (Népköltési gyüjtemény 13. kötet). Budapest: az Athenaeum Részvénytársulat Tulajdona. 1914. pp. 297-301.
  16. Wratislaw, A. H. Sixty Folk-Tales from Exclusively Slavonic Sources. London: Elliot Stock. 1889. pp. 63-74.
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