Nemtudomka (Hungarian folktale)

Nemtudomka (English: Little I Don't Know) is a Hungarian fairy tale, first published in the mid-19th century by author János Erdélyi. It is classified in the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as ATU 314, "Goldener". It deals with a friendship between a king's son and a magic horse that are forced to flee for their lives due to the boy's own mother, and reach another kingdom, where the boy adopts another identity by only uttering the words "Nem tudom" ("I don't know").

Although it differs from variants wherein a hero acquires golden hair, its starting sequence (persecution by the hero's own mother) is considered by scholarship as an alternate opening to the same tale type.

The tale was first published by János Erdélyi in the mid-19th century, in his book Magyar Népmesék ("Hungarian Folktales"), in Hungarian.^[1] It was later republished by György Gaal with the same title (Nemtudomka), albeit with textual differences,^[2] and translated into German as Weissnitle by author Gottlieb Stier [de].^[3]

The wife of a king in Scythia gives birth to a prince named Dániel, and, at the same time, a foal is born in the stables. The king presents Dániel with the foal, and they become friends. One day, however, one of the king's generals becomes the queen's lover, and they plan to kill the prince since he is too clever and may reveal their affair. First, they place a dagger in his bed, so it can pierce his heart in his sleep; next, the queen bakes him sweets laced with poison. With the horse's warnings, Dániel avoids both attempts. The general notices the horse is the one helping the prince, and tells the queen to feign illness and ask for the foal's liver as cure after the king comes home from war. When the king returns, the queen asks for the foal's liver, and the king tells Dániel they will kill his pet foal. The prince then asks his father to saddle his horse so he can run circles around the castle for three laps, then toast to their health. The king indulges his son one last time; Dániel makes a toast to the king, the queen, and the treasonous general, then rides away to London, England, while the king deals with the traitorous queen and her paramour.

Back to Dániel, the horse advises him to always answer "Nem tudom". Dániel goes to find work in the castle, and is hired as a cook's assistant. However, he is a disaster at the kitchen, and is given to the royal gardener as his assistant. One day, the people go to church, and Dániel, in his new identity of Nemtudomka, goes to meet his horse, which gives him a bridle to summon him. The next Sunday, everyone at the castle goes to mass, save for the princess, who stays at the castle. Thinking no one is at the castle, Nemtudomka summons his horse, which furnishes him with copper-coloured garments so he can ride the horse around the garden and trmple the flowers - an event witnessed by the youngest princess. After the royal family and the staff return from church, the gardener complains to Nemtudomka and threatens to beat him to discipline him, but the princess intervenes on the latter's behalf. This repeats again for the next two Sundays, with Nemtudomka in silver and golden garments.

Some time later, the king decides to marry his three daughters: the elder two choose princes and the youngest Nemtudomka, and they move out to a shabby hut just outside the palace. Later, Nemtudomka's brothers-in-law go on a hunt and invite Nemtudomka to join them. Although he is given a lame horse at first, he dismisses the mount and summons his loyal horse to run ahead of his brothers-in-law: in the first hunt, he agrees to share the golden mallard in exchange for their rings; in the second hunt, he agrees to give them he golden deer if they allow to be branded on their foreheads with a signet ring; in the third hunt, he agrees to share with them the golden game, if they allow to be branded with a gallows on their backs.

Later, Nemtudomka's horse gives him three magical bags (one full of unlimited ammo, another with infinite food and the third able to summon an army), since his father-in-law's kingdom will soon enter a war against Kukoricza Marczi. Nemtudomka and his brothers-in-law are called to defend the kingdom, but only Nemtudomka, wearing his royal garments, turns the tide of battle, but is injured in the leg during a fight. The king, his father-in-law, sees the knight's injury and bandages with his scarf, then the knight retreats to parts unknown. At the end of the tale, the king summons the kingdom for a feast at the castle, where Nemtudomka unmasks the boastful brothers-in-law due to their rings and marks on their bodies, and tells the king he is prince Dániel.^[4]

The Hungarian Folktale Catalogue (MNK) registers type AaTh 532 as Nemtudomka (German: Klein Weißnicht;^[5] English: "Little Don't Know"): the hero is threatened by his mother and her lover (or by a stepmother) and escapes with his horse to another kingdom, where is advised to always answer "Nem tudom" (Hungarian for "I don't know").^[6][7]

Folklorist Stith Thompson questioned the existence of type AT 532 in the international index as an independent tale type, since, barring a different introduction, its main narrative becomes "the same as in the Goldener tale [tale type 314]". This prompted him to suppose the tale type was a "variety" of "Goldener".^[8] In the same vein, the Hungarian Folktale Catalogue (MNK) also took notice of the great similarity between types 532 and 314, which difficulted a specific classification into one or the other.^[6] In addition, Hungarian scholar Ágnes Kovács, in Magyar Néprajzi Lexikon ("Hungarian Ethnographic Dictionary"), stated that the "Nemtudomka" story was "the Eastern European" redaction of tale type 314, "The Golden-Haired Gardener", and most of the national indexes did not consider type 532 as an independent type.^[9]

Furthermore, German folklorist Hans-Jörg Uther, in his 2004 revision of the international tale type index (henceforth, ATU), subsumed type AaTh 532 under a new tale type, ATU 314, "Goldener", due to "its similar structure and content".^[10]

Scholarship notes three different opening episodes to the tale type: (1) the hero becomes a magician's servant and is forbidden to open a certain door, but he does and dips his hair in a pool of gold; (2) the hero is persecuted by his stepmother, but his loyal horse warns him and later they both flee; (3) the hero is given to the magician as payment for the magician's help with his parents' infertility problem.^[11][12][13] Folklorist Christine Goldberg, in Enzyklopädie des Märchens, related the second opening to former tale type AaTh 532, "The Helpful Horse (I Don't Know)", wherein the hero is persecuted by his stepmother and flees from home with his horse.^[14][a]

American folklorist Barre Toelken recognized the spread of the tale type across Northern, Eastern and Southern Europe, but identified three subtypes: one that appears in Europe (Subtype 1), wherein the protagonist becomes the servant to a magical person, finds the talking horse and discovers his benefactor's true evil nature, and acquires a golden colour on some part of his body; a second narrative (Subtype 3), found in Greece, Turkey, Caucasus, Uzbekistan and Northern India, where the protagonist is born through the use of a magical fruit; and a third one (Subtype 2). According to Toelken, this Subtype 2 is "the oldest", being found "in Southern Siberia, Iran, the Arabian countries, Mediterranean, Hungary and Poland". In this subtype, the hero (who may be a prince) and the foal are born at the same time and become friends, but their lives are at stake when the hero's mother asks for the horse's vital organ (or tries to kill the boy to hide her affair), which motivates their flight from their homeland to another kingdom.^[16]

Professor Anna Birgitta Rooth stated that the motif of the stepmother's persecution of the hero appears in tale type 314 in variants from Slavonic, Eastern European and Near Eastern regions. She also connected this motif to part of the Cinderella cycle, in a variation involving a male hero and his cow.^[17]

Hungarian linguist Elemér Moór [hu] has noticed that the hero's name in Hungarian, "Nemtudomka", corresponds with the Russian-language "Neznaiko" (both meaning "I don't know"). This great similarity in names, he supposed, indicates a connection between the tales, but he could not ascertain whether the tales have originated from the Russians or passed into Russia from Hungary.^[18]

The motif of the princess throwing an apple to her suitor is indexed as motif H316, "Suitor test: apple thrown indicates princess' choice (often golden apple)".^[19] According to mythologist Yuri Berezkin and other Russian researchers, the motif is "popular" in Iran, and is also attested "in Central Europe, the Balkans, the Caucasus, the Near East, and Central Asia".^[20]

According to Turkologist Karl Reichl [ky], types ATU 314 and ATU 502 contain this motif: the princess chooses her own husband (of lowly appearance) in a gathering of potential suitors, by giving him an object (e.g., an apple). However, he also remarks that the motif is "spread in folk literature" and may appear in other tale types.^[21]

Germanist Günter Dammann [de], in Enzyklopädie des Märchens, argued that Subtype 2 (see above) represented the oldest form of the Goldener narrative, since the golden apple motif in the suitor selection roughly appears in the geographic distribution of the same subtype.^[22]

According to Richard MacGillivray Dawkins, in the tale type, the hero as gardener destroys and restores the garden after he finds work, and, later, fights in the war. During the battle, he is injured, and the king dresses his wound with a kerchief, which will serve as token of recognition.^[23]

According to German scholars Günther Damman and Kurt Ranke, another motif that appears in tale type ATU 314 is the hero branding his brothers-in-law during their hunt.^[24][25] Likewise, Ranke stated that the hero's branding represented a mark of his ownership over his brothers-in-law.^[25]

Ranke located the motif in the Orient and in the Mediterranean.^[25] In the same vein, Hungarian professor Ákos Dömötör, in the notes to tale type ATU 314 in the Hungarian National Catalogue of Folktales (MNK), remarked that the motif was a "reflection of the Eastern legal custom", which also appears in the Turkic epic Alpamysh.^[26]

Stith Thompson supposed that tale type 532 was "essentially a Russian development", with variants also found in Hungary, Finland and the Baltic Countries.^[8] In the same vein, Hungarian-American scholar Linda Dégh stated that the type was "particularly widespread" in the Central and Eastern regions of Europe.^[27] Also, according to Hungarian scholar Ágnes Kovács, in Magyar Néprajzi Lexikon [hu] ("Hungarian Ethnographic Dictionary"), tale type 532, "Nemtudomka", registered 17 variants across Hungary, but it is "more popular" in Palócföld, Northeastern Hungary and Transylvania ("Erdély", in the original).^[9]

In a Hungarian tale published by János Berze Nagy [hu] with the title Nemtudomka, collected in Heves from an informant named Molnár Margit, a queen is pregnant, and so is a mare in the stables. While the king goes to war, she gives birth to a golden-haired boy and the mare foals a golden-maned colt. The boy and the colt become great friends growing up. However, the queen herself begins to hate her own child and conspires with a tailor ways to kill him: first, she tries to give the prince a bowl of poisoned soup; next, she bakes bread with poison and tries to have him eat it; lastly, the tailor sews a garment that could kill the prince immediately. With the colt's warnings, the prince avoids the danger. Finally, his father, the king, returns home, and the colt tells the prince they have nothing more to keep them at home, and prepare to escape. The colt takes the boy to another kingdom, tells him to find work and always utter the words "Nem tudom" ("I don't know"), and gives him its bridle to summon it. The prince knocks on the castle doors, and its occupants ask the motive of his visit, but since he always says "Nem tudom", they cannot understand him. Even the king's three daughters ask him, the youngest the most empathetic towards him. She inquires him if he wants to be their gardener; he nods with the head and is hired as the royal gardener. Under him, the garden flourishes, to the youngest princess's delight. Some time later, on a Sunday, the king and his daughters go to church, and leave the youngest princess at the castle. While they are away, Nemtudomka summons his horse and asks it to provide him with silver clothes so he can ride around the garden - an event witnessed by the princess. This happens again in the next two Sundays, with Nemtudomka in golden clothes and diamond garments. Later, the elder princesses are already married to princes, but the youngest, stil unmarried, makes up a suitor test: whoever catches from her hand her scarf, her ring and a golden apple, shall marry her. Nemtudomka rides the horse in his diamond clothes, gets the items and runs back to his hut. The king discovers him and marries the boy to his youngest daughter, and has them move out to a henhouse. Some time later, Nemtudonka's brothers-in-law invite him to join them in the hunt, and give them a lame mount. As soon as his brothers-in-law are away, Nemtudomka summons his loyal horse and goes hunting for rabbits in the forest. The brothers-in-law are unable to hunt anything, and find Nemtudomka - whom they do not recognize -, and ask him if they can have some of his game. Nemtudomka agrees, as long as they agree to receive a stamp on their foreheads. During a second hunt, Nemtudomka catches red deer and agrees to share the carcass with his brothers-in-law, as long as they agree to be branded on their hands. Finally, the king summons his three sons-in-law to a feast. After the brothers-in-law boast about their hunting prowess, Nemtudonka points to their gloved hands and scarved foreheads as proof of their trickery, and tells the king the whole truth.^[28]

In a Hungarian language tale collected by Gyula Istvánffy from a Palóc source in Dorogháza, with the title Nemtudomka ("I Don't Know"), a king in Vélag has a son named Miklós Király (prince Miklós), who is raised by his mother until she dies. The king is convinced to find another queen, and remarries. However, the new queen hates her stepson, and, one day, says she is too ill for any remedy, save for Miklós's liver. The king agrees to sacrifice his son, and tells the youth about his decision. Miklós has a last request: to be able to ride around the garden on his táltos horse one last time. The king indulges his son, and the prince rides around three times; after the third time, Miklós spurs the horse hard and both fly over the gates, fleeing their homeland. After the long aerial journey, the táltos lands on near another kingdom. The táltos horse begins to talk and says Miklós is near the diamond castle of another king, advising him to enter the castle by the kitchen, lie on the ashes and always utter "Nem tudom" ("I don't know"). As a parting gift, the horse gives Miklós a silver bridle to summon it, and gallops away. Miklós enters the castle and sees two large white hounds biting away at something gold: an animal's entrail, which he puts on his head. He enters the kitchen in ragged clothes, and sleeps on the ashes. The kitchen staff notice the newcomer and ask him about it, but he can only answer "Nem tudom". The two elder princesses come down to the kitchen to talk to the youth, who again utters "Nem tudom". Despite the strange mannerisms of the boy, they let him stay by the kitchen, and employ him in their errands. Some time later, the eldest princess is getting married, and the court goes to church, leaving the youth Nemtudomka in the kitchen to mind the soup. The prince takes the opportunity of everyone's absence to summon the táltos horse for a ride around the castle patio, an event witnessed by the youngest princess, who was left behind. The princess admires the strange knight, clad in fine garments, and talks to him. He explains he has come from another land, and she gives her her diamond ring. Miklós dries some drops of sweat from his forehead with a kerchief, and the princess notices a mark on his head. Miklós rides away, dismisses the horse and returns to the kitchen. However, the soup has cooled off, for he did not mind the fire, and the cook chastises him. While people eat the soup and celebrate her sister's wedding, the youngest princess is despondent, for she misses the handsome knight. While she is tasting the soup, she accidentally bites her own diamond ring. She sends for the cook, who explains his assistant Nemtudomka did it, but the boy does not say anything else. Still, the princess falls into great despair, so the king decides she should be married off: he invites nobles and princes, but no one interests the girl. The monarch then sends for Nemtudomka to stay behind in queue, with the other suitors, for the princess to give a golden apple to her bridegroom. Miklós/Nemtudomka scratches his head, and the princess notices the birthmark on the youth's head, giving him the golden apple. The king is enraged at her choice, but Miklós/Nemtudomka explains he is a prince from another land, and summons his táltos horse. Thus, they marry.^[29]

In a Hungarian tale published by ethnographer Ákos Dömötor with the title Nemtudomka, a king and queen have a son whom they protect from everything, even the winds. However, the king has to depart for war, and leaves the son under the queen's care. The prince wishes to join his father in the war, but his mother forbids it. Still, the prince interacts with his pet horse. One day, a general arrives with a letter, and the prince goes to the stables. His horse begins to talk and says the general is too close to the queen, and both plan to get rid of the prince, so the animal suggests he avoids eating and drinking anything they offer him, and he should escape from the kingdom. The prince gathers some provisions, mounts on the horse and both fly away to another kingdom. They land in France, and the horse tells the prince to always answer "nem tudom" ("I don't know"), and to find work with the king, then gives him a whistle as a parting gift. The prince passes by the guards at the gate and is brought to the king, who takes him as a gardener's assistant. The king's three daughters enjoy strolling in the garden, and the youngest likes the new assistant, whom they called Nemtudomka. Some time later, the court goes to church, and the prince summons his horse for a ride around the garden. He doffs his idiot disguise and talks to the youngest princess, warning her to keep his secret, lest he destroys the kingdom like he did to the garden. When people returns from church, he dismisses the horse and goes back to his disguise. The gardener discovers the destroyed garden, and orders Nemtudomka to plant everything, lest he is hanged from a tree. After they leave for church in the afternoon, the prince summons the horse again and, after riding around the garden three times, restores everything. The youngest princess talks to him again, declaring her love for him. Later, three foreign princes come to ask for the hands of the French princesses: the elder two agree, but the youngest only wants Nemtudomka. The king is enraged by her decision, and moves her out to live with Nemtudomka in the chicken coop. Nemtudomka blows on the whistle and turns the chicken coop into a nice palace with a diamond roof, and the princess bears the brunt of her sisters' mockery. Later, the princes go on a hunt, and Nemtudomka joins them: he summons his horse and rides into the forest in a nice silver garment, then shoots at a golden eagle. His brothers-in-law do not recognize him and ask for the golden eagle; the prince agrees, in exchange for their engagement rings. The next day, the brothers-in-law hunt a chicken with golden eggs, which the prince, in golden clothes, catches and agrees to let them have it, in exchange for them being branded on their backs with their own engagement rings. Finally, the prince puts on diamond vestments and catches a golden duck, which he agrees to give to his brothers-in-law in exchange for their canines (teeth). After every hunt, the brothers-in-law boast of their success in hunting, while Nemtudomka is mocked for his failures. At the end of the tale, Nemtudomka dresses himself and his wife in diamond clothes and go to court to meet the French king. The prince, whom the king, his father-in-law does not recognize, asks the monarch about the other princes' success in their hunt, then produces the princesses' engament rings, to the latter's surprise. The prince then shows the markings on their backs and the lost canines, which serve as proof of their deception. The prince reveals he is Nemtudomka, and, mockingly, asks his sisters-in-law if they are happy with their marriages. The elder princesses renege on their respective husbands, and the princes flee the kingdom, and are still running.^[30]

Journalist Elek Benedek adapted Erdélyi's version as the story Deszkavári királyfi, translated as The Prince and His Magic Horse, where the prince is named Dániel, born in Szyttia, and the court master tries to kill him by placing a large sword on the boy's bed.^[31]

• Green-Vanka
• The Black Colt
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• The Prince and the Foal
• Cinder Jack (Hungarian fairy tale)

• Kovács, Ágnes (1980). "Nemtudomka". In Gyula Ortutay (ed.). Magyar Néprajzi Lexikon (in Hungarian). Vol. 3: K-Né. Akadémiai Kiadó. pp. 704–705.