The Enchanted Pig (Romanian: Porcul cel fermecat) is a Romanian fairy tale, collected in Rumanische MärchenKremnitz, Mite. Rumänische Märchen. Leipzig: Wilhelm Friedrich, 1882. pp. 48-66. and also by Petre Ispirescu in Legende sau basmele românilor. Andrew Lang included it in The Red Fairy Book.
The tale is related to the international cycle of the Animal as Bridegroom or "The Search for the Lost Husband", wherein a human maiden marries a husband in animal form, breaks a prohibition and has to search for him. According to scholarship, the pig form of the enchanted husband is popular in Romania.
Source According to Ispirescu, the tale was provided by his mother, in the period of 1838-1847.
Synopsis A king goes to war and tells his daughters they may go anywhere in the castle except one room. One day, they disobey and find a book open in it. It says that the oldest shall marry a prince from the east, the second a prince from the west, and the youngest a pig from the north. The youngest is horror-struck, but her sisters manage to convince her that it is impossible.
The king returns and discovers, from the youngest's unhappiness, what they had done. He resolves to face it as best they can. A prince from the east marries the oldest, and a prince from the west the second, and the youngest becomes distressed. A pig comes to woo her, and when the king refuses his consent, the city fills with pigs. The king tells his daughter that he is certain there is something strange about this pig, and that he believes magic has been at work. If she were to marry the pig, it might be broken.
She marries the pig and goes off with him. At his home, he becomes a man every night, and is so kind that he wins her heart. She asks a witch what happened to her husband. The witch tells her to tie a thread to his foot to free him. When the young wife does so, her husband wakes and tells her that the spell would have fallen from him in three days, but now he must remain in this shape, and she will not find him without wearing out three pairs of iron shoes and blunting a steel staff.
She sets out as soon as she gets herself three pairs of iron shoes and a steel staff. She wanders far, until she comes to the house of the Moon (Sânta Lună). The Moon's mother lets her in, and while she is there, she gives birth to a son. The Moon's mother tells her that the Moon could not tell her where to find her husband, but she can go on, to the Sun. She also gives her a chicken and tells her to keep every one of the bones. The princess thanks her, throws away one pair of shoes, which was worn out, and puts on another.
She finally finds her way to the Sun's house, and the Sun's mother lets her in. She hides her, because the Sun is always ill-tempered when he returns. He is, but his mother soothes him, and asked about her husband. He cannot tell her, so his mother sends her on, to the Wind. Also, she gives her a chicken and tells her to take care of the bones. Here, she throws out the second pair of shoes.
At the Wind's house, his mother discovers that her husband lives in a wood no axe could cut through. She sends her to it, with a chicken and instructions to keep every bone. The princess goes on, although her third pair of shoes wears through, on the Milky Way. She finds the castle where her husband lives, and the bones stick together to form her a ladder to let her in. She is one bone short, and cuts off her little finger to complete the ladder. Her husband returns, and the spell on him is broken.
He reveals that he is a prince, who had killed a dragon, and the dragon's mother, a witch, had turned him to that shape and then advised her to tie the string to keep him in it. They set out to his father's kingdom, and then return to her father's kingdom.
Translations The tale was also translated and published in the compilation The Foundling Prince & Other Tales (1917).Julia Collier Harris, Rea Ipcar. The Foundling Prince & Other Tales: Translated from the Roumanian of Petre Ispirescu. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. 1917. pp. 27-52. The tale was also translated as The Enchanted Hog by Robert Nisbet Bain and published as a part of a supplement in his translation of Ignáz Kunós's book of Turkish fairy tales.Bain, Robert Nisbet. Turkish Fairy Tales and Folk Tales Collected by Dr. Ignácz Kúnos. Lawrence and Bullen. 1896. pp. 222-243. The tale was also translated as The Enchanted Prince by Jacob Bernard Segall.
Analysis Tale type
The first part of the tale corresponds to Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as ATU 441, "In an Enchanted Skin". Others of this type include The Pig King.Ashliman, D. L. A Guide to Folktales in the English Language: Based on the Aarne-Thompson Classification System. Bibliographies and Indexes in World Literature, vol. 11. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1987. p. 93. . This tale type is characterized by a childless couple (royal or peasant) wishing for a child, "even if it was a hedgehog" (or pig, or boar).
The second part of the tale follows Aarne-Thompson tale type 425A, "The Search for the Lost Husband": the maiden breaks a taboo or burns the husband's animal skin and, to atone, she must wear down a numbered pair of metal shoes. On her way to her husband, she asks for the help of the Sun, the Moon and the Wind.Thompson, Stith (1977). The Folktale. University of California Press. pp. 97-98. . According to Hans-Jörg Uther, the main feature of tale type ATU 425A is "bribing the false bride for three nights with the husband". Others of this type include The Black Bull of Norroway, The Brown Bear of Norway, The Daughter of the Skies, East of the Sun and West of the Moon, The Tale of the Hoodie, Master Semolina, The Sprig of Rosemary, The Enchanted Snake, and White-Bear-King-Valemon.Heidi Anne Heiner, "Tales Similar to East of the Sun & West of the Moon " In Balkanic variants of the tale type, the husband curses his wife not to give birth to their child until she has sought him out.
Motifs
The pig husband Polish philologist Mark Lidzbarski noted that the pig prince usually appears in Romance language tales, while the hedgehog as the animal husband occurs in Germanic and Slavic tales.Lidzbarski, Mark (Hg.). Geschichten und Lieder aus den neuaramäischen Handschriften. Weimar: Verlag von Emil Felber, 1896. p. 82. Also, according to Swedish folklorist and Christine Shojaei Kawan (in Enzyklopädie des Märchens), in type ATU 441 the animal husband may be a hedgehog, a wild boar or a porcupine.
Scholarship recognized the popularity of the character of the pig-husband (Romanian: soțul porc) in Romania:Repciuc, Ioana. "Identificarea sursei folclorice a basmului Cupidon şi Psyché de către Petru Caraman – în contextul cercetărilor internaţionale" [Petru Caraman's Work on Identifying the Folkloric Source of Cupidon şi Psyche Fairytale – In the Context of International Research]. In: Anuarul Muzeului Etnografic al Moldovei 15 (2015): 201. Romanian scholar , in his 1928 index of Romanian tale types, identified that the bridegroom appeared as a pig in most of the available variants at the time (twelve texts), followed by a serpent (eight texts). In that regard, ethnologue noted that the enchanted husband in Romanian variants "usually" appears under a snakeskin or a pigskin: per his 1966 study, the enchanted husband is a snake in 25 variants and pig in 17 (18 in a 1971 study),Petre Ispirescu - Opere. Volume 1. Ed. Minerva, 1971. p. lvi (in Romanian). assuming other forms in other texts, like a hedgehog, a crayfish, a frog and even a pumpkin. According to Romanian scholarship, Porcul cel fermecat, by Ispirescu, is the oldest Romanian variant about the prince in pig form.
Fulfilling the king's tasks In Adolf Schullerus's analysis of the Romanian tales, he noted that the husband, in pig form, marries the heroine after fulfilling the suitor's tasks in the tales. According to Jan-Öjvind Swahn and Georgios A. Megas, the motif of the animal suitor fulfilling the king's tasks before he marries the heroine appears in variants from Eastern Europe and the Near East, and in Romania in subtypes 425A and 425L.
The heroine's helpers In a study published posthumously, Romanian folklorist noted that, in Romanian and in some South Slavic variants, instead of meeting the Sun, the Moon and the Wind on the way to her husband, the heroine finds incarnations of the days of the week, like Holy Wednesday and Holy Friday. They function the same as the elements and gift the heroine with golden objects.Caraman, Petru. "Identificarea episodului despre Cupidon şi Psyche, din romanul „Metamorphoses” al lui Apuleius, cu un basm autentic popular" [Identification of the Episode on Cupidon and Psyche, in the Novel Metamorphoses by Appuleius, with An Authentic Folk Fairy Tale]. In: Anuarul Muzeului Etnografic al Moldovei 9 (2009): 28–33. French philologist Jean Boutière, in his doctoral thesis, analysed the variants available at the time and concluded that the heroine seeks the help of Holy Wednesday, Holy Friday and Holy Sunday (which are sometimes replaced by Holy Monday and Holy Saturday), and, rarely, of the Moon, the Sun and the Wind.Boutière, Jean. La vie et l'oeuvre de Ion Creangă. Paris: Librairie Universitaire J. Gamber, 1930. p. 121.
Additionally, researcher Vitalii Sîrf noted that, in some Gagauz tales, the heroine goes in search of her lost husband, and meets Baba-Vineri ("Old Woman Friday"), Baba Miercuri (Gagauz: Çarșamba babusu, "Old Woman Wednesday"), Duminica-mamă (Gagauz: Pazar babusu, "Grandmother Sunday"). These characters gift the heroine with golden objects she will use to bribe the false bride.SÎRF, Vitalii. "Ajutorii de provenienţa religioasă ai eroului din povestea magică şi legendară găgăuză". In: Revista de Etnologie şi Culturologie. 2013, nr. 13-14, pp. 140-141. .
Variants Romania The Child in the Pighair Clothes