The Horse Lurja (, ; Russian: "Конь Лурджа", "Horse Lurja") is a Georgian folktale published by Georgian folklorist . It tells the story about the friendship between a princess and a magic horse, which sacrifices itself for her after it rescues her from great peril. Although the tale appears in Georgia, some scholars recognize similar narratives in Central Asia and across Europe.
Summary A king and a queen have a beautiful daughter. One day, an old witch tells the queen she and her husband can regain their youth if they kill their daughter and eat her liver and heart. The princess talks to her pet horse, Lurja, and confides in it about the murderous plan. The horse advises her to trick her parents: she is to ask the king and the queen to be dressed as a man and for her to take a ride on the horse to see the world before she dies.
It happens as the horse predicts and the princess seizes the opportunity to escape to another kingdom, in a male disguise. In this new kingdom, the king's son invites her to a hunt. The king's son suspects she is a girl, but his mother insists otherwise and tells him to test her: first by racing; then by going to the war treasury and choose what most appeals to a masculine mind.
The princess is eventually unmasked, but marries the king's son as she is. Her husband is invited as guest to another king, and borrows his wife's horse, Lurja. While he is away, she gives birth to a golden-haired son and writes a letter to him. A royal messenger takes the letter to deliver to the prince, but he spends the night in a house, where the contents of the letter are altered to say she gave birth to an abomination. The prince receives the letter and writes back that she and her son are to be kept safe until his return. The messenger passes by the same house, and the prince's letter is falsified with a command to burnt the princess and her son in an oven.
The horse Lurja senses that something is wrong with the princess and, despite one leg being tied to a pole, breaks free and races to the save the princess. He reaches the princess in the nick of time, on three legs, takes the princess and her son, and flies far away. At a safe distance, the horse realizes that being a three-legged beast is of no use to the princess, and urges her to kill it, place its three legs on three corners and its head in the middle. Reluctantly, she follows the horse's instructions and chants a spell; a temple is built in their place. The princess raises her son in this new place.
Meanwhile, the prince returns home and learns of the exchanged letters, and falls into despair, thinking that his wife and son were burnt in the oven. His father, the king, seeing his son's grief, decides to wander the world in search of his daughter-in-law and grandson. He eventually reaches the temple and meets his grandson and his mother.Hunt, David. "Fairy-Tale Motifs from the Caucasus". In: A Companion to the Fairy Tale. Edited by Hilda Ellis Davidson, Hilda Roderick Ellis Davidson, Anna Chaudhri. DS Brewer, 2006. pp. 230-231. .Berman, Michael. The Shamanic Themes in Georgian Folktales. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008. pp. 59-67. .
Analysis Tale type Georgian scholar T. Kurdovanitze identified a new tale type, not listed in the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index, which he termed "Красавица и ее конь" ("The Beauty and Her Horse"): a magical horse helps mother and son escape from burning and rides into the unknown with them; later, parts of its body (entrails, horsehide, etc.) transform into a castle to shelter mother and son, and her husband finds them."Грузинские народные сказки" [Georgian Folk Tales]. Сост., вступит. статья, примеч. и типолог. анализ сюжетов Т. Д. Курдованидзе. Vol. I. Moskva, Главная редакция восточной литературы издательства «Наука», 1988. pp. 353-354.
This tale is classified by Georgian scholarship as an independent tale type in the Georgian Folktale Index, numbered -538*, "The Beauty and her Horse", with 12 variants listed.Kʻurdovaniże, Tʻeimuraz et al. The index of Georgian folktale plot types: systematic directory, according to the system of Aarne - Thompson. Tbilisi: Merani, 2000. p. 54.
Other regions In a 2013 article, researcher Veronica Muskheli, from University of Washington, took notice of a cycle of stories that she located in Central Asia. In this narrative, which she named Woman's Magical Horse, the heroine rides her magical horse to escape from a great evil, usually wears masculine clothes, and eventually finds a husband. The horse eventually perishes after helping the heroine one last time and she uses the horse's remains to build a new home for her.
According to Basque researcher , Italian folklorist located stories of the crossdressing heroine, her helpful horse and the flight from an unwanted monstruous suitor in Italy, Catalonia and Basque Country - which corresponds to Type C in Lo Nigro's study.
In a study about the European cycle of La Doncella Guerrera ("The Warrior Maiden"), French historian identified a second form of the cycle, which he termed La fille qui a épousé le diable (English: "The girl who married the devil"). In this form, the crossdressing heroine is still put to the test of her gender, but she is helped by her faithful magic horse. Delpech also concluded that the heroine's horse is the one that rescues her from a terrible marriage with a supernatural being and sets her up with a beneficial human partner.Delpech, François. ""La doncella Guerrera": chansons, contes, rituels". In: Formas breves del relato: coloquio Casa Velázquez-Departamento de Literatura Española de la Universidad de Zaragoza. Madrid, febrero de 1985. Coord. por Aurora Egido, Yves-René Fonquerne, 1986, pp. 67-68. . (In French)
Haitian anthropologist Suzanne Comhaire-Sylvain studied an Haitian tale, titled Domangage with the heroine's marriage with a monstrous bridegroom and her escape with the help of a horse. She compared the Haitian tale with African stories and a Basque tale collected by Paul Vinson, concluding that they "share the same origin". Comhaire-Sylvain also mentioned a Turkish tale (Kamertag) collected by Kúnos, which would point to an Eastern origin for the story. Comhaire-Sylvain also concluded that the Haitian story is spread in America (in the Antilles, the United States and in Brazil), in Africa (in Senegal and Gabon) and in Western Europe (Basque Country), and supposed that the Haitian version was brought by Malinké, Wolof or Mpongwe slaves.
Motifs According to scholarship, the Georgian word lurǯa means a 'blue-gray' color, or refers to a horse of dark gray colour.
According to Chilean folklorist , in some variants, the heroine is betrothed or already married to a gentleman (who is a devil in disguise), and escapes from him in a "Magical Flight" sequence. Despite the presence of the motif, these tales are not classified as type ATU 313, "The Magic Flight".
Relation to other tale types In an article in Enzyklopädie des Märchens, narrative researcher Ines Köhler-Zülch stated that this narrative (heroine and magic horse save themselves from demonic bridegroom) may also start as tale type AaTh 621, "The Flea": her father, the king, fattens a louse and uses its hide as a suitor's riddle; a demonic bridegroom guesses it right.Köhler-Zülch, Ines. "Lausfell erraten (AaTh 621)" [Louse Skin (ATU 857)]. In: Enzyklopädie des Märchens Band 8: Klerus – Maggio. Edited by Rudolf Wilhelm Brednich; Hermann Bausinger; Wolfgang Brückner; Helge Gerndt; Lutz Röhrich. De Gruyter, 2016 . p. 797. .
Italian scholar Sebastian Lo Nigro, in his study, noted that the motif of the sequence of falsified letters harks back to tale type ATU 706, "The Maiden Without Hands".Lo Nigro, Sebastiano. Tradizione e invenzione nel racconto popolare. Olschki, 1964. p. 78.
Variants Europe Georgia In a Georgian tale titled Arcivis švili and translated into Russian as "Сын орла" ("Eagle Son") and into German as Der Sohn des Adlers, a king has no children, until one day his wife gives birth to an eagle. The king orders for a hole to be excavated and the eagle to be thrown down there. The eagle is fed with oxen, and devours the royal cattle in no time. The king announces that the populace is to feed the bird with their cattle or, lacking it, with humans. One day, an orphan girl is selected as the next sacrifice and goes to her mother's grave to weep over her fate. The mother's spirit appears to the girl and advises her: she is to dress in a buffalo hide and ask the eagle prince to take off its skin. The girl obeys the instructions and is roped down the hole in a buffalo skin. The eagle watches her intently and orders her to take off her skin, but the girl retorts that the eagle should take off his first. The eagle obeys and sheds the birdskin to become a youth of so great a beauty he illuminates the hole. Some servants of the king fail to hear any screams, and go to check: the girl is still alive, and a youth is there as well, with no trace of the eagle. The servants tell the king, who does not believe them and has them executed. Then, the goes to check for himself and confirms the servants' story. He marries his son, now human, to the girl, and gives her a magical horse. One day, the prince has to journey to another city, and borrows his wife's magical horse. While he is away, his wife gives birth to a golden-haired boy, and writes a letter the tell her husband the good news. A royal messenger is given the letter to deliver to the prince, but spends the night in a house. A woman that lives in the house writes that the princess gave birth to a puppy. The messenger delivers the false letter, and the prince writes that she is to be protected until his return. The same messenger spends the night again at the same house, and the same woman takes the true letter and falsifies it with a command to take the princess and her son and burn them in an oven. The princess and her son are put in a chest and taken to the oven. However, her magical horse rushes to her, takes the chest out of the oven and rides with it to another land. The horse arrives at a desert and bursts open the chest, releasing mother and son. With no more strength, the horse tells the princess she can use its tail as a whip, so that, with every crack of the whip on the ground, the desert can be filled with flowers. The horse dies, and the princess follows the horse's instructions. Mother and son live out their days in this new land, and the boy grows up as a fine hunter. The tale then segues into tale type ATU 315, "The Faithless Mother"."Грузинские народные сказки" [Georgian Folk Tales]. Сост., вступит. статья, примеч. и типолог. анализ сюжетов Т. Д. Курдованидзе. Vol. I. Moskva, Главная редакция восточной литературы издательства «Наука», 1988. pp. 141-147.