Donotknow () is a Russian fairy tale (skazka) collected by folklorist Alexandr Afanasyev in his three-volume compilation Russian Fairy Tales. The tale was also translated as "Know Not" by Jack V. Haney. It deals with a friendship between a merchant's son and a magic horse that are forced to flee for their lives due to the boy's stepmother, and reach another kingdom, where the boy adopts another identity by only uttering the words "Ne znayu" ("I don't know").
According to scholarship, tales where the hero is instructed by his horse to always utter "I don't know" (or a variation thereof) are reported particularly in Russia, in Finland, in the Baltic Countries and in Hungary.
Summary A widowed rich merchant has a son, Ivan, and marries a new wife. When he is ready to go on a business trip, Ivan asks his father to find him his "luck". The merchant finds a scabby foal, and buys it. He brings it home and gives it to Ivan, who takes care of the horse and works at his father's counter.
Meanwhile, Ivan's stepmother begins to hate her stepson, and plots with "a wise old woman" to kill him: first, she puts poison under the house threshold. Ivan leaves his father's shop and goes home, but enters the stables to check on the foal and finds him crying. He questions the animal the reason why and the foal, in tears, tells Ivan that his stepmother has placed poison under the threshold, and he should let his dog enter the house first. Ivan follows the horse's warnings: the dog crosses the threshold and "it [is] torn into small atoms" (in Leonard Magnus's translation).
The stepmother's second attempt involves giving Ivan a cup of poisoned wine. Once again, the foal cries in the stables and warns Ivan of the next attempt. The boy simply throws the liquid out of the window. On her third attempt, the stepmother gives Ivan a shirt that will strangle him. With the horse's warnings, Ivan gives the shirt to a servant to wear, and he falls to the ground as if he is dead. Ivan takes off the shirt from the boy and throws it in the oven; the boy servant returns to life and the oven breaks apart in small pieces.
Failing all attempts to kill her stepson, the woman turns her attentions to the foal. After her husband returns from the journey, she pretends to be ill and tells her husband she had a dream that, if the foal's throat is slit and its liver rubbed on her body, she may regain her health. Ivan's father tells him of his intentions: the foal is to be killed to restore his stepmother's health. Ivan cries over his father's decision and goes to the stables. The horse is aware of its planned fate, and begs Ivan to save it, just as it saved Ivan, by having the boy ask his father to take one last ride on it.
Ivan follows the horse's instructions and flees with the horse to another kingdom, leaving a goodbye letter to his father explaining his reasons to leave. At a safe distance, the foal tells Ivan to pluck three hairs of its mane to summon it, and advises him to kill a bull, dress in its hide, put a bladder on his head as a cap, and only repeat the words "Idonotknow". The horse then vanishes. Ivan sails with a crew and only repeats "Idonotknow" to the sailor. Finally, Ivan reaches a kingdom, where the king hires him as a scarecrow for his gardens.
The king has three daughters, the third the most beautiful of the lot. A foreign Arab prince tells her father he wants her, either by choice or by force, but the king refuses to surrender her to the Arab prince and he moves his armies to invade the kingdom. Ivan learns of this and summons his loyal horse by burning one of its hairs. The horse appears at once, and takes Ivan to the battlefield. Ivan vanquishes several soldiers, steals a helmet to conceal his face, and leaves only the Arab prince and a few soldiers alive, then goes back to the gardener, dismisses the horse, and resumes his menial work.
Some time later, the Arab prince sends another letter asking for the king's third princess, and is still denied, so he prepares another attack. Ivan Donotknow ditches his shabby disguise, summons the horse and rides again to battle, where he fights every Arab knight, leaving some alive to tell the tale. Ivan, however, is injured in his hand by one of the Arab soldiers, and the princess, seeing his wound, takes a kerchief and wraps it around Ivan's hand.
Time passes, and the king decides to marry his two elder daughters to famous Tsarevichi. During the celebrations, the guests take notice of Donotknow as he works in the garden, and inquire about his presence there. The king explains that the man at garden is Donotknow and works as a scarecrow. However, the third princess recognizes her kerchief wrapped around his hand. After a while, she begins to visit the garden to be next to him, and eventually asks her father to wed them both. The king then marries his daughter to Donotknow.
Finally, the Arab prince sends another letter asking for the princess, but the king writes him back that she is betrothed to Donotknow, and invites him to come see it for himself. The Arab prince comes and, seeing the strange man Donotknow, summons him to a mortal combat. Ivan Donotknow once again shirks his shabby disguise, summons the horse and rides into the open field to fight the Arab prince. After a long fight, Ivan kills the Arab prince, and his father-in-law, the king, recognizes Ivan not as the lowly gardener, but as a brave knight. Ivan marries the princess, brings his merchant father to live with him, and punishes his traitorous stepmother.Magnus, Leonard. Russian Folk-Tales. New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1916. pp. 234-242.
Analysis Tale type The tale is classified - and gives its name - to the East Slavic type SUS 532, , of the East Slavic Folktale Classification (): a hero is banished with his horse by his stepmother and, to protect himself, he is advised by the horse to always say "не знаю" (Russian for "I do not know"); the hero finds work as a gardener to another king, and, through heroic deeds, marries a princess.Barag, Lev. "Сравнительный указатель сюжетов. Восточнославянская сказка". Leningrad: НАУКА, 1979. p. 153.
The East Slavic type corresponds, in the international Aarne-Thompson Index (henceforth, AaTh), as tale type AaTh 532, "I Don't Know (The Helpful Horse)".Aarne, Antti; Thompson, Stith. The types of the folktale: a classification and bibliography. Folklore Fellows Communications FFC no. 184. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1961. p. 191. However, folklorist Stith Thompson, in his work The Folktale, doubted the existence of the story 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".
A similar notion is shared by Greek folklorists Anna Angelopoulou, Marianthi Kapanoglou and Emmanuela Katrinaki, editors of the Greek Folktale Catalogue: although they classified the Greek variants under type 532 (Greek: Ο Μπιλμέμ), they still recognized that they should be indexed as type 314 (Greek: Ο Κασίδης), since their only difference seems to lie in the introductory episodes.Angelopoulou, Anna; Kapanoglou, Marianthi; Katrinaki, Emmanuela. "ΚΑΤΑΛΟΓΟΣ ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΩΝ ΠΑΡΑΜΥΘΙΩΝ-4: ΕΠΕΞΕΡΓΑΣΙΑ ΤΥΠΩΝ ΚΑΙ ΠΑΡΑΛΛΑΓΩΝ AT 500-559". Athena: ΚΕΝΤΡΟ ΝΕΟΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΩΝ ΕΡΕΥΝΩΝ, 2004. pp. 15, 389-390. (In Greek). 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.Dömötör Ákos (szerk.). Magyar népmesekatalógus 2. Budapest, MTA Néprajzi Kutató Csoport, 1988. A magyar tündérmesék katalógusa (AaTh 300-749). p. 306.
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".
Motifs According to folklorist Christine Goldberg, in Enzyklopädie des Märchens, the "only specific motif" of type 532 is the hero's feigned ignorance on the horse's orders.Goldberg, Christine. "Pferd: Das hilfreiche Pferd (AaTh 532)". In: Enzyklopädie des Märchens Online, edited by Rolf Wilhelm Brednich, Heidrun Alzheimer, Hermann Bausinger, Wolfgang Brückner, Daniel Drascek, Helge Gerndt, Ines Köhler-Zülch, Klaus Roth and Hans-Jörg Uther. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2016 . p. 934. https://www-degruyter-com.wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org/database/EMO/entry/emo.10.177/html. Accessed 2023-06-14.
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.Rooth, Anna Birgitta. The Cinderella Cycle. Lund, 1951. pp. 138-139.
Hungarian linguist has noticed that the name "Nemtudomka", from the Nemtudomka fairy tale, 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.
Variants Distribution Stith Thompson supposed that this tale type was "essentially a Russian development", with variants also found in Hungary, Finland and the Baltic Countries. In the same vein, Hungarian-American scholar Linda Dégh stated that the type was "particularly widespread" in the Central and Eastern regions of Europe.Dégh, Linda (1996). Hungarian Folktales: The Art of Zsuzsanna Palkó. New York and London: Garland Publishing. p. 3. .
Russia Predecessors