Prince Crawfish (Belarusian: "Рак Царэвіч") is a Belarusian folktale collected by Belarusian ethnographer and folklorist . Folklorist later republished it in German as Der Krebs als Zarensohn ("The Crab as Son-in-Law").
The tale is related to the international cycle of the Animal as Bridegroom or The Search for the Lost Husband: a human maiden marries an animal that is a prince in disguise, breaks a taboo and loses him, and she has to seek him out.
Summary An old couple suffers for they have no son. One day, the old man captures a crawfish in a bucket and the animal tells him he wants to be his son. Some time later, the crab son asks his father to go to court and ask for the hand of the czar's daughter in marriage. The czar laughs at the silly proposition and orders the poor man three tasks for his crawfish son: to build a bridge encrusted with gold and silver between the palace and the old couple's hut; to plant a tree along the road that yields golden and silver fruits, and to have a marching band with fine garments and a fine horse. The crawfish prince tells his father not to worry, and goes to the lake where he was found; he takes off his crawfish shell and summons the fishes and crabs to provide him with the tasks.
After seeing the results of his orders, such was their impossibility, the czar admits his prospective son-in-law must be someone magical and marries one of his daughters to the crab. The princess discovers the crab prince becomes a handsome man at night and tells her sisters as rebuttal to their mockery, and her sisters say they will burn the shell. That night, while the crawfish prince and the princess are asleep, they burn the shell; the crawfish prince awakens, sensing something is afoot, and learns of the burnt shell. He admonishes his wife and tells her to find him after wearing down three pairs of iron boots, three iron canes and eating three iron loaves of bread. He summons his magical horse Sivko-Burko, his father's mount, and vanishes into the sky.
The princess follows through with his directions and walks a long road: she meets on the way her sisters-in-law, who shelter her and each give her an item (a cloth embroidered with gold and silver, a golden and silver haircomb, and a spinning wheel with a spindle). Her third sister-in-law advises her to reach the next town with a bazaar, open up shop and put the items on show, for a noblewoman will come to buy the objects, but she must refuse money and ask to sleep with her husband for three nights. Twice it happens, but the princess fails to awake her husband, because the noblewoman gave him a sleeping potion. He only awakens on her third attempt and recognizes her.Романов, Е. Р. Белорусский сборник. Volume 6. Могилев: Типография Губернского правления, 1901. pp. 419-426.
Analysis Tale type The tale is classified in the East Slavic Folktale Classification () as type SUS 440, : the heroine marries a crawfish or water animal that fulfilled the king's tasks; he takes off the animal skin at night to become a handsome youth; the heroine burns the animal skin and has to seek him out.Barag, Lev. "Сравнительный указатель сюжетов. Восточнославянская сказка". Leningrad: НАУКА, 1979. p. 134.
Russian scholarship suggests that East Slavic types SUS 433B and SUS 440 are closely related."Русские сказки Сибири и Дальнего Востока: Волшебные. О животных" [Russian Fairy Tales from Siberia and Far East: Magic and Animal Tales]. Сост. Р.П. Матвеева, Т.Г. Леонова. Новосибирск: ВО «Наука». Сибирская издательская фирма, 1993. p. 33. . In type SUS 433B, , a woman gives birth to a crawfish who marries the princess; the princess burns his animal skin and has to seek him out; she trades expensive items to spend a night with her husband and he recognizes her.Barag, Lev. "Сравнительный указатель сюжетов. Восточнославянская сказка". Leningrad: НАУКА, 1979. p. 134.
However, in the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index, the tale corresponds to type ATU 425A, "The Animal (Monster) as Bridegroom": the princess burns the husband's animal skin and she must seek him out, even paying a visit to the Sun, the Moon and the Wind and gaining their help.Vernaleken, Theodor. In the Land of Marvels: Folk-tales From Austria And Bohemia. London: W. S. Sonnenschein & co., 1884. pp. 359-360.Kovacs, Agnes. "Az égig éro fa meséjének magyar redakcioi és samanisztikus motivumaik" [Die ungarischen Redaktionen des Märchens vom Himmelhohen Baum (AaTh 468) und ihre schamanistischen Motive]. In: Ethnographia vol. 95, n°1 (1984). p. 23. The heroine is given marvellous objects on the way to her husband by the personifications of the elements, or by her helpers, and she uses them to bribe the false bride for a night with him. Only on the third night the heroine manages to talk to her husband and he recognizes her.Bamford, Karen. "Quest for the Vanished Husband/Lover, Motifs H1385.4 and H1385.5". In: Jane Garry and Hasan El-Shamy (eds.). Archetypes and Motifs in Folklore and Literature. A Handbook. Armonk / London: M.E. Sharpe, 2005. p. 254.
Motifs The crawfish husband In his work on Cupid and Psyche and other Animal as Bridegroom tales, Swedish scholar located in Eastern Europe variants wherein the animal bridegroom is in the shape of a lobster, shrimp, crayfish and crab, in regards to his type B, which involves the heroine bribing the false bride for three nights with her husband with the gifts she gained from her helpers.Swahn, Jan Öjvind. The Tale of Cupid and Psyche. Lund, C.W.K. Gleerup. 1955. p. 230. Similarly, in his work about animal symbolism in Slavic culture, Russian philologist stated that the crawfish has male symbolism, and marries the heroine in East Slavic types SUS 433B, "Царевич-рак" ("Prince Crawfish"), and SUS 440, "Муж-рак" ("Crawfish Husband"), although the crawfish bridegroom may be replaced by another type of animal in variants, like frogs, toads, snakes, serpents and worms.
Russian scholars A. P. Razumova and G. I Senkina stated that the crawfish ('rak', in the original) as the form of the enchanted husband is unique to the Pomor tradition, and nowhere else. In the Pomor tales, the crawfish is captured by the old man in a net, fulfills the king's tasks and marries the princess, who betrays his trust either by revealing his secret or burning his shell."Русские народные сказки Карельского Поморья" [Russian Folktales of the Pomors of Karelia]. Сост., вступ. ст. А. П. Разумовой [A. P. Razumova] и Г. И. Сенькиной [G. I. Senkina]. Петрозаводск: Карелия, 1974. pp. 359-360.
Fulfilling the monarch's tasks According to Russian folklorist , type SUS 440 with the motifs of the crawfish suitor fulfilling the king's pre-marriage tasks (akin to type SUS 560, "The Magic Ring"), is "characteristic" of Ukrainian and Belarusian 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.
The heroine's journey According to Hans-Jörg Uther, the main feature of tale type ATU 425A is "bribing the false bride for three nights with the husband". In fact, when he developed his revision of Aarne-Thompson's system, Uther remarked that an "essential" trait of the tale type ATU 425A was the "wife's quest and gifts" and "nights bought".
Variants East Slavic Belarus Ethnographer collected and published four other tales from Belarus: Ab ràczku ("About the little crayfish"),Federowski, Michał. Lud białoruski na Rusi Litewskiej. Materiały do etnografii słowiańskiej zgromadzone w latach 1877-1905. Tom 2, Część I: Baśnie fantastyczno-mityczne. Kraków: Akademia Umiejętności, 1902. pp. 181-183 (entry nr. 156). Ab kralèwiczu zaklátum ṷ ráka ("About the prince enchanted to be a crayfish"),Federowski, Michał. Lud białoruski na Rusi Litewskiej. Materiały do etnografii słowiańskiej zgromadzone w latach 1877-1905. Tom 2, Część I: Baśnie fantastyczno-mityczne.. Kraków: Akademia Umiejętności, 1902. p. 183 (entry nr. 157). Ab kralèwiczu-ràczku ("About the little crayfish-prince"),Federowski, Michał. Lud białoruski na Rusi Litewskiej. Materiały do etnografii słowiańskiej zgromadzone w latach 1877-1905. Tom 2, Część I: Baśnie fantastyczno-mityczne. Kraków: Akademia Umiejętności, 1902. p. 184 (entry nr. 158). and an untitled one.Federowski, Michał. Lud białoruski na Rusi Litewskiej. Materiały do etnografii słowiańskiej zgromadzone w latach 1877-1905. Tom 2, Część I: Baśnie fantastyczno-mityczne.. Kraków: Akademia Umiejętności, 902. pp. 152-153 (entry nr. 400).
In a Belarusian tale titled Ab ràczku or "Аб рачку" ("About the little crayfish"), an old man goes to fetch firewood in the forest, when a crayfish begins to talk and asks to be taken home with him. Despite some reservations, the man takes the crayfish with him. Some time later, the crayfish learns of a local tsar who has three daughters, and asks the man to court one of the princesses on his behalf. The man is shocked at the crustacean's words, but goes to talk to tsar about his adoptive son and the princess's prospective son-in-law. The tsar then orders the crayfish to build a diamond bridge between the man's house and the palace. The old man reports to the crayfish about the task, and he accomplishes overnight. For the next task, the tsar orders the crayfish to plant poppies along the road overnight: the crayfish asks for some poppy seeds, which he plants and trees grow overnight. As a last task, the tsar asks the crayfish to sew a dress for the princess, without ever seeing her. The crustacean does it and the man delivers the dress to the princesses, which fits in all of them. Thus, the crayfish is brought on a platter to his wedding and marries the princess. On the wedding night, the crayfish removes his shell and reveals himself to be a handsome youth to the princess. He explains a witch cursed him into that form. The next day, the princess takes the crayfish shell and burns it. The youth despairs at the fact and says he could have endured another month, but now he does not know even if he will be able to escape the curse. He then gives her some climbing shoes, telling her to find him, turns into a pigeon and flies away. The princess cries for her decision, but puts on the shoes and wanders through mountains and forests until she reaches a derelct house where a witch lives. The witch does not welcome her in, but guides her to another witch who can give her a job of feeding her pigeons. The second witch's pigeons are actually enchanted princes. The princess is hired to look after the pigeons and recognizes her husband in avian form. Her husband tells her that, after a year, when she is to be paid her wages, she is to ask for one of the birds, and he will nod his head to her. After a whole year, the witch goes to talk to the princess and asks if she wants to work another year. The princess refuses, and asks for one of the pigeons as her payment. The witch bids her choose one of the birds, and her husband, in bird form, nods. The princess takes her husband back and walks back home. On the way, her shoes are worn out, and the prince returns to human form. Thus, the princess and her husband return home and celebrate.Federowski, Michał. Lud białoruski na Rusi Litewskiej. Materiały do etnografii słowiańskiej zgromadzone w latach 1877-1905. Tom 2, Część I: Baśnie fantastyczno-mityczne. Kraków: Akademia Umiejętności, 1902. pp. 181-183 (entry nr. 156).
Russia According to Russian scholarship, East Slavic type SUS 433B has seven variants registered in Siberia."Русские сказки Сибири и Дальнего Востока: Волшебные. О животных" [Russian Fairy Tales from Siberia and Far East: Magic and Animal Tales]. Сост. Р.П. Матвеева, Т.Г. Леонова. Новосибирск: ВО «Наука». Сибирская издательская фирма, 1993. p. 33. .