The Tale of Clever Hasan and the Talking Horse is a Middle Eastern tale published by author , about the friendship between a prince and his magic talking horse, both evading dangers poised by the boy's stepmother.
The tale is classified in the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as type ATU 314, "Goldener", with an alternate introductory episode: evil stepmother persecutes hero and his horse. Similar tales are known across the Middle East.
Source The tale was provided to Katibah by an informant named Mr. Azar H. Hanania, from Lincoln, N. J.Katibah, Habib. Arabian Romances and Folk-tales. C. Scribner's sons, 1929. p. xiii. Scholar Hasan M. El-Shamy sourced the tale from Lebanon.El-Shamy, Hasan (2004). Types of the Folktale in the Arab World: A Demographically Oriented Tale-Type Index. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. p. 137 (entry nr. 36).
Summary A king's wife gives birth to a boy named Hasan, and dies, and a foal is born in the stables at the same time. The boy and the foal become great friends and spend time together. In time, the king remarries; his second wife is a princess, who eventually gives birth to her own sons, Hasan's half-brothers. She begins to despise her step-son and conspires with a loyal nurse ways to get rid of her step-son: she places a poisoned needle near the entrance, so as to prick Hasan when he returns from school. With the Talking Horse's warning, Clever Hasan avoids the danger. Later, she feigns illness and asks for the heart of the horse as a cure. The Talking Horse overhears their conversation and convinces Hasan to escape with him to another kingdom.
They ride away to the wilderness and find an old man next to a fire. Clever Hasan greets him politely, and the old man allows the boy to sit beside him. The old man also tells him that, by next morning, he will die, and begs Hasan to arrange a proper burial. Before he dies, he gives Hasan a set of keys to the doors to his cave, which he can freely explore, save for the seventh door, and bids him graze his flock of sheep and goats everywhere save the east direction. The old man dies, and Hasan takes the opportunity to explore the cave; behind every door, heaps of treasure, an arsenal; a pool of gold and a pool of silver with which Hasan washes his hair. Curious about the seventh door, Hasan lets the flock graze in the east, and suddenly a ghoul appears. She devours the sheep and pursues Hasan, who manages to kill her.
Later, he finally opens the last door; inside, a black steed with fiery eyes that begs for Hasan to release him. Hasan obeys; the horse becomes a marid and threatens the boy, since his father kidnapped his marid mate who turned into a mare. The Talking Horse barges into the room and tells the marid he is his son. After the family reunion, the marid gives some of his hairs to Hasan and departs. Later, the prince and the horse reach another city; Hasan leaves the horse on the outskirts of the town, while he goes to look for a job. Inside the city, he trades clothes with a shepherd, puts on a cap on his hair, and finds work as an assistant to the royal gardener, under the name "Baldy". A sultan lives in the city with his three daughters, Zubaida, Zulfa and Zainab, the youngest the most beautiful, with whom Clever Hasan falls in love.
On two occasions, Clever Hasan summons the marid and asks him to bring a suit of red armor; he dons the red armor and rides the Talking Horse to trample the garden. He spins a story about a horde of horsemen that attacked the garden. Princess Zainab has witnessed the event, and throws him her handkerchief. Some time later, the sultan decides to find suitors for the princesses in the same occasio, by having them throw apples at their spouses of choice. Zubaida chooses the grand vizier's son, Zulfa the cadi's son and Zainab the gardener's assistant, to the mockery of the populace.
A month passes; the sultan falls ill, and only the milk of lions can cure him. Clever Hasan summons the marid and asks to be taken to the Land of Lions, where he spends some time milking the lionesses. Two weeks later, his brothers-in-law reach the Land of Lions and ask Hasan to give a bit of the milk. Hasan agrees to share, as long as both men agree to be branded in their inner thighs. Later, war breaks out with a neighbouring king; Clever Hasan summons the marid again and asks for a suit of black armor and a powerful sword. He wins the battle. The sultan comes to the battlefield to thank the mysterious black knight, who reveals himself as Baldy, the gardener, and his son-in-law.Katibah, Habib. Arabian Romances and Folk-tales. C. Scribner's sons, 1929. pp. 98-129.
Analysis Tale type The tale is classified in the Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as type ATU 314, "The Goldener": a youth with golden hair works as the king's gardener. The type may also open with the prince for some reason being the servant of an evil being, where he gains the same gifts, and the tale proceeds as in this variant.Stith Thompson, The Folktale, pp. 59-60, University of California Press, Berkeley Los Angeles London, 1977.El-Shamy, Hasan (2004). Types of the Folktale in the Arab World: A Demographically Oriented Tale-Type Index. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. p. 138 (entry nr. 57).
Introductory episodes 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.Bolte, Johannes; Polívka, Jiri. Anmerkungen zu den Kinder- u. hausmärchen der brüder Grimm. Dritter Band (NR. 121–225). Germany, Leipzig: Dieterich'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1918. p. 97.Uther, Hans-Jörg (2004). The Types of International Folktales: A Classification and Bibliography, Based on the System of Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson. Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, Academia Scientiarum Fennica. p. 198. .Dammann, Günter. "Goldener (AaTh 314)". In: Enzyklopädie des Märchens Band 5: Fortuna – Gott ist auferstanden. Edited by Rudolf Wilhelm Brednich; Hermann Bausinger; Wolfgang Brückner; Helge Gerndt; Lutz Röhrich; Klaus Roth. De Gruyter, 2016 . pp. 1373-1374. . 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.Goldberg, Christine. "Pferd: Das hilfreiche Pferd (AaTh 532)". In: Enzyklopädie des Märchens Band 10: Nibelungenlied – Prozeßmotive. Edited by Rudolf Wilhelm Brednich; Hermann Bausinger; Wolfgang Brückner; Helge Gerndt; Lutz Röhrich; Klaus Roth. De Gruyter, 2016 . p. 933. . https://www.degruyter.com/database/EMO/entry/emo.10.177/html
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.Toelken, Barre. "The Icebergs of Folktale: Misconception, Misuse, Abuse". In: Carol L. Birch and Melissa A. Heckler, eds. Who Says? – Essays on Pivotal Issues in Contemporary Storytelling. Little Rock, Arkansas: August House Publishers, 1996. pp. 42-43.
Motifs
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.
Quest for the remedy A motif that appears in tale type 314 is the hero having to find a cure for the ailing king, often the milk of a certain animal (e.g., a lioness). According to scholar Erika Taube, this motif occurs in tales from North Africa to East Asia, even among Persian- and Arabic-speaking peoples.Taube, Erika. "Löwenmilch" [Lion's Milk]. 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 . pp. 1232-1233. Similarly, Hasan M. El-Shamy noted that the quest for the king's remedy appears as a subsidiary event "in the Arab-Berber culture area". In addition, Germanist Gunter Dammann, in Enzyklopädie des Märchens, noted that the motif of the quest for the remedy appeared "with relative frequency" in over half of the variants that start with the Subtype 2 opening (stepmother's persecution of hero and horse).Dammann, Günter. "Goldener (AaTh 314)". In: Enzyklopädie des Märchens Band 5: Fortuna – Gott ist auferstanden. Edited by Rudolf Wilhelm Brednich; Hermann Bausinger; Wolfgang Brückner; Helge Gerndt; Lutz Röhrich; Klaus Roth. De Gruyter, 2016 . pp. 1374-1375, 1377. .
Branding the brothers-in-law 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.Dammann, Günter. "Goldener (AaTh 314)". In: Enzyklopädie des Märchens Band 5: Fortuna – Gott ist auferstanden. Edited by Rudolf Wilhelm Brednich; Hermann Bausinger; Wolfgang Brückner; Helge Gerndt; Lutz Röhrich; Klaus Roth. De Gruyter, 2016 . p. 1375. . in Likewise, Ranke stated that the hero's branding represented a mark of his ownership over his brothers-in-law.
Ranke located the motif in the Orient and in the Mediterranean. 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.Dömötör Ákos (szerk.). Magyar népmesekatalógus 2. Budapest, MTA Néprajzi Kutató Csoport, 1988. A magyar tündérmesék katalógusa (AaTh 300-749). pp. 113-114.
Variants According to Germanist , tale type 314 with the opening of hero and horse fleeing home extends from Western Himalaya and South Siberia, to Iran and the Arab-speaking countries in the Eastern Mediterranean.Dammann, Günter. "Goldener (AaTh 314)". In: Enzyklopädie des Märchens Band 5: Fortuna – Gott ist auferstanden. Edited by Rudolf Wilhelm Brednich; Hermann Bausinger; Wolfgang Brückner; Helge Gerndt; Lutz Röhrich; Klaus Roth. De Gruyter, 2016 . pp. 1376-1377. . In addition, scholar Hasan El-Shamy stated that type 314 is "widely spread throughout north Africa", among Arabs and Berbers; in Sub-saharan Africa, as well as in Arabia and South Arabia..
Lebanon Clever Hasan