The White Hound of the Mountain (Irish: Cú Bán an tSléiḃe) is an Irish folktale collected in the early 20th century and published in academic journal Béaloideas. It is related to the international cycle of the Animal as Bridegroom or The Search for the Lost Husband, wherein a human maiden marries a man under an animal curse, loses him and has to search for him.
Sources The tale was originally collected in Belmullet, County Mayo, in 1903, from an informant called Antoine Sirin (Searns) and published in journal Béaloideas.Ó Tiománaiḋe, Míċeál. “Cú Bán an TSléiḃe”. In: Béaloideas 2, no. 2 (1929): 171. https://doi.org/10.2307/20521576.
Summary A king has a magical wishing chair. His three daughters, the princesses, wish to see for themselves its mystical powers. Each girl sits on the chair and wishes for a husband: the first for the king of the Eastern World, the second for the King of the Western World and the youngest for the titular "White Hound of the Mountain". As they predicted, each of their husbands appear to claim them. The third suitor, however, is not met with the same reception as the others. After three attempts, the White Hound takes the third princess as his intended and goes with her to their new home. The White Hound reveals himself to be a man by night and a hound by day. They live together and she bears him three children. After each birth, the children are taken from them by a mysterious lady. The third princess visits her family and, hounded by her relatives, tells everything about her married life. The White Hound becomes a crow and disappears, and his wife goes after him. The princess visits three houses and obtains a pair of scissors, a comb and a reel for winding yarn. At last she reaches the castle of the Queen of the Black Cloak, the witch who enchanted her husband, and bribes her with the golden objects she received.Ó Tiománaiḋe, Míċeál. “Cú Bán an TSléiḃe”. In: Béaloideas 2, no. 2 (1929): 157–170. https://doi.org/10.2307/20521576.
Analysis Tale type The tale is classified in the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as type ATU 425A, "The Animal as Bridegroom". in this tale type, the heroine is a human maiden who marries a prince that is cursed to become an animal of some sort. She betrays his trust and he disappears, prompting a quest for him. According to Irish folklorist Dáithí Ó hÓgáin, type 425 is known in Ireland as Cu Ban an tSléibhe ("The White Hound of the Mountain"): the heroine marries a prince cursed to be a hound by day, burns his dogskin and finds him under the power of a witch, with whom she trades three wonderful and magical objects (a comb, scissors and a needle) for three nights with him.Ó hÓgáin, Dáithí. "Wonder Tales" entry. In: Myth, legend & romance: an encyclopaedia of the Irish folk tradition. New York: Prentice Hall Press, 1991. p. 424.
Motifs
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".
According to 's study on some 1,100 variants of Cupid and Psyche and related types, the motif of the "wishing chair" appears in Celtic, Irish and British variants.Best, Anita; Greenhill, Pauline; Lovelace, Martin. Clever Maids, Fearless Jacks, and a Cat: Fairy Tales from a Living Oral Tradition. University Press of Colorado. 2019. p. 86. . In the same study, he concluded that the dog as the animal husband appears "confined to the Germanic and Celtic areas".Swahn, Jan Öjvind. The Tale of Cupid and Psyche. Lund, C.W.K. Gleerup. 1955. p. 228.
The vanishing of the children The motif of the separation of the heroine from her children is located by scholarship across Celtic and Germanic speaking areas. According to scholar Gerard Murphy, in Irish variants, the children are taken by a "Hand-down-the-chimney", a motif that also appears in the Fenian Cycle.
Variants Ireland Cú Bán an t-Sléibhe (Galway) An Irish language variant titled Cú Bán an t-Sléibhe ("The White Hound of the Mountain"; IPA:[kuːbˠaːnˠənˠˈtʲlʲeːvʲə]) was published in the academic journal Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie. In this tale, a king has a wife who dies, but who expressed an order to bar anyone from entering a certain room before she was buried in a year and a day. However, when the king is on a hunt, the princesses enter the room and sit on a chair, which is magical. All three express their wishes for a husband: the elder wishes to marry the King of the East, the middle one with the King of the West, and the youngest to "The White Hound of the Mountain", without knowing if he exists or not. In time, their respective suitors appear to fetch their brides, including the White Hound of the Mountain. The third princess marries the White Hound and she gives birth to three children of wondrous aspect in three consecutive pregnancies: two girls and a boy with a ring on the head, gold in the forehead and silver on their backs. After her labour, she gives the children to a handmaid to look after the baby, but a pair of hands come in through the chimney and vanishes with the baby everytime. After the third time, where she gave birth at her father's house, the elder sisters return home without riches and clothes, and notice the luxury of their cadette, then feel jealous and decide to beat her. The pair take the princess to the forest and beat her, but lightning and thunder roar in the sky, the White Hound appears and beats his sisters-in-law to a pulp, then runs away. The princess goes after him and reaches a house. The White Hound tells his wife to take shelter in a nearby house, where she finds a woman taking care of a girl (the princess's daughter). Before she leaves, the woman gives the princess a comb. This repears twice more, with the princess gaining a pair of scissors and a needle. In the third house, the princess notices the boy is missing an eye, so she takes out an eyeball from her pocket and inserts it in the boy's eye socket. The White Hound appears before her and reveals that his curse is due to the princess not giving birth to their children at his home, then runs away until he enters a mountain. She tries to grab onto his shirt and lets four droplets of blood stain it, then turns into stone. After nine years, the princess is restored to human form and goes to talk to a hunter about White House. The hunter tells the princess his master has married a witch. The witch appears to wash the bloodstained shirt and the princess sees it, then touches the shirt, removing the blood. The princess then asks the witch to spend the night with the White Hound, by trading the objects she gained with the witch (named Cúl-Carrach) and her daughter (named Maol-Charrach) for three nights with him. The witch who cursed him can only be defeated by breaking the egg with her life in it. The tale was translated into German as Der Weisse Hund vom Gebirge ("The White Hound of the Mountain").Müller-Lisowski, Käte. Irische Volksmärchen. Jena: Eugen Diederichs, 1923. pp. 313-318 (text for tale nr. 38). Reidar Christiansen identified this variant as hailing from Galway, and also classified the tale as types 425 and 302.
Cú Bán an t-Sléibhe 1 In another homonymous variant titled Cú Bán a' tSléiḃe ("The White Hound of the Mountain"), a king has a magical wishing chair (cathaoir a' tsóláis). Each of his three daughters wish for a husband: the elder for a husband more beautiful than the sun, the middle one for one more beautiful than the moon, and the third for the White Hound. In time, all three bridegrooms arrive to get their respective brides, the White Hound taking his through a secret forest path. In their castle, the White Hound asks his wife which form she prefers him to be, and she answers that as a man by night. Some time later, the princess is pregnant with their first child (a son, White Hound prophecises), and is taken to her family's castle to give birth, but with instructions to leave the child outside the gate for the White Hound to take him. The same happens to their second child, but, with the third pregnancy, the White Hound alerts his wife not to return home, since her new step-mother will force her to disclose the princess's married life. Despite the warnings, the princess goes to her father's castle and leaves her third son outside. Inside, the princess's stepmother tortures her with an iron poker, and, to avoid further harm to herself, the princess gives in and tells everything to her perfidious step-mother. The princess awaits for her husband to come, but he does not, so she walks by herself to the White Hound's castle, finding nothing but ruins. She notices three sods and picks them up. When she tosses one, her husband appears with their sons, and flees soon after. The princess runs after him, until she stops to rest by an old woman's hut. Before the princess leaves, the old woman tells her that her family stopped there - her proof a half-bitten sandwich -, and gives her a pair of magic scissors. Her pursuit continues with two next stops, where she gets a comb and a box, until she reaches her father-in-law's castle. For a year and a day, the White Hound (back to human form), lives with his father, and announces he shall marry one that can wash his bloodied shirt. The princess washes it, but the hen-wife's daughter takes the credit for it, and is set to marry the human White Hound. The princess uses the old women's gifts (a scissors that turn cloth to silk, a comb that turns hair golden and the box that spins yarn) to bribe the false bride for three nights with the White Hound. For the first two nights, she cannot wake him up, due to him drinking a sleeping potion, until the third day, where he wakes up and recognizes her.Mac Airt, Seán. “Sgéaltaí ó Thír Eóghain”. In: Béaloideas 20, no. 1/2 (1950): 6-11, 40-42. https://doi.org/10.2307/20521194.
Cú Bán an t-Sléibhe 2