The Wonderful Sea-Horse is an Iranian folktale collected from storyteller Mashdi Galeen Khanom and published by Laurence Paul Elwell-Sutton. It is classified in the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as ATU 314, "Goldener". It deals with a friendship between a king's son and a magic horse that comes from the sea; both are later forced to flee for their lives due to the boy's own sisters, and reach another kingdom, where the boy adopts another identity.
Although it differs from variants wherein a hero acquires golden hair, its starting sequence (persecution by the hero's female relative, e.g., his sisters) is considered by scholarship as an alternate opening to the same tale type.
Origin The tale was provided by a female storyteller from Iran named Mashdī Galīn Khānom, and published by L. P. Elwell-Sutton.Márkus, K. (1995). [Review of Die Erzählungen der Mašdi Galin Hānom / Qessehā-ye Mashdī Galīn Khānom [The Tales of Mashdī Galīn Khānom]; Dāstānhā-ye-širin: Fünfzig persische Volksbüchlein aus der zweiten Hälfte des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts [Sweet Stories: Fifty Persian Chapbooks from the Second Half of the Twentieth Century], by U. Marzolph, A. Amirhosseini-Nihammer, & L. P. Elwell-Sutton]. Asian Folklore Studies, 54(2), 354. https://doi.org/10.2307/1178966 German scholar , in his catalogue of Persian folktales, sourced the story from Markazi province.Marzolph, Ulrich. Typologie des persischen Volksmärchens. Beirut: Orient-Inst. der Deutschen Morgenländischen Ges.; Wiesbaden: Steiner [in Komm.], 1984. p. 69 (entry nr. 1).
Summary A king has many daughters, but only one son, Prince Ebrahim, whom he dotes on, to the girls' jealousy. One day, some huntsmen bring to the palace a horse they have captured, which the prince wants to himself. The king buys him the horse and takes it to the stalls, feeding it sweets and comfits instead of hay or barley. Years later, when the boy is 13 years old, the princesses, his sisters, begin to hate him, and decide to kill him: first, they hire well-diggers to dig up a hole in his room, place knives, spikes and swords inside it, and cover it with carpets. One day, Prince Ebrahim goes home from school and goes to meet the horse, finding it weeping for him, since the princesses are trying to kill him and prepared a trap in his room. With the horse's warning, he jumps over the trap, uncovers the carpet and goes to tell his father. The king then investigates into the matter, and traces the order to the princesses, although they deny any involvement.
Next, the girls bribe the cook to poison their brother's food. However, Ebrahim is again warned of the danger by his sea-horse: he feeds the cat with it and it dies. The king once again traces the assassination attempt to his daughters, and still they deny it. The princesses notice that their plans failed and discover the reason: a stableboy tells them the sea-horse is helping their brother. Thus, Fatima, the youngest princess, whom the king loves most of all the princesses, feigns illness and ask for the sea-horse's blood as cure. The king is torn at the decision, but his viziers advise him to let the teacher keep him at school while they sacrifice the horse.
Prince Ebrahim goes to meet the sea-horse again in the evening, and is told of the course of action they plan to take. The sea-horse worries for the boy, and conspires with the prince how they can escape: the prince is to pocket some jewels and his finest garments, then pocket some ashes to throw at his teacher and some pennies at the students to distract them, while the sea-horse will neigh three times to alert the prince; when he rushes back to the palace, he is to ask for a last ride on the animal, three times around the yard. The next morning, it happens thus: the prince rides around three times, each time confessing to his father about the attempts on his life, and flies away on the horse to another realm.
When they land, a shepherd informs Ebrahim he is near the castle of the King of the Eastern Lands. The sea-horse advises the prince to find work as a gardener's assistant and gives some of its hairs to the boy, to summon him in case he needs the animal's help, and goes to graze in his original homeland. Prince Ebrahim finds work as the royal gardener's assistant, spinning a story about being an orphan boy. One day, he sees his employer preparing flower bunches for the king's three daughters, and asks if he can arrange some and bring to the princesses. Ebrahim takes the flowers and goes to the terrace where the princesses are, and gives his bunch to the youngest, named Pari, to her sisters' envy. One day, Prince Ebrahim summons his sea-horse, for he wants to ride around the garden as the prince to impress princess Pari: both make a show of strength to her delight, who falls even more in love with him.
Later, the king orders for a crowd to be assembled in front of the palace, where the princesses shall choose their husbands by releasing a falcon at random and, whoever it lands on, they shall marry them. The first falcon lands on the head of the son of the vizier of the right hand, and the second on the son of the vizier of the left hand. The third falcon lands on the head of the gardener, Prince Ebrahim, but, knowing he is a poor choice, the guards remove him from the crowd. Ebrahim sits by the public baths, and the third falcon, released a second time, lands on his head again. Thinking the bird made the same mistake, the viziers order the boy to be taken back to his garden outside of the town. The third falcon is released a third time, and again it circles around in the air until it finds Ebrahim in the garden.
The king ponders about the situation (two fine sons-in-law for his elder daughters, a lowly one for his youngest), and decides to marry the elder two in grand ceremonies with pomp, while the youngest is wedded like a poor servant and moves out to a humble part of town. Time passes, and the king falls ill; the royal doctors prescribe that only meat from a gazelle, a deer or other game animal is to be given to him as remedy. Pari convinces her husband to join in the hunt, and asks her father to lend him a horse. Back to Prince Ebrahim, he summons his loyal horse again, and says it is almost time to end the charade, so that he is given the respect and honour he is due. The sea-horse understands the message, goes away for a while, then returns to fetch the prince. When they reach the wilderness, there is a large pavilion with a throne, and every wild animal has been herded there.
The king's two sons-in-law cannot find any game, until they sight the pavilion from a distance and go near it. They meet Prince Ebrahim, whom they do not recognize, and ask for some of the gazelles for the king. Prince Ebrahim makes a deal: the gazelle meat in exchange for branding the duo as his slaves. The sons-in-law agree to do it, since no one will know of the transaction, then go back to the king. Ebrahim keeps the gazelle heads for himself and asks his wife to prepare a dish for her father. The king eats the dishes made from the gazelle meat and does not recover, until he eats the dish made from the heads and his health improves.
Later, Ebrahim asks his wife to invite her father to visit their home, and he summons the sea-horse once again, so that their humble hut is turned into a wonderful palace. It happens overnight, and the king appears with his court to visit the newly built palace, which is richly decorated and furnished. After a splendid meal, the king wishes his host, whom he does not recognize as the gardener's assistant, could have been one of his sons-in-law. Prince Ebrahim then admits he is the gardener, and the king's son-in-law, while his brothers-in-law are Ebrahim's slaves, marked with a royal brand on their chests. The viziers' sons show their marks, confirming Ebrahim's story, and the king celebrates Pari's wedding to Ebrahim. At the end of the tale, Ebrahim returns to his homeland with his wife and slaves, and his sisters having repented of their previous actions.Mashdi Galeen Khanom; Elwell-Sutton, Laurence Paul. The Wonderful Sea-horse: And Other Persian Tales. G. Bles, 1950. pp. 11-34. .
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. In this case, it is an "independent Near Eastern subtype of AT 314".
Professor , in his catalogue of Persian folktales, named type 314 in Iranian sources as Das Zauberfohlen ("The Magic Horse"):Marzolph, Ulrich. "Iranian Tales". In: The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Folktales and Fairy Tales. Volume 2: G-P. Edited by Donald Haase. Westport, Connecticut; London: Greenwood Press, 2008. p. 501. . the horse saves the protagonist from jealous relatives and takes him to another kingdom; in this kingdom, the protagonist is advised by the horse to dress in shabby garments (as a "Kačal") and work as the king's gardener; a princess falls in love with him. Marzolph listed 17 variants of this type across Persian sources.Marzolph, Ulrich. Typologie des persischen Volksmärchens. Beirut: Orient-Inst. der Deutschen Morgenländischen Ges.; Wiesbaden: Steiner [in Komm.], 1984. pp. 68–70 (entry nr. 1). In addition, according to Marzolph, the tale type, also known as Korre-ye daryā'i (German: Das Meeresfohlen; English: "The Sea Foal"), is one of the most collected types in the archives of Markaz-e farhang-e mardom (Centre of Popular Culture),Marzolph, Ulrich. "Iran" [Iran, Narrative Tradition in]. 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. 260. https://www-degruyter-com.wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org/database/EMO/entry/emo.7.038/html. Accessed 2023-01-17. and a well-known Iranian folktale.
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