"About the astonishing husband Hora" () is a Ukrainian fairy tale collected by folklorist from a Transcarpathian Ukrainian source. It deals with the marriage between a human maiden and a man in a serpent's guise.
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. A specific motif of the tale, which also appears in variants from the Balkans and Romania, is the heroine searching for her husband under a curse not to bear their child until he touches her again.
Sources According to Petro Lintur, the tale was collected from an informant named Dilinko Ivan Gavrilovich.
Summary A man has an estate and lends money to the tsar. One day, he tells his wife he will search for a son for themselves, so he can inherit the estate. The man wanders off a bit and finds a small snake on the ground which he bags and brings home. He drops the snake inside a small cup filled with milk. The snake keeps growing and he moves him to a large tub full of milk, and finally to a large barn.
One day, the snake son whistles and his father goes to check on him: the snake wishes to marry the tsar's daughter. The man goes to talk to the tsar and says his son is so tall he lives in a barn. The tsar takes the queen and the princess and accompanies the man back to the barn: the monarch finds the large snake, but decides to go through with the wedding between the princess and the animal. The princess dances with the snake at the wedding, and tells the snake to devour her, but the snake bridegroom says she is his wife. The snake takes her with him to the end of the world, and the princess tells the snake to devour her, but again the snake tells her she is his wife, then gives her a ball to throw upwards. The princess does as instructed: the ball is tossed upwards then falls to the ground, turning into a large palace.
The snake then says the princess is to stay home while he goes fishing. As soon as he leaves, he takes off the snakeskin and becomes a silver-haired youth. He meets the princess, named Mariyka, and tries to come on to her, placing his hand on her, but she denies him, saying she is already married to Hora. The snake husband tests her fidelity again, the second time by removing his snakeskin and turning into a golden-haired youth. He appears as a stranger to her and again tries to seduce her, but she remains loyal to the snake husband and denies the stranger's advances. Lastly, he tests her a third time by becoming a diamond-haired youth. Once again, Mariyka denies the stranger's advances. The farce ending, he admits he is her husband. Mariyka does not believe it at first, until he enters the snakeskin and becomes the youths that appeared to her. He also tells her he knows she wishes to visit her parents, so he gives her a magic chair and a straw that can carry her back to her parents, but advises her not to listen to her mother, only to her father.
Mariyka sits on the chair and says to the straw to carry her back to her parents' palace. She tells them everything, and her mother advises her to heat up the oven and burn the snakeskin, but the king warns her not to do it, and let his curse end in its own time. Still, Mariyka returns to her husband's palace and, while he goes out to fish, she tosses the snakeskin in the fire. The snake husband smells the burning and returns to the palace. He admonishes his wife for listening to her mother's words, and curses his wife not to give birth to the twin boys she is carrying in her womb, until he touches two fingers on her, for she will have three iron hoops around her body. He then vanishes, taking the castle with him and abandoning her in the meadow.
The princess then begins a journey in search of her husband: she passes by the houses of the Sun and his mother (where she gets a silver hen with chicks), the Stars and their mother (where she gains a self-moving sliver), and the Moon and his mother (where she gains a pair of golden ducks). The Moon knows the location of Mariyka's husband, for he has been there, and gives her directions. Mariyka reaches her husband's new location, where he has taken another wife, a wicked queen. Mariyka stays by the steps of the castle spinning the sliver and interacting with the hen, the chicks and the birds. The queen's maidservants tell the queen, and she wishes to buy the object. Mariyka offers the golden sliver for a night in Hora's chambers. The queen gives Hora's some wine so he falls asleep. Mariyka tries to wake him and begs for him to touch her, but he does not nudge.
The next morning, a servant named Popela, who has eyes in front and in the back of his head and lies on the castle stove, alerts Hora he saw something at night, but will only reveals if he is given a porridge with flour and some mare's milk. Popela then warns him not to drink anything the queen may give him, and only pretend to fall asleep. On the second night, Mariyka trades the hen and chicks and the golden ducks for a night in Hora's room. She begs him to touch her, he wakes up and touches her body, thus allowing her to give birth to their sons, a pair of golden twins. Hora then orders the queen to be drawn and quartered by horses, and he lives with Mariyka and their sons.
Analysis Tale type The tale is classified in the East Slavic Folktale Classification () as 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. The East Slavic Index, last updated in 1979 by folklorist , registers variants of type SUS 433B only in Ukraine. In the same vein, in a 1958 study, professor Nikolay Andreyev noted that the tale type 433B, "The Crab Prince", featured among types that were rare or inexistent in the Russian repertoire. (posthumous translation of the work of Nikolay Andreyev by Barbara Krader)
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 Marriage to a snake is classified by Motif-Index of Folk-Literature as motif B656. Marriage to reptile in human form.
In Balkanic variants of the tale type, the supernatural husband curses his wife not to give birth to their child for a long period of time until she finds him again.
The snake husband Similarly, in his work about animal symbolism in Slavic culture, Russian philologist noted that the snake husband marries the heroine in East Slavic type SUS 433B, although the enchanted husband can appear as another type of animal, such as crawfish, frogs, toads, serpents and worms. Also, the snake itself is imbued with male symbolism, and is connected to phallic symbolism.
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".
In the same vein, in Ukrainian tales of type SUS 433B, the heroine marries a water or aquatic animal, burns his animal skin, causing their separation, and goes in search of him, meeting helpers on the way who give her wondrous objects she uses to bribe her husband's second bride. The heroine's helpers, in the Ukrainian texts, may be the Sun, the Moon, the Wind, the Stars and their respective mothers. These women are the ones to act as mediators between the heroine and the elements.
Variants By Petro Lintur In a Ukrainian tale collected by folklorist Petro Lintur from Khust with the title "Жених-уж и невеста-лягушка" (), a boy begins to behave badly, and his widow mother curses him to become a reptile. He turns into a snake and creeps away to the mountains. Meanwhile, a local king becomes blind, and his only cure is water from a certain fountain. Each of this daughters goes to the fountain to fetch some water in a jug, but a mysterious voice scares the elder two away, while the youngest princess daringly takes some water. The voice tells her she will become the voice's bride, and the princess retorts: "So be it". The third princess brings the water to cure her father, and tells him about the voice. The king advises her to fulfill her promise. Thus, the princess wears a black dress and waits in her room for whoever was at the fountain. A snake slithers into her room, and asks her to turn off the light. She does; the snake takes off the snakeskin to become a golden-haired youth whose hair illuminates the whole room. The youth then asks the princess not to reveal the secret. The next morning, the princess's sisters mock her for having a mysterious husband, and she answers she has a handsome human husband. Later that day, the princess's sisters take the snakeskin and burn it in an oven. When the youth awakes, he cannot find the snakeskin, so he curses his wife not to give birth to any child until he places two fingers on her, then departs to a kingdom beyond the Black Sea. A year, a year and a half passes; the princess, heavily pregnant, wraps iron circles around her belly and begins a long quest. She passes by the hut of the First Wind and its father (who give her a golden hen with golden chicks), the Second Wind and its mother-in-law (who give her a golden yarn and a golden spindle), and the Third Wind and its father. The Third Wind returns from a journey around the world and tells the princess he saw her husband's second wife trying to wash a bloodied shirt in the kingdom beyond the Black Sea, and gives her a ball, advising her to reach the kingdom and trade the items with the woman. Following its orders, the princess reaches the kingdom beyond the Black Sea, and washes the bloodied shirt for her. The princess then trades the golden objects for three nights with her husband; for the first two nights, he lies asleep due to a sleeping draught, but she manages to wake him up on the third night. He wakes up and places his fingers on her; she gives birth to twin boys, one golden-haired, like the father, and another without golden hair. The tale then continues with the adventures of the golden-haired twin, who grows up and marries a frog that turns into a human princess."Сказки Верховины". Ужгород: Закарпатское областное книжно-газетное издательство, 1963. pp. 236-241.
By Mykola Levchenko