Nemtudomka (English: Little I Don't Know) is a Hungarian fairy tale, first published in the mid-19th century by author . 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 are forced to flee for their lives due to the boy's own mother, and reach another kingdom, where the boy adopts another identity by only uttering the words "Nem tudom" ("I don't know").
Although it differs from variants wherein a hero acquires golden hair, its starting sequence (persecution by the hero's own mother) is considered by scholarship as an alternate opening to the same tale type.
Sources The tale was first published by János Erdélyi in the mid-19th century, in his book Magyar Népmesék ("Hungarian Folktales"), in Hungarian. It was later republished by with the same title (Nemtudomka), albeit with textual differences, and translated into German as Weissnitle by author .
Summary The wife of a king in Scythia gives birth to a prince named Dániel, and, at the same time, a foal is born in the stables. The king presents Dániel with the foal, and they become friends. One day, however, one of the king's generals becomes the queen's lover, and they plan to kill the prince since he is too clever and may reveal their affair. First, they place a dagger in his bed, so it can pierce his heart in his sleep; next, the queen bakes him sweets laced with poison. With the horse's warnings, Dániel avoids both attempts. The general notices the horse is the one helping the prince, and tells the queen to feign illness and ask for the foal's liver as cure after the king comes home from war. When the king returns, the queen asks for the foal's liver, and the king tells Dániel they will kill his pet foal. The prince then asks his father to saddle his horse so he can run circles around the castle for three laps, then toast to their health. The king indulges his son one last time; Dániel makes a toast to the king, the queen, and the treasonous general, then rides away to London, England, while the king deals with the traitorous queen and her paramour.
Back to Dániel, the horse advises him to always answer "Nem tudom". Dániel goes to find work in the castle, and is hired as a cook's assistant. However, he is a disaster at the kitchen, and is given to the royal gardener as his assistant. One day, the people go to church, and Dániel, in his new identity of Nemtudomka, goes to meet his horse, which gives him a bridle to summon him. The next Sunday, everyone at the castle goes to mass, save for the princess, who stays at the castle. Thinking no one is at the castle, Nemtudomka summons his horse, which furnishes him with copper-coloured garments so he can ride the horse around the garden and trample the flowers - an event witnessed by the youngest princess. After the royal family and the staff return from church, the gardener complains to Nemtudomka and threatens to beat him to discipline him, but the princess intervenes on the latter's behalf. This repeats again for the next two Sundays, with Nemtudomka in silver and golden garments.
Some time later, the king decides to marry his three daughters: the elder two choose princes and the youngest Nemtudomka, and they move out to a shabby hut just outside the palace. Later, Nemtudomka's brothers-in-law go on a hunt and invite Nemtudomka to join them. Although he is given a lame horse at first, he dismisses the mount and summons his loyal horse to run ahead of his brothers-in-law: in the first hunt, he agrees to share the golden mallard in exchange for their rings; in the second hunt, he agrees to give them the golden deer if they allow to be branded on their foreheads with a signet ring; in the third hunt, he agrees to share with them the golden game, if they allow to be branded with a gallows on their backs.
Later, Nemtudomka's horse gives him three magical bags (one full of unlimited ammo, another with infinite food and the third able to summon an army), since his father-in-law's kingdom will soon enter a war against Kukoricza Marczi. Nemtudomka and his brothers-in-law are called to defend the kingdom, but only Nemtudomka, wearing his royal garments, turns the tide of battle, but is injured in the leg during a fight. The king, his father-in-law, sees the knight's injury and bandages with his scarf, then the knight retreats to parts unknown. At the end of the tale, the king summons the kingdom for a feast at the castle, where Nemtudomka unmasks the boastful brothers-in-law due to their rings and marks on their bodies, and tells the king he is prince Dániel.ERDÉLYI JÁNOS, Magyar népmesék, Pest, 1855
Analysis Tale type The Hungarian Folktale Catalogue (MNK) registers type AaTh 532 as Nemtudomka (German: Klein Weißnicht; English: "Little Don't Know"): the hero is threatened by his mother and her lover (or by a stepmother) and escapes with his horse to another kingdom, where is advised to always answer "Nem tudom" (Hungarian for "I don't know").Dömötör Ákos (szerk.). Magyar népmesekatalógus 2. Budapest, MTA Néprajzi Kutató Csoport, 1988. A magyar tündérmesék katalógusa (AaTh 300-749). p. 306.
Folklorist Stith Thompson questioned the existence of type AT 532 in the international index as an independent tale type, since, barring a different introduction, its main narrative becomes "the same as in the Goldener tale [tale type 314]". This prompted him to suppose the tale type was a "variety" of "Goldener". In the same vein, the Hungarian Folktale Catalogue (MNK) also took notice of the great similarity between types 532 and 314, which difficulted a specific classification into one or the other. In addition, Hungarian scholar , in Magyar Néprajzi Lexikon ("Hungarian Ethnographic Dictionary"), stated that the "Nemtudomka" story was "the Eastern European" redaction of tale type 314, "The Golden-Haired Gardener", and most of the national indexes did not consider type 532 as an independent type.
Furthermore, German folklorist Hans-Jörg Uther, in his 2004 revision of the international tale type index (henceforth, ATU), subsumed type AaTh 532 under a new tale type, ATU 314, "Goldener", due to "its similar structure and content".
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.
Origin Hungarian linguist has noticed that the hero's name in Hungarian, "Nemtudomka", corresponds with the Russian-language "Neznaiko" (both meaning "I don't know"). This great similarity in names, he supposed, indicates a connection between the tales, but he could not ascertain whether the tales have originated from the Russians or passed into Russia from Hungary. Linda Dégh stated that the tale Nemtudomka was "popular" in Hungary, and suggested an origin in Eastern Europe.
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.
The suitor selection test The motif of the princess throwing an apple to her suitor is indexed as motif H316, "Suitor test: apple thrown indicates princess' choice (often golden apple)". According to mythologist Yuri Berezkin and other Russian researchers, the motif is "popular" in Iran, and is also attested "in Central Europe, the Balkans, the Caucasus, the Near East, and Central Asia".
According to Turkologist , types ATU 314 and ATU 502 contain this motif: the princess chooses her own husband (of lowly appearance) in a gathering of potential suitors, by giving him an object (e.g., an apple). However, he also remarks that the motif is "spread in folk literature" and may appear in other tale types.Reichl, Karl. Turkic Oral Epic Poetry: Traditions, Forms, Poetic Structure. Routledge Revivals. Routledge. 1992. p. 136. .
Germanist , in Enzyklopädie des Märchens, argued that Subtype 2 (see above) represented the oldest form of the Goldener narrative, since the golden apple motif in the suitor selection roughly appears in the geographic distribution of the same subtype.Dammann, Günter. "Goldener (AaTh 314)" [Goldener (ATU 314)]. 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. 1379-1380. https://www-degruyter-com.wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org/database/EMO/entry/emo.5.211/html. Accessed 2023-06-22.
The gardener hero