The Gypsy Tsaritsa () is a Serbian folktale published in the early 20th century. It is classified as tale type ATU 408, "The Love for Three Oranges", of the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index. As with The Three Oranges, the tale deals with a prince's search for a bride that lives inside a fruit, who is replaced by a false bride and goes through a cycle of incarnations, until she regains physical form again.
Source According to Serbian scholarship, the tale was first collected a teacher named Nikola Jakševac, from a student named Jovan Đorđević, in Pirot, East Serbia, and published by scholar Veselin Čajkanović.
Summary An old woman goes to draw water from a fountain, when the prince throws a pebble at the woman, breaking her jars. The woman then curses the prince to find a maiden from anywhere, and for him to find a bride with the ala. The prince then decides to look for his bride. He goes to the house of an ala and asks if she has such a girl. The ala says she has no girls, but forty sons that will soon come to devour him, so she hides him in her hut by transforming him into a broom. When her sons come home, they sense a human smell, but the ala dismisses it. After they sleep, the ala changes the prince back to human form and sends him to another ala, her sister, who might help him. The prince reaches the house of a second ala, asking her about any daughter she may have; the ala answers she has no daughters, only sons, and all fifty of them will come soon to devour him, so she turns the human prince into a broom, which she will throw among the apple trees.
The next morning, while her sons are asleep, the ala turns the prince back to human form and tells him to pluck however many apples he can carry in his hands. The prince plucks three apples, and is warned to open them near water. The prince leaves the ala's house and cuts open the first apple near water: a maiden appears and asks for water; the prince goes to give her some water, but she dies. The same thing happens to a second maiden from the second apple. The prince then enters the water and cuts open the last fruit, releasing another maiden, to whom he gives water and she survives. The prince falls in love with the third maiden and leaves her up a tree, while he goes to bring a wedding retinue to welcome her. After the prince goes away, there are some grain harvesters nearby, and a gypsy woman appears, carrying jugs to draw water. When the gypsy woman goes to draw water, she sees the apple maiden reflection in the water and believes it is her own, then declares she is too beautiful to work, and stops her task. Some time later, the harvesters return to work and the gypsy woman goes to draw water again, and again sees the maiden's reflection, then declares she is too beautiful to work. The apple maiden, from up the tree, explains the reflection is hers, not the gypsy's, and beckons her to draw some water for the harvesters. The gypsy girl, then, spots the maiden up the tree and calls for her to come down. The apple maiden does and the gypsy woman shoves her down in water, where she drowns, steals her clothes and takes her place atop a tree.
However, a spark comes out of the apple maiden's body when she hits the water, and it turns into a falcon. The gypsy takes the apple maiden's place atop the tree, having learned that her victim was waiting for the prince. The prince returns and notices the girl's appearance has changed to a darker colour, and she blames the heat. The prince believes the story and marries her. Some time later, a falcon appears in the royal gardens and asks the gardener about the prince and gypsy, uttering her wishes for him to sleep well and cursing the gypsy with pus and blood and for the tree it is perching on to dry and rot. It keeps happening whenever the falcon returns to the garden. The prince asks the gardener and is told the entire garden is almost with no trees, so he orders the rotten trees to be cut down and for tar to be smeared in the remaining ones. When the falcon returns, its talons are glued to the tar, and the prince takes the bird inside. When the prince leaves for a hunt, the gypsy bride, who knows the falcon is the apple maiden's new form, wrings the bird's neck and kills it; some blood drips on the floor, a spark comes out of the bird's body and turns into the apple maiden, who quickly hides inside a wardrobe without the gypsy noticing her.
Whenever food is brought to the king, the apple maiden comes out of the wardrobe to eat the rest of the food and to kiss the prince. One day, the gypsy bride discovers her, tears out her eyes to lock them in a box, then throws the apple maiden through a window. An old man wanders near the castle and the maiden asks him to take her in. The old man shelters the girl in his house, where she produces pearls with her tears. Some time later, the old man goes to the market with the pearls, which he wants to sell for eyes. The gypsy bride learns of the seller and trades the apple maiden's eyes for the pearls. The apple maiden regains her sight when she puts on her eyes.
Later, the prince sends horses for the people to keep and groom, and the old man is given one. At the old man's house, the horse follows after the apple maiden, who produces grass wherever she steps on. The horse eats so much grass it becomes fat. When it is time to retrieve the animal, the prince finds it at the old man's house, where he spots the apple maiden producing grass with her every step. The maiden reveals the gypsy's deceit to him. The prince then executes the gypsy by burning and marries the apple maiden.
Analysis Tale type The tale is classified in the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as tale type ATU 408, "The Three Oranges".Aarne, Antti; Thompson, Stith. The types of the folktale: a classification and bibliography. Folklore Fellows Communications FFC no. 184. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1961. pp. 135-137. In an article in Enzyklopädie des Märchens, scholar Christine Shojaei Kawan separated the tale type into six sections, and stated that parts 3 to 5 represented the "core" of the story:
(1) A prince is cursed by an old woman to seek the fruit princess; (2) The prince finds helpers that guide him to the princess's location; (3) The prince finds the fruits (usually three), releases the maidens inside, but only the third survives; (4) The prince leaves the princess up a tree near a spring or stream, and a slave or servant sees the princess's reflection in the water; (5) The slave or servant replaces the princess (transformation sequence); (6) The fruit princess and the prince reunite, and the false bride is punished.
Motifs The maiden's appearance According to the tale description in the international index, the maiden may appear out of the titular citrus fruits, like oranges and lemons. However, she may also come out of pomegranates or other species of fruits, and even eggs.Aarne, Antti; Thompson, Stith. The types of the folktale: a classification and bibliography. Folklore Fellows Communications FFC no. 184. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1961. p. 135. Likewise, Serbian scholarship notices that the heroine can come out of apples or eggs, but "in most tales" she appears from lemons and oranges. According to Walter Anderson's unpublished manuscript, variants with eggs instead of fruits appear in Southeastern Europe.Ranke, Kurt. Folktales of Germany. Routledge & K. Paul. 1966. p. 209. . In addition, Christine Shojaei-Kawan located the motif of the heroine emerging from the eggs in Slavic texts.
The transformations and the false bride The tale type is characterized by the substitution of the fairy wife for a false bride. The usual occurrence is when the false bride (a witch or a slave) sticks a magical pin into the maiden's head or hair and she becomes a dove. In some tales, the fruit maiden regains her human form and must bribe the false bride for three nights with her beloved.Gulyás Judit (2010). "Henszlmann Imre bírálata Arany János Rózsa és Ibolya című művéről". In: Balogh Balázs (főszerk). Ethno-Lore XXVII. Az MTA Neprajzi Kutatóintezetenek évkönyve. Budapest, MTA Neprajzi Kutatóintezete (Sajtó aatt). pp. 250-253.
In other variants, the maiden goes through a series of transformations after her liberation from the fruit and regains a physical body. In that regard, according to Christine Shojaei-Kawan's article, Christine Goldberg divided the tale type into two forms. In the first subtype, indexed as AaTh 408A, the fruit maiden suffers the cycle of metamorphosis (fish-tree-human) - a motif Goldberg locates "from the Middle East to Italy and France"Goldberg, Christine. "Imagery and Cohesion in the Tale of the Three Oranges (AT 408)". In: Folk-Narrative and World View. Vortage des 10. Kongresses der Internationalen Gesellschaft fur Volkserzahlungsforschung (ISFNR) - Innsbruck 1992. I. Schneider and P. Streng (ed.). Vol. I, 1996. p. 211. (especifically, it appears in Greece and Eastern Europe). In the second subtype, AaTh 408B, the girl is transformed into a dove by the needle.Shojaei-Kawan, Christine (2004). "Reflections on International Narrative Research on the Example of the Tale of the Three Oranges (AT 408)". In: Folklore (Electronic Journal of Folklore), XXVII, p. 35.
Separated from her husband, she goes to the palace (alone or with other maidens) to tell tales to the king. She shares her story with the audience and is recognized by him.Angelopoulos, Anna and Kaplanoglou, Marianthi. "Greek Magic Tales: aspects of research in Folklore Studies and Anthropology". In: FF Network. 2013; Vol. 43. p. 15.
Variants The Tsar's Son and the Golden Apple