The Horse of the Cloud and the Wind () is an Iranian folktale first published by Iranian scholar . 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 stepmother, 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 stepmother) is considered by scholarship as an alternate opening to the same tale type.
Sources According to German professor Ulrich Marzolph, the tale was sourced from Khorasan.Marzolph, Ulrich. https://opendata.uni-halle.de/handle/1981185920/114208 Typologie des persischen Volksmärchens]. Beirut: Orient-Inst. der Deutschen Morgenländischen Ges.; Wiesbaden: Steiner [in Komm.], 1984. p. 69 (entry nr. 5).
Summary In a land, a king rules over the divs, and has a son. He also has a wonderful horse (called "رخش" in the original text) that goes to foal somewhere out of sight. The div prince ("Diovzadeh") goes to investigate and follows the mare to a well. As soon as the animal is ready to release its young into the well, the prince rescues the colt and takes it with him back home to raise. Meanwhile, the wife of the div king dies and he remarries. One time, when the king is away, the new queen plots with the prayer writer how to kill the prince. They conspire to place some snakes in a jug of water and give the prince very salty food, which would cause him to feel thirsty and drink from the jug. leading to the snakes biting and killing him. The horse warns the div prince about the trap and the youth dunks the water in another vessel to avoid the snakes.
The next time, the queen finds another accomplice, who advises her to dig up a well, fill it with blades and spears, then covers it with a rug for the prince to sit on and fall to his death. Again, the horse warns the prince about. Failing both times, the queen consults with her accomplice, who advises her to feign illness by smearing her face with turmeric, place some breakable bread under her body to pretend it is the sound of her bones breaking, and ask for the flesh of the horse as remedy. The next day, the div prince goes to talk with his horse, and the animal says the queen wants to kill it, and the prince's mullah is in on the plan. The horse will neigh three times, after the third neigh they will kill him.
The prince goes to school, when the hears the horse's three whinnies. He hits the mullah, who wanted to retain at school, and rushes to aid his horse. He reaches his father's courtyard and asks for a ride on the horse before it is killed, but with his stepmother as his company. The div king allows it, and the prince climbs on the horse, the queen after him. Suddenly, the horse begins to soar, and lets the queen fall from its back to her death, while the equine takes the div prince to another country. When the horse lands, the div prince buys a sheep from a nearby shepherd, kills it and wears it skin on his head. The horse gives some of the hairs of its wings to the prince and tells him he has but to burn the hairs and the animal will come at once, then departs.
The div prince, in his new disguise, wanders off until he reaches the garden of a nearby king, and spies on the three princesses frolicking in the garden, falling in love with the youngest of them. He summons his horse and asks it to provide him with clothes and appearance "of a human" ("زمینیها", in the original). It happens thus, and the div prince is seen by the human princess, who falls in love with him. The following week, the local king gives three apples to his daughters for them to choose their husbands by throwing it: the elder sister throws her to the son of the right hand minister, the middle one to the son of the minister of the left hand, and the youngest to the div prince, in his lowly disguise. The king dislikes his cadette's choice and organizes a humble wedding for her.
Some time later, the king orders his sons-in-law to go hunting, giving fine stallions to the first two sons-in-law and a lame mount to the lowly one. After his brothers-in-law depart, the div prince summons his horse and both depart to the wilderness to hunt. The two brothers-in-law cannot find any good game, until they spot the prince on the horse, whom they do not recognize. The duo ask for some of the stranger's game, which he agrees to lend, in exchange for branding them. A deal is made, and the brothers-in-law bring some game home for the princesses to cook for the king. The dishes prepared by the elder princesses are tasteless, while the youngest's is delicious.
The next morning, a servant reports to the king a palace materialized near the royal palace, more beautiful than the king's. Its occupant, who is the div prince under another disguise appears and says he is looking for his two runaway slaves, branded with his seal. The king orders a search through the whole kingdom for the slaves, and orders for everyone to show their bodies. Finally, it is time for the king's two sons-in-law, who have the brands on their bodies. The king, disappointed in them, strips them of their inheritance. The div prince resumes his true form with the help of the horse, gives his jewels to his father-in-law and inherits the kingdom.درويشيان، علي اشرف. فرهنگ افسانه هاي مردم ايران. Vol. 1. Intishārāt-i Ānzān, 1998. pp. 187-190 (text), 190 (source) (In Persian).
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
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.
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 In Iranian tales about the sea-horse, the princess throws an apple to her suitor - a motif 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". In the same vein, professor noted that the motif of the princess throwing an item to choose her husband is "widespread" ("распространение", in the original) in tales from the Iranian peoples.Персидские народные сказки. Сост. М.-Н. О. Османов, предисл. Д. С. Комиссарова. М., Главная редакция восточной литературы издательства «Наука», 1987. p. 489.