The Donkey's Head (Turkish: Eşek-Kafası) is a Turkish folktale collected by Turkish folklorist Pertev Naili Boratav from his mother. The tale is related to the international cycle of the Animal as Bridegroom or The Search for the Lost Husband, in that a human princess marries a supernatural or enchanted husband in animal form, breaks his trust and he disappears, having to search for him. Specifically, the tale belongs to a subtype of the cycle, classified in the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as tale type ATU 425D, "The Vanished Husband".
Source Boratav collected the tale from his own mother, Sidika Boratav, who first heard the story in Gemlik, when she was 12 years old.Стеблева, Ия Васильевна. Турецкие сказки. Сост., пер. с турецк., вступит. статья и примеч. И.В. Стеблевой. Мoskva: Наука, 1986. p. 379 (source for tale nr. 17). The tale was translated to German as Der Eselskopf ("The Donkey's Head") and to Russian as "Ослиная голова" ("Donkey's Head").Стеблева, Ия Васильевна. Турецкие сказки. Сост., пер. с турецк., вступит. статья и примеч. И.В. Стеблевой. Мoskva: Наука, 1986. pp. 48-54 (Russian translation).
Summary An old couple have no sons. One day, the man is ploughing the fields and mutters to himself that Allah did not give him sons. Suddenly, a black man (or dervish) appears to him and gives him an apple, for the man to eat half and his wife to eat the other half. The man doubts the effectiveness of the apple and eats it whole. Nine months later, a donkey's head bursts out of his body. The man digs up a hole, buries the donkey's head, and returns home. Soon after, they hear the donkey's head voice shouting for them. The couple decide to take the creature, wrap it and throw it in the sea. The donkey's head survives and the couple, resigning themselves, raise it as their son.
Some twenty years later, the donkey's head tells them he wants to marry the padishah's daughter. The donkey's head magically produces a lavish carriage to take his mother to the padishah to ask for her hand in marriage in her son's stead. The padishah agrees to it, but orders first a palace to be built next to his. The donkey's head also creates the palace, and sets a condition for his bride: she is to come alone. The padishah's daughter goes to the bridegroom's palace and enters a room. She sees a tray nearby with a cloth on it. The girl takes off the cloth and sees the donkey's head. The creature falls on the ground and becomes a handsome man. He tells his bride not to reveal the secret to anyone, not even the slaves that serve their palace. One day, however, the padishah's daughter's nanny spies on her ward and sees the donkey's head. She screams. The donkey's head laments the fact, and tells his wife that he will leave, then vanishes. The padishah's daughter grieves for her lost husband and asks her father to build a bath house for her, where everyone can take a bath, in exchange for telling their stories.
One day, a boy named Keloglan asks his mother to go to the bathhouse. Keloglan goes to the river and dozes off. By moonlight, he wakes up and thinks it is daylight, then sees a strange sight unfold before him: two men come with forty mules, one chops firewood and the other loads the firewood on the mules. Keloglan follows the mules and reaches an underground chamber. The mules disappear and boiling cauldrons appear. Keloglan wanders a bit more and enters another room: donkey's head comes, turns into a man and sits at a table; a dove flies in, takes a bath and becomes a maiden; the maiden tries to comfort the man, but he rebuffs her; the maiden turns back into a dove and flies away. Keloglan returns to his mother and suggests they tell the padishah's daughter in the bath house. The padishah's daughter listens to the boy's tale and asks to be taken there.
The padishah's daughter follows the same trail and reaches the underground chamber. She hides in a closet and sees donkey's head and the dove come to the room. After the dove maiden leaves, donkey's head notices his human wife's presence and tells her the daughter of the padishah of the peris made him her prisoner. Donkey's head tells his wife to build a large cage with outward spikes: the couple is to enter it, so that the daughter of the padishah of the peris and her flying army will try to kill them, but will instead destroy themselves in the spikes. It happens thus; donkey's head is freed from his captor, and returns with his human wife to her kingdom.Стеблева, Ия Васильевна. Турецкие сказки. Сост., пер. с турецк., вступит. статья и примеч. И.В. Стеблевой. Мoskva: Наука, 1986. pp. 48-54 (Russian translation), 379 (source for tale nr. 17).
Analysis Tale type Boratav classified the tale as types AT 425A and AT 425D.Стеблева, Ия Васильевна. Турецкие сказки. Сост., пер. с турецк., вступит. статья и примеч. И.В. Стеблевой. Мoskva: Наука, 1986. p. 392 (classification for tale nr. 17). The tale is related to the cycle of the Animal as Bridegroom or the Search for the Lost Husband, and classified in the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as type ATU 425D, "The Vanished Husband". This type refers to a human girl marrying a supernatural husband in animal form; she betrays his secret and he disappears. In order to find him, she builds an inn, hospital or bath house to listen to passers-by's stories. One day, she listens to a person's narration about a flock of birds transforming into men in a place somewhere. The heroine recognizes it is about her husband and asks to be taken there.Angelopoulou, Anna; Broskou, Aigle. "ΕΠΕΞΕΡΓΑΣΙΑ ΠΑΡΑΜΥΘΙΑΚΩΝ ΤΥΠΩΝ ΚΑΙ ΠΑΡΑΛΛΑΓΩΝ AT 300-499". Tome B: AT 400-499. Athens, Greece: ΚΕΝΤΡΟ ΝΕΟΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΩΝ ΕΡΕΥΝΩΝ Ε.Ι.Ε. 1999. pp. 772-774.Ashliman, D. L. A Guide to Folktales in the English Language: Based on the Aarne-Thompson Classification System. Bibliographies and Indexes in World Literature, vol. 11. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1987. p. 89. .
In the Typen türkischer Volksmärchen ("Turkish Folktale Catalogue"), by Wolfram Eberhard and Pertev Naili Boratav, both scholars catalogued a similar tale type to ATU 425D, indexed as TTV, EB, or EbBo 92, "Der Affenmann" ("The Monkey Husband"). In this tale, a supernatural husband in simian form makes a princess laugh and marries her; the heroine betrays his secret and he disappears; the heroine then asks her father to build a bath house, where people can bath for free; one day, a Keloglan and his mother visit the princess's bath house and tell her about a lovelorn man somewhere, whom the princess recognizes as his husband and asks to be taken there. Boratav and Eberhard also noted that Turkish type TTV 92 was also "closely linked" to type TTV 98, "Der Pferdemann" ("The Horse Husband"), since the motifs of the open bath house and the Keloglan appear in some variants of the latter. In the same vein, Swedish scholar noted that, in Turkish tales, the person that usually leads the heroine to her lost husband is the Keloglan.
Motifs According to Georgios A. Megas, the main motif of the tale type is H11.1.1, "Recognition at inn [hospital, etc.], where all must tell their life histories".Megas, Geōrgios A. Folktales of Greece. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1970. p. 226.Aarne, Antti; Thompson, Stith. The types of the folktale: a classification and bibliography. Third Printing. Folklore Fellows Communications FFC no. 184. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1973 . p. 143. In the same vein, Swedish scholar identified among the "motifs characteristic of subtype D" the bath-house, the inn, or places where the heroine goes to hear stories or news about her husband.
Variants Turkey Tales with donkey's head The Donkey's Head and the Padishah's Daughter In a Turkish tale collected in Gaziantep with the title Eşekbaşı ile Padişah Kızı ("The Donkey's Head and the Padishah's Daughter"), an old couple are childless, and the wife wishes so ardently to have one, so she prays to Allah for one, even if he is a donkey's head. In answer to her prayer, she becomes pregnant and gives birth to a donkey's head as a son. His mother wails due to the creature she gave birth to, and the midwives promise to get rid of him. They try to lift him up, but he does not budge, and settles under the table. Years later, the donkey's head grows up and asks his mother to marry him off. The woman questions who would marry one such as him, and he mentions he wants the local padishah's youngest daughter as his bride. She is startled, and he advises her not to mention his name. The old woman goes to the padishah and asks for the hand of the youngest daughter. The padishah requests some suitor's tasks first, with her head on the line if she fails: to fill the palace cisterns, one with oil and the other with honey, and to provide forty camel loads of gold, diamonds, pearls, and other unparalleled treasures. The old woman returns home and explains the padishah's requests to the donkey's head, who sends his mother ahead of him to the padishah's palace and worry about nothing. The old woman goes to the palace and finds a litany of camels carrying loads of treasure, led by a white rooster singing poems, the cisterns are filled with oil and honey, and a palace has materialized next to the padishah's. The old woman is relieved her head is saved, and returns home to talk to her donkey's head son.
The wedding is arranged, and the old woman asks the donkey's head whether he has any conditions for the wedding: he tells her he is not to be seen until the wedding day, and she must hide him under a veil and place him under the bed. They celebrate the wedding, and the princess is left alone in the chambers. She finds the furniture, the walls and the door are all laughing and producing pearls and coral with their laughter. Suddenly, a handsome youth enters. He says he will come at night, but depart at the morning prayer, so she must keep the secret, for, if she tells anyone anything, she will not be able to find him even if she wears down iron sandals and an iron cane. In the morning, he leaves her. Her family pesters her with questions about her husband's appearance, but she keeps quiet. Her husband comes at night and leaves at dawn, and her relatives keep asking her questions about him. One day, she cannot stand it anymore and reveals it. She waits for him at night, but he does not come. She cries nonstop for him and becomes weaker with the passing of the days. Her parents worry for her condition. The princess decides to take action and asks her father for iron shoes and an iron staff, for she will search for her husband. Despite their protests, they give her the iron apparel and she begins a journey. She passes by cities and cities, but does not find any clue. She then decides to sell her ring and build a bathhouse for the people, so strangers can come and tell her their troubles.