Three Princesses () is a Hungarian fairy tale collected by author and published in 1859. It is classified in the Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as tale type ATU 301, "The Three Stolen Princesses". This type refers to a set of stories where three heroes (or three brothers) approach a cave or hollow and send one of them down to rescue three captured princesses. According to Hungarian scholarship, in some of the Hungarian variants of the tale type, the three heroic brothers are born at different times of the day, with the one born in the morning the true hero of the tale.
Summary In this tale, a king has three daughters that he has never seen daylight. One day, the elder princess, now eighteen years old, approaches her father and asks to be allowed to stroll in the garden. Despite some reluctance, the king indulges her. However, as soon as the princess leaves the castle, a dragon comes out of the water and kidnaps her. Next, the middle princess, already eighteen, asks her father to be allowed the same whim. Again, the middle princess is taken by the dragon. Lastly, the youngest princess follows her elder sisters in their fate.
The king announces that whoever locate his daughters shall have half of the kingdom. An old woman who has three sons, Estve ("Night"), Éjfél ("Midnight") and Hajnal ("Dawn"), thinks to herself that her sons could know something, and welcomes first Estve, then Éjfél, and lastly Hajnal when each arrive to her house. The trio are surprised at each other's presence there, but their mother assures they are brothers, and asks them if they saw the princesses. The elder two saw nothing, but Dawn says he saw them and can even rescue them. Hajnal asks his mother to go to king and convince him to construct a large chain, which the youth intends to use to reach the princesses in their underground prison.
Hajnal and his brothers carry the chain to the forest, tie it into a tree, and try to descend the hole: Estve and Éjfél try to climb down, but soon come back, leaving their brother Hajnal the one to venture forth. He climbs down the chain and arrives at a palace of copper, where the first princess is being kept by the dragon. The princess is surprised at his presence there, and warns him about her dragon captor, who drinks some liquid and eats loaves of bread to become strong. Hajnal eats the same portions as the dragon and waits for him. The six-headed dragon appears to fight Hajnal, but he is defeated and all of his heads are cut off. The princess thanks Hajnal and says he can use a copper rod to turn the castle into a copper apple.
Hajnal soon arrives at a second palace, of silver, where another princess is being kept by another dragon which he also kills, and at last to a golden palace, where the last princess is being kept prisoner by a twelve-headed dragon. Hanjal eats the same food as before and kills each dragon, then converts the silver castle into a silver apple with a silver rod and the golden palace into a golden apple with a golden rod. He takes the princesses and the castles with him to the chain and fences them up. On the surface, Hajnal drops the three apples near the king's palace, restoring them to their original form, to the king's surprise. Hajnal and his brothers marry the princesses.György Gaal. Gaal György magyar népmese-gyujteménye (3. kötet). Pest: Emich Gusztáv könyvnyomdája. 1859. pp. 46–51 (text for tale nr. 30).
Analysis Tale type Elisabeth Rona-Sklárek commented that the tale about a youth who rescues three maidens from the underground prison was in Hungary.Róna-Sklarek, Elisabet. Ungarische Volksmärchen. Neue Folge. Leipzig: Dieterich 1909. p. 294. 20th century Hungarian scholar, found 145 variants of the tale type, divided into 6 redactions.Kiss, Gabriella. "Hungarian Redactions of the Tale Type 301". In: Acta Ethnographica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 17 (1968): 353–356. Hungarian-American Linda Dégh locates 7 redactions of the tale type in Hungary: 5 she considers to be "distinctively Hungarian", 1 "ethnic Romanian" and another from the South Slavics.Dégh, Linda. Narratives in Society: A Performer-Centered Study of Narration. FF Communications 255. Pieksämäki: Finnish Academy of Science and Letters, 1995. p. 41.
One of the Hungarian redactions, classified as 301A II* by Kovács with the name ,Kiss, Gabriella. "A 301-es mesetípus magyar redakciói. (Csonkatehénfia)". In: Ethnographia. LXX. évf. (1959) 1–3. pp. 254–255. or ,Dömötör Ákos (szerk.). Magyar népmesekatalógus 2. Budapest, MTA Néprajzi Kutató Csoport, 1988. A magyar tündérmesék katalógusa (AaTh 300–749). p. 455. concerns three heroic brothers born on the same day, at different times.Kiss, Gabriella. "Hungarian Redactions of the Tale Type 301". In: Acta Ethnographica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 17 (1968): 355. Nine variants of this type were found in Hungarian sources (as of the 1960s), and Akos Dömötor's updated version of the catalogue (published in 1988) registers 11 in total.Dömötör Ákos (szerk.). Magyar népmesekatalógus 2. Budapest, MTA Néprajzi Kutató Csoport, 1988. A magyar tündérmesék katalógusa (AaTh 300–749). pp. 64–65. These tales were still classified in the international index as AaTh 301ACsallány Géza. "Üzenetküldés motívuma népmeséinkben. In: A Jósa. András Múzeum Évkönyve, IV—V. Nyíregyháza, 1964. p. 109 and footnote nr. 18. and, after 2004, as tale type ATU 301.
According to Hungarian professor Ákos Dömötör, in the notes to the tale type in the Hungarian National Catalogue of Folktales (MNK), the motif of three brothers' birth at times of the day is dated to the early-19th century, and appears as a "regional" element in tales from the northern and northeastern part of the Hungarian-speaking areas. It also appears in Romania.Dömötör Ákos (szerk.). Magyar népmesekatalógus 2. Budapest, MTA Néprajzi Kutató Csoport, 1988. A magyar tündérmesék katalógusa (AaTh 300–749). pp. 64–65.
Variants Hungary Night, Midnight and Dawn (Berze Nagy) In the Hungarian tale , collected by folklorist János Berze Nagy. Népmesék Heves- és Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok-megyébol (Népköltési gyüjtemény 9. kötet). Budapest: Az Athenaeum Részvény-Társulát Tulajdona. 1907. pp. 1–15. and translated as , a childless couple pray for a son. An old lady instructs the wife to eat however many beans she can find in her house. The woman finds three beans and eats them, giving birth to three boys: one at night, the second at midnight and the third at the break of dawn. The three brothers grow up very quickly and seek a job opportunity with the king, who sends them to rescue his three daughters. When the brothers camp out in the woods, a small creature defeats the two older brothers but is defeated by Daybreak. The usual story follows: Daybreak rescues the three princesses, is betrayed by his brothers, escapes to the upper world on the back of an eagle. At the end of the tale, he forgives his older brothers.Róna-Sklarek, Elisabet. Ungarische Volksmärchen. Neue Folge. Leipzig: Dieterich 1909. pp. 186–198.
Dawn, Night and Midnight (Mailand) In the tale , collected by ethnographer from Szováta, Székely, an old woman gives birth to three boys, each named after the time of the day they were born. When they are of age, the king orders the youths to rescue his three daughters, otherwise they may lose their heads. The three brothers traverse a silver forest and a diamond forest until they reach a hole in the ground. The two brothers, with the help of a gypsy boy, begin to descend but feel afraid and climb back. Hajnal descends the rope and reaches three castles: the first guarded by an iron gate and two lions; the second by a stone walls and a pair of bears, and the third made entirely of marble and guarded by two elephants. After he is abandoned by his brothers and a gypsy boy, Hajnal has further adventures in the underworld and gains a three-legged horse. With the horse, he manages to reach the surface and the king's city.Oszkár Mailand. Székelyföldi gyüjtés (Népköltési gyüjtemény 7. kötet). Budapest: Az Athenaeum Részv.-Társulat Tulajdona. 1905. pp. 489–521 and 573.
Little Dawn In a variant collected by Arnold Ipolyi with the title , a woman with no sons prays to God to have one. One night, she awakes and heats up the oven. A son is born at night: Este, who just as he appears, asks for some clothing to leave. His mother laments his departure. She awakes again at midnight, lights up a fire and another youth is born: Éjfél. He also leaves home. Finally, she awakes at dawn, lights the fire and a boy is born: Hajnalka. Just as they leave, they return the next day. Some time later, Hajnalka goes to the city and asks his mother why the kingdom seems to be grieving. His mother says it is because three dragons captured the princesses. Hajnalka states he and his brothers shall rescue them and orders the king for a great chain to be built, so that he can use it to reach , the realm of the dragons, located in an upper realm. Hajnalka climbs up th chain, rescues the three princesses on castles that gyrate on bird's feet (the copper castle on duck's, the silver palace on goose's and the golden one on crane's). With a magical wand, the youth transforms the palaces into small apples, gets the dragon's tongues, and depart with the princesses. On their way down, a "winged man" named Kalekaftor appears, takes the princesses (and the credit for their release) and abandons Hajnalka to his fate. Still in , Hajnalka shields a nest of griffin chicks from "sulphur rain" and their grateful father takes him to the human world. Now on earth, Kalefaktor insists to be married to the youngest, who tries to delay the marriage by demanding the items she had in the golden castle in . Hajnalka produces the items the princess asked for and marries her. The tale continues on as his brothers conspire to cut his legs and abandon him in the forest.Arnold Ipolyi. Ipolyi Arnold népmesegyüjteménye (Népköltési gyüjtemény 13. kötet). Budapest: Az Athenaeum Részvénytársualt Tulajdona. 1914. pp. 34–48. Arnold Ipolyi noted that the usual location of the princesses' captivity is an underworld realm, even in a mountain, but not the sky.Arnold Ipolyi. Ipolyi Arnold népmesegyüjteménye (Népköltési gyüjtemény 13. kötet). Budapest: Az Athenaeum Részvénytársualt Tulajdona. 1914. pp. 509–510.
The Magic Story of Dawn