Enchanted Balaur (Romanian: Balaurul fermecat) is a Romanian fairy tale collected by author T. Popovic and published in 1908. It is related to the international cycle of the Animal as Bridegroom or The Search for the Lost Husband: a human maiden marries an animal that is a prince in disguise, breaks a taboo and loses him, and she has to seek him out.
The story shares motifs with other tales of the region, like Serbian Again, The Snake Bridegroom, and Hungarian The Serpent Prince: the heroine must search for her husband under a curse not to bear their child until he touches her again. Other Romanian tales of the same classification are The Enchanted Pig, wherein the enchanted husband is a pig, and Trandafiru, wherein the enchanted husband is a pumpkin.
Source The tale was collected by author T. Popovic and published in magazine Ion Creangă, in 1908. According to Popovic, the story was sourced to Bogdănești-Bîrlad and provided by his mother, who heard it from his grandmother, Maria Peiu, in Bogdănești, Fălciu, around 1840.Popovici, T. "Balaurul fermecat". In: Ion Creangă, I (1908), nr. 4, p. 140.
Summary An old couple live alone and suffer for not having children to brighten up their days. One night, the male half of the couple has an idea to go on a pilgrimage to God to be granted a son. The next day, the old man goes on a long journey outside the village and stops to rest under a willow tree and eat the food his wife prepared him. Suddenly, he sees a little snake in the grass eating the crumbs and, thinking the animal is a sign from God, takes the snake back home. He and his wife feed it with milk and place it in a pantry when the snake grows overnight.
One day, the snake calls for his adoptive parents and asks them to woo the emperor's daughter on his behalf. The old couple is afraid at first for the snake to talk, but agree to fulfill his request, so the old man goes to talk to the emperor. After the emperor learns his prospective son-in-law is a snake (balaur), he demands that he builds a copper palace in the place of the hut and a copper bridge connecting the palace to the emperor's castle. The old man reports to the snake, who assures his father not to worry about. At night, the snake removes his snakeskin, becomes a handsome youth and waves his snakeskin in the four corners of the hut to turn it into a copper palace. The emperor is impressed, but demands that a silver palace is built in place of the copper one. The snake son repeats the magic and creates a silver palace with a silver bridge. Lastly, the emperor requests that a golden palace is built with a connecting golden bridge, with golden trees that yield jewelled flowers along the way, singing birds on the trees and a fountain in front of the emperor's castle. Once again, the snake son fulfills the emperor's request. Defeated, the emperor agrees to marry his daughter to the poor couple's snake son.
The princess is taken to the bridal chambers and waits for the snake by praying to God, but is relieved to see a handsome youth. they spend the night together and the youth returns to the snakeskin in the morning, asking his wife not to tell anyone about it. They fall into a routine. Half a year later, the empress pays a visit to her daughter and questions how her daughter is able to live with a snake. The princess then reveals her snake husband is actually a handsome man underneath the serpentine disguise, and the empress suggests she burns the snakeskin in the stove with fire and salt. On the same night, the princess takes the snakeskin when her husband is asleep and destroys it. The snake husband, who the tale explains is an emperor's son cursed by a snake into balaur form for seven years for killing the snake's young, wakes up with a start, admonishes his wife for her mistake, since he had still three days for the curse to end. He then tells his wife to search for him in steel shoes and with a steel crutch, and curses that an iron hoop will circle her womb and not let her give birth to their son until he lays a hand on her. With this, he vanishes, and so do the bridge and the palace.
The princess mourns for her husband and goes after him in steel apparel, passing by the huts of Sfânta-Mercure (Holy Wednesday), where she gains a golden fork, a self-moving golden shaft and golden spindle, then the hut of Sfânta-Vineri (Holy Friday), where she gains a golden hen with chicks, and the hut of Sfânta Duminica (Holy Sunday). The princess helps Holy Sunday in feeding her animals, and in return Holy Sunday summons the animals, beasts and birds to give out the princess's husband's location, to no avail. A returning hultan (eagle) appears and says it saw a prince shooting it. Holy Sunday orders the eagle to take the princess and prepares provisions for the aerial journey: 100 oxen, 100 cartloads of bread and 160 barrels of wine, to feed the eagle on the way there. Holy Sunday also gives the princess a bottle with a liquid to remove stains and bids the princess good luck. After a long journey, the provisions are consumed and the princess cuts up a piece of her leg to feed the eagle, but the bird returns the meat to the princess's flesh and thanks her.
After reaching a marvellous palace, the princess takes out the golden objects to draw out the attention of the local empress's maidservant. The maidservant reports to the empress about the golden objects, and the monarch wishes to have them. The princess trades them for a night with the now human snake prince, and tries to wake him in the first two nights, begging him to touch her, to no avail. On the third night, the princess notices the maidservant is trying to wash some stains on a shirt and convinces her to let the princess wash it. The princess uses the bottle with the liquid and washes the shirt, bargaining for a last night with the prince. Still, the prince is asleep, when a tear falls from the princess's eyes and wakes him up. He then touches his wife's belly and she gives birth to a handsome son. Their son turns the palace into a golden apple and they all return home. The prince executes the false bride by tying her to two horses, restores his adoptive parents' golden palace and reigns with his wife in his father-in-law's stead.Popovici, T. "Balaurul fermecat". In: Ion Creangă, I (1908), nr. 4, pp. 102—110 (part 1), 132—140 (part 2).
Analysis Tale type The tale is classified in the Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as type ATU 425A, "The Animal (Monster) as Bridegroom".Dégh, Linda. Hungarian Folktales: The Art of Zsuzsanna Palkó. Routledge, 2014. p. 77. .Dégh, Linda. Folktales and Society: Story-telling in a Hungarian Peasant Community: Expanded Edition with a New Afterword. Indiana University Press, 1989. p. 325. . In this tale type, the princess burns the husband's animal skin and she must seek him out, even paying a visit to the Sun, the Moon and the Wind and gaining their help.Vernaleken, Theodor. In the Land of Marvels: Folk-tales From Austria And Bohemia. London: W. S. Sonnenschein & co., 1884. pp. 359-360.Kovacs, Agnes. "Az égig éro fa meséjének magyar redakcioi és samanisztikus motivumaik" [Die ungarischen Redaktionen des Märchens vom Himmelhohen Baum (AaTh 468) und ihre schamanistischen Motive]. In: Ethnographia vol. 95, n°1 (1984). p. 23.
In tale type ATU 425A, the heroine journeys far and wide to encounter her husband, and finds him at the mercy of a second spouse. The supernatural husband, now human, is put to sleep by the magic potion of the second spouse, so that the heroine has no chance of rescuing him.Bálint Peter. Kedvenc Népmeséim (My Favourite Folk Tales): A hangok sokfélesége (The Multiplicity of Voices) - meseszöveg-gyűjtemény és tanulmányok (a collection of tales and studies). Hajdúböszörmény, 2010. p. 225. .
Motifs The snake husband Romanian (Transylvanian Saxon) scholar , in his 1928 index of Romanian tale types, identified that the bridegroom appeared as a pig in most of the available variants at the time (twelve texts), followed by a serpent (eight texts). In that regard, ethnologue noted that the enchanted husband in Romanian variants "usually" appears under a snakeskin or a pigskin: per his 1966 study, the enchanted husband is a snake in 25 variants and pig in 17 (18 in a 1971 study),Petre Ispirescu - Opere. Volume 1. Ed. Minerva, 1971. p. lvi (in Romanian). assuming other forms in other texts, like a hedgehog, a crayfish, a frog and even a pumpkin.
Fulfilling the king's tasks According to Jan-Öjvind Swahn and Georgios A. Megas, the motif of the animal suitor fulfilling the king's tasks before he marries the heroine appears in variants from Eastern Europe and the Near East, and in Romania in subtypes 425A and 425L.
The heroine's pregnancy According to Adolf Schullerus, one of the "characteristic features" of most of the Romanian variants is that, after the burning of his animal skin, the husband wraps hoops around the heroine's body and curses her not to bear their children until he places his arm around her body; after the curse is lifted, the heroine gives birth to a golden-haired son.
In addition, in Balkanic variants of the tale type, the supernatural husband curses his wife not to give birth to their child for a long period of time until she finds him again. Likewise, according to Lithuanian professor , similar tales from Hungary, Romania and Moldova contain the motif of the supernatural husband wrapping iron hoops around the heroine's belly so she cannot give birth to their child until he lays a hand on her again.
The heroine's journey According to Hungarian folklorist , Romanian tales of the "Snake Bridegroom" may show two versions (or redactions): either the mother-in-law burns the man's snakeskin, but he stays with his human bride, or the snakeskin is burnt and the husband disappears. The latter sequence prompts the husband's curse of the long pregnancy and the wife's quest for her husband.Bálint Peter. Kedvenc Népmeséim (My Favourite Folk Tales): A hangok sokfélesége (The Multiplicity of Voices) - meseszöveg-gyűjtemény és tanulmányok (a collection of tales and studies). Hajdúböszörmény, 2010. p. 142 (footnote nr. 1). .
In a study published posthumously, Romanian folklorist noted that, in Romanian and in some South Slavic variants, instead of meeting the Sun, the Moon and the Wind on the way to her husband, the heroine finds incarnations of the days of the week, like Holy Wednesday (ro) and Holy Friday (ro). They function the same as the elements and gift the heroine with golden objects.Caraman, Petru. "Identificarea episodului despre Cupidon şi Psyche, din romanul „Metamorphoses” al lui Apuleius, cu un basm autentic popular" [Identification of the Episode on Cupidon and Psyche, in the Novel Metamorphoses by Appuleius, with An Authentic Folk Fairy Tale]. In: Anuarul Muzeului Etnografic al Moldovei 9 (2009): 28–33. French philologist Jean Boutière, in his doctoral thesis, analysed the variants available at the time and concluded that the heroine seeks the help of Holy Wednesday, Holy Friday and (which are sometimes replaced by Holy Monday and Holy Saturday), and, rarely, of the Moon, the Sun and the Wind.Boutière, Jean. La vie et l'oeuvre de Ion Creangă. Paris: Librairie Universitaire J. Gamber, 1930. p. 121.
According to Ovidiu Bîrlea, "in most variants" of type ATU 425, the heroine passes by incarnations of the days of the week, "often" Holy Wednesday, Holy Friday and Holy Sunday.
The gifts from the helpers According to Hans-Jörg Uther, the main feature of tale type ATU 425A is "bribing the false bride for three nights with the husband". In fact, when he developed his revision of Aarne-Thompson's system, Uther remarked that an "essential" trait of the tale type ATU 425A was the "wife's quest and gifts" and "nights bought".