The Black Foal (French: Le Poulain noir) is a folktale from Afghanistan published by Ré Soupault and Philippe Soupault. It deals with a friendship between a sultan's son and a magic horse that are forced to flee for their lives due to the boy's step-mother, and reach another kingdom, where the prince adopts another identity.
It is classified in the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as ATU 314, "Goldener". 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. Similar tales are known across the Middle East and were collected in Afghanistan.
Summary In this tale, the son of a sultan loses his mother when he is three years old, and the sultan decides to remarry to give the boy a mother. However, the woman begins to hate her stepson. When the prince is fourteen years old, the sultan gifts him a black foal which he visits after school to pet and feed sweets to. The stepmother hates her stepson even more due to the boy's affection for the foal, and sends a favourite slave around town to bribe the doctors, so that they say that the sultana is ill and needs to eat the flesh of a black foal as remedy. To give credence to the lie, the sultana dyes her skin with yellow dye and places some bread under her body to appear as if her bones are breaking. The sultan is told by the doctors the sultana is ill and needs the flesh of the black foal, which puts the sultan in a dilemma. However, he decides to sacrifice his son's pet foal and orders the teacher to hold the boy longer at school the following morning.
As for the prince, he returns from school and goes to talk to the horse, which is crying bitter tears and refuses to eat his rations, then explains the sultana is feigning illness and that the sultan ordered its sacrifice. The foal then tells the prince they plan to hold him at school, but it will neigh three times to alert him, and he is to come to its aid and hold onto its back, for it will take both to safety. The following morning, the prince is at school, when he hears the horse neigh, and asks his teacher to be dismissed. On being scolded, the prince hears the third neigh, throws a brazier full of coals at his teacher's face and rushes back to the palace to stop the execution. The prince asks his father to be allowed one ride on the foal, and the sultan indulges his son. The prince saddles his horse with a diamond saddle, rides around the palace twice and, on the third time, rides the foal through the skies away from the palace.
The foal lands near a garden and tells the prince it cannot stay with him, but gives him four hairs of its mane which he can use to summon it, then departs. The prince hides his garments and saddle, wears a ram's skin on his head and finds work as the gardener's assistant to the local sultan. The sultan has seven daughters, the youngest the most intelligent and beautiful of them. On one hot day, the prince burns a hair of his foal to summon him, takes a bath in the river, dons his princely garments and rides around the garden three times. The local sultan's youngest daughter watches the event from her window and notices his beauty and grace, which he hides under the lowly gardener's assistant's disguise.
In time, the local sultan decides that it is time his daughters are married, and assembles a crowd of eligible suitors for the princesses to choose their husbands by throwing an orange to their suitors of choice. The elder chooses the vizier's son, the second eldest an emir's son, and the others sons of lords, while the youngest princess withholds hers, since she cannot find the gardener's assistant. The sultan orders that his soldiers bring whoever is absent, and they bring the lowly assistant, to whom the youngest princess throws her orange, signifying her choice. The sultan is enraged his cadette chose a lowly husband, and moves her out of the palace.
Some months later, the king falls ill, and the doctors prescribe gazelle meat as the remedy. The six sons-in-law ride into the wilderness to find any gazelle, to no avail. As for the prince, he burns the last hair of the mane of his foal, which bids him prepare for the hunt since it will group the gazelles near a tent. The brothers-in-law approach the tent and meet a prince surrounded by gazelles, who is the gardener they do not recognize. The brothers-in-law ask for some gazelle meat and the prince agrees to a deal: the meat in exchange for them being branded like slaves with hot iron. The brothers-in-law ponder a bit and agree to his terms, then take the meat, while the prince keeps the heads.
The sultan eats the meat from the gazelle carcasses, but cannot regain his health. The prince prepares a broth with the gazelle heads to be given to the sultan, who refuses to eat it at first. After some convincing by his wife, the sultan eats it and his health improves. The following morning, the sultan receives news that a prince has come to fetch his runaway slaves. The sultan says there are no slaves there, save for his six sons-in-law. The group enter the room and the prince points them as his slaves. The sons-in-law show their backs with the slave marks, proving the prince's claims. Soon, the sultan's youngest daughter appears and points to the prince as her master and husband. The sultan learns of the whole story and places his turban on the prince's head, marking him as his successor.
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.Stith Thompson, The Folktale, pp. 59-60, University of California Press, Berkeley Los Angeles London, 1977.El-Shamy, Hasan (2004). Types of the Folktale in the Arab World: A Demographically Oriented Tale-Type Index. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. p. 138 (entry nr. 57).
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.
Quest for the remedy A motif that appears in tale type 314 is the hero having to find a cure for the ailing king, often the milk of a certain animal (e.g., a lioness). According to scholar Erika Taube, this motif occurs in tales from North Africa to East Asia, even among Persian- and Arabic-speaking peoples.Taube, Erika. "Löwenmilch" [Lion's Milk]. 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 . pp. 1232-1233. Similarly, Hasan M. El-Shamy noted that the quest for the king's remedy appears as a subsidiary event "in the Arab-Berber culture area". In addition, Germanist Gunter Dammann, in Enzyklopädie des Märchens, noted that the motif of the quest for the remedy appeared "with relative frequency" in over half of the variants that start with the Subtype 2 opening (stepmother's persecution of hero and horse).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. 1374-1375, 1377. .
Branding the brothers-in-law According to German scholars Günther Damman and Kurt Ranke, another motif that appears in tale type ATU 314 is the hero branding his brothers-in-law during their hunt.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 . p. 1375. . in Likewise, Ranke stated that the hero's branding represented a mark of his ownership over his brothers-in-law.
Ranke located the motif in the Orient and in the Mediterranean. In the same vein, Hungarian professor Ákos Dömötör, in the notes to tale type ATU 314 in the Hungarian National Catalogue of Folktales (MNK), remarked that the motif was a "reflection of the Eastern legal custom", which also appears in the Turkic epic Alpamysh.Dömötör Ákos (szerk.). Magyar népmesekatalógus 2. Budapest, MTA Néprajzi Kutató Csoport, 1988. A magyar tündérmesék katalógusa (AaTh 300-749). pp. 113-114.
Variants