The Daughter of the Griffin Bird (Hungarian: A griffmadár leánya) is a Hungarian fairy tale published by Hungarian author Arnold Ipolyi.
The tale is classified in the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as tale type ATU 408, "The Love for Three Oranges", albeit in a variation that appears locally in Hungary: instead of fruits, the fairy maiden can come out of eggs.
Summary In this tale, a prince asks his father for money to use on his journey. The king gives him four hundred florints, but says he is not to return until he is married to the daughter of the griffin bird. The prince ventures into a forest and meets an old man who directs him to a griffin's nest, with five eggs, but alerts that the griffin has left the nest so the prince can don the man's clothes to steal the eggs. The prince climbs up the tree and grabs all five eggs from the griffin's nest.
The old man advises the prince not to open the eggs until he finds a well. The prince thanks the old man and makes a return home. Eager to see the contents of the eggs, he cracks open the first: out comes a beautiful maiden wearing a dress that asks for water. Since he has none with him, she dies. The same happens to the next eggs. Lastly, the prince reaches a well and cracks open the final egg, releasing a maiden wearing a golden dress that asks for water. The prince gives her water and places her atop the beam of the well, promising to return with a golden carriage driven by golden-maned horses.
While he is away, a pair of gypsy women come to the well and find the maiden's visage in the water, each mistaking it for their own appearance. The gypsy pair argue about their beauty, and one of them returns home, while the other discovers the egg maiden atop the well. She shoves the egg maiden into the well and takes her place. Inside the well, the egg maiden becomes a golden fish, while the prince returns with a great retinue. He notices the maiden atop the well does not look like the one he released from the egg, but takes her back to the palace anyway. He also brings the golden fish back home.
The prince orders a woman to clean the golden fish and remove its scales, but she misses a golden scale which contains the egg maiden and it becomes a tree branch. The false bride feigns illness and asks the prince to cut down the branch and make a bed out of it. The prince does as asked, and fells the tree branch, but the woman who cut the fish plucks some woodchips and brings home with her. She places the chips in the fire and goes to a neighbour's house, while the egg maiden comes out of the chips to eat the woman's food. The woman returns and notices there is no food for her, so she decides to investigate: one day, she spies through the keyhole the egg maiden coming out of the chips. The old woman intercepts the egg maiden and asks her to be her adopted daughter.
The egg maiden helps the poor old woman in her chores, taking the cows to graze and drawing water. As the egg maiden takes the cows to graze, the prince stops to light up a pupe and admire the maiden's beauty and her shining golden dress. One night, the prince notices that the maiden's dress is illuminating the night and sends for the old woman and the maiden to ask them for explanations. The pair tell him the whole story. After discovering the truth, he marries the griffin's daughter and punishes the gypsy woman by placing her inside a barrel and tying it to a loose horse.Arnold Ipolyi. Ipolyi Arnold népmesegyüjteménye (Népköltési gyüjtemény 13. kötet). Budapest: az Athenaeum Részvénytársulat Tulajdona. 1914. pp. 297-301.
Analysis Tale type The tale is related to type ATU 408, "The Love for Three Oranges" or Die Drei Citronenjungfrauen ("The Three Maidens in the Citron Fruits").Sklarek, Elisabet. Ungarische Volksmärchen. Einl. A. Schullerus. Leipzig: Dieterich. 1901. pp. 289-290.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. 85. .
In an article in Enzyklopädie des Märchens, scholar Christine Shojaei Kawan separated the tale type into six sections, and stated that parts 3 to 5 represented the "core" of the story:Kawan, Christine Shojaei. "Orangen: Die drei Orangen (AaTh 408)" [Three Oranges (ATU 408)]. 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. 347. https://www-degruyter-com.wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org/database/EMO/entry/emo.10.063/html. Accessed 2024-07-218.
(1) A prince is cursed by an old woman to seek the fruit princess; (2) The prince finds helpers that guide him to the princess's location; (3) The prince finds the fruits (usually three), releases the maidens inside, but only the third survives; (4) The prince leaves the princess up a tree near a spring or stream, and a slave or servant sees the princess's reflection in the water; (5) The slave or servant replaces the princess (transformation sequence); (6) The fruit princess and the prince reunite, and the false bride is punished.
Motifs The heroine's appearance According to Hungarian folktale collector , Hungarian variants of the tale type usually show the fairy maiden coming out of a plant ("növényből").Arnold Ipolyi. Ipolyi Arnold népmesegyüjteménye (Népköltési gyüjtemény 13. kötet). Budapest: az Athenaeum Részvénytársulat Tulajdona. 1914. p. 521. In addition, the Hungarian Folktale Catalogue (MNK) named the type A Három Nádszálkisasszony ("The Three Reed Maidens"), since the maidens come out of reeds instead of fruits.Dömötör Ákos (szerk.). Magyar népmesekatalógus 2. Budapest, MTA Néprajzi Kutató Csoport, 1988. A magyar tündérmesék katalógusa (AaTh 300-749). p. 202. However, they may also appear out of eggs (in 5 variants)Kawan, Christine Shojaei. "Orangen: Die drei Orangen (AaTh 408)" [Three Oranges (ATU 408)]. 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. 350. https://www-degruyter-com.wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org/database/EMO/entry/emo.10.063/html. Accessed 2024-01-07. or from apples (in 3 variants).Dömötör Ákos (szerk.). Magyar népmesekatalógus 2. Budapest, MTA Néprajzi Kutató Csoport, 1988. A magyar tündérmesék katalógusa (AaTh 300-749). p. 206. According to Ákos Dömötör, the motif of "girls from eggs" in variants of type 408 indicates "the Subcarpathian unity" of the tales.
Variants According to scholar Stith Thompson, Hungarian professor Ágnes Kovács, Hungarian-American folklorist Linda Dégh and German scholar Hans-Jörg Uther, the tale of the reed girls is one of the popular fairy tales in Hungary.Sebestyén Ádám. Bukovinai Székely Népmesék. Volume I. Szekszárd: 2009. p. 516 (notes to tale nr. 85). . In addition, the tale type is known all throughout the Hungarian speaking regions. The Hungarian Folktale Catalogue (MNK) listed 59 variants of type 408, A Három Nádszálkisasszony ("The Three Reed Maidens"), across Hungarian sources.Dömötör Ákos (szerk.). Magyar népmesekatalógus 2. Budapest, MTA Néprajzi Kutató Csoport, 1988. A magyar tündérmesék katalógusa (AaTh 300-749). pp. 202-205. On the other hand, Hans-Jörg Uther reports 79 variants.
A previous study reported four texts in Palóc. Later fieldwork conducted in 1999 by researcher Zoltán Vasvári amongst the Palóc population found 3 texts.Vasvári, Zoltán. "Népmese a Palócföldön". In: Palócföld 1999/2, pp. 93-94.
Tales with eggs In a Hungarian tale from Baranya, A tojásból teremtett lány ("The Girl who was created from an Egg"), the king asks his son to find a wife "just like his mother": "one who was never born, but created!" The prince, on his journeys, finds an egg on the road. He cracks open the egg and a maiden comes out of it; she asks for water to drink, but dies. This repeats with a second egg. With the third, the prince gives water to the egg-born maiden. He goes back to the castle to find her some clothes. While she awaits, a gypsy girl meets the egg maiden and throws her in the well. The gypsy maiden takes the place of the egg girl and marries the prince. Some time later, an old gypsy shows the prince a goldfish he found in the well. The usual transformation sequence happens: the false queen wants to eat the fish; a fish scale falls to the ground and becomes a rosewood; the gypsy wants the rosewood to be burnt down, but a splinter remains. At the end of the tale, the egg princess regains her human form and goes to a ceremony of kneading corn, and joins the other harvesters in telling stories to pass time. She narrates her life story and the king recognizes her.Frankovics György. A bűvös puska. Budapest: Móra Könyvkiadó. 2015. pp. 86-90.
In a Hungarian tale collected from a source in Potyondon, Rábaköz, with the dialectal title Léán, aki sé anyátú, sé apátú nem született ("The Girl, never born from father, nor mother"), a prince has been cursed by his parents to search for a girl who has not been born by neither father, nor mother. He wanders the world and ventures into a forest, where he meets a witch. The witch directs him to a very tall tree with 999 branches, upon one lies a nest with tree eggs, and a magic fountain nearby. The witch then tells the prince to open the egg near the fountain, for a girl will emerge of it. The prince follows the instructions and fetches the eggs from the nest, cracking open the first: a maiden comes out of it and asks for water, but he cannot give any and he dies. He cracks open the second one and releases another maiden, who dies for not being given water. With the last egg, the prince breaks open the egg near the fountain, and gives water to the egg maiden. Noticing her nakedness, he leaves her by the fountain and promises to return with clothes for her. While he is away, a gypsy duo comes and drowns the maiden in the fountain, then the gypsy girl replaces the egg maiden. The prince returns and notices the egg maiden's skin has changed colour, and the false egg maiden says the sun darkened her skin. Still, he takes her to the palace. As for the true egg maiden, she has turned into a fish in the fountain. The gypsy asks the fish to be cooked and served her. The egg maiden turns into a little bird that sings to the prince, but the gypsy girl wants the prince to knock out the bird, since she dislikes its song. The prince, however, does not listen to her, finds the bird and touches its wings: the bird turns back into the egg maiden, and she retells the whole story to him, which alerts him to the false bride. The prince executes the false bride, and marries the egg maiden.