Bogatyr Neznay (Russian: Богатырь Незнай) is a folktale collected from a Bashkir source by ethnographer Aleksandr G. Bassonov. It deals with a friendship between a merchant's son and a magic horse that are forced to flee for their lives due to the boy's own mother, and reach another kingdom, where the boy adopts another identity by only uttering the words "Ne znayu" ("I don't know").
Tales where the hero is instructed by his horse to always utter "I don't know" (or a variation thereof) are reported particularly in Russia, in Finland, in the Baltic Countries and in Hungary. In the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index, it has been subsumed under new type ATU 314, "Goldener", with an alternate introductory episode: evil stepmother or mother persecutes hero and his horse.
Source The tale was originally collected by ethnographer between the years of 1891 and 1906.
Summary In this tale, a rich merchant has a wife who gives birth to a son. In a matter of days, the boy grows up to be a strong bogatyr. One day, his father gives him money to buy a horse. The boy buys a one-year foal which his father believes will make a fine horse. At the same time, the merchant's wife begins an affair with a young man. Her lover advises her to kill the son: first, she sends him to the public bathhouse and douses the seam of a shirt in poison for him to put on and die. The foal warns the youth about the danger and suggests he places the poisoned shirt on a dog. It happens thus, and the dog dies. Next, the woman gives him pancakes ("блины", in the Russian translation) laced with poison, but the foal warns about the second danger and advises the youth to give the poisoned food to another dog, which eats it and dies. Failing both times, the woman's lover advises her to seek an old woman sorceress. The old sorceress advises the woman to feign illness and ask for her son's foal to be sacrificed so she can eat its meat to regain her health. The woman tells her son about it and the merchant agrees to sacrifice the horse to help his wife. The youth asks his father for a ride on the foal while he goes to gather the people. The youth seizes the opportunity to gallop away from home. The foal asks the boy to whip its flank, and the horse flies away through the air to another kingdom. The horse lands and the youth dismisses him. The local king sights the boy and inquires him about his origins, but the boy can only answer "Neznay". The king asks his viziers to bring the boy in, whom he believes will become a fine warrior, and the boy is brought before him. Again, he utters only Neznay, and is ordered to work in the garden. The boy sleeps in the garden with his head uncovered, showing a golden forelock on his head, and the local king's youngest princess falls in love with him. The cadette princess then talks to her elder sisters about marrying and they send a letter to their father, the king. The monarch agrees to marry them off and gathers a crowd of suitors, then gives apples to his daughters, for them to throw it at their husbands of choice. The eldest princess throws her to a senator, the middle to a vizier, but the cadette withholds hers. The king sends for any other available male and the soldiers bring in the gardener Neznay. The third princess throws her apple to Neznay, but the crowd thinks she made a mistake and she repeats her action, choosing Neznay. The king announces his cadette is to be given to Neznay and moved out to a chicken coop, while he marries the elder two in grand ceremonies.
Sometime later, war breaks out, and the princesses and their respective husbands go to war to protect the kingdom. The youngest princess asks her husband to join the family in the war, but he only replies with Neznay, so she requests her father for a fine horse, but is given a cart to ride. While his wife is away, he plucks a hair from his head, burns it and summons his horse, Neznay. The youth rides the horse and goes to join the others. He meets his wife en route, who does not recognize him, and asks her for a kiss, then for her silver wedding ring and headscarf, but the princess rejects his requests since he is a stranger. Neznay then meets his elder brother-in-law in the battlefield, and agrees to help him in exchange for branding a hammer-shaped tamga on his back. The eldest son-in-law agrees to the stranger's terms, suffers the branding of the tamga and returns to the king's castle to boast about his false victory, while Neznay defeats part of the enemy army. He meets his middle brother-in-law and makes the same proposition, this time asking to cut a stripe of flesh from his back in exchange for defeating his enemies. It happens thus, and Neznay defeats the army, then goes back home to the chicken shed, dismisses the horse, and lies with his wife in bed.
The queen goes to bring some food to Neznay and her daughter in their shed. She enters the shed, and finds Neznay's sword swaying in the wall and humming a sound, and a forelock of gold on the youth's head. Afraid, the queen goes back to the castle and reports to her husband about what she saw, realizing Neznay is no ordinary person due to the magic sword and his golden forelock, and fears that he may destroy the realm. The king sends a servant to inform the couple to visit him in the castle, and Neznay agrees to a visit: he dons a sapphire garment and a diamond sword, while his wife wears golden clothes. The king sees the couple in splendid clothes and, in fear, asks his viziers to spread carpets and pillows on the path for them. The monarch welcomes them and asks Neznay for forgiveness for mistrating him, since he did not know him at first. Neznay says he is not angry and respects the king as his father-in-law, so he asks him to gather his army, since Neznay is after his two runaway slaves, one with a tamga marking and another with a stripe of flesh cut off from his back. The king summons the army, but Neznay cannot find his slaves there, so he asks for the sons-in-law to be brought to his presence. The duo appears and Neznay asks the elder son-in-law to remove his clothes and show the tamga on his back, and the other to show his stripe of flesh from his back. Neznay points them as his slaves and reveals he was the one to defeat the enemy army, not them. The king tells Neznay he will give him the kingdom and bids him judge the brothers-in-law as he sees fit. Neznay declines the offer and tells the king to judge them: the king orders them to be hanged. The monarch then reigns alongside Neznay.
Analysis Tale type According to Russian folklorist , the tale is the oldest attestion of the type "Neznay" (AT 532 + AT 530A) in the Bashkir tale corpus."". Tom 4: Волшебные сказки. Сказки о животных [Vol. 4: Tales of Magic and Animal Tales]. Сост. Н.Т. Зарипов. Вступ. ст., коммент. Л.Г. Барага и Н.Т. Зарипова. Уфа [Ufa]: Башкирское книжное изд-во, 1989. p. 457 (notes to tale nr. 3, entry "Bassonov"). .
AaTh 532: I Don't Know (The Helpful Horse) In type AaTh 532: I Don't Know (The Helpful Horse), of the international Aarne-Thompson Index (henceforth, AaTh or AT), the hero is persecuted by his stepmother, who also sets her sights on the hero's helpful horse, but they escape from home and go to another kingdom, where the hero is instructed to always utter "I don't know"; the hero, under a new identity, performs heroic deeds like rescuing a princess from a dragon.Aarne, Antti; Thompson, Stith. The types of the folktale: a classification and bibliography. Folklore Fellows Communications FFC no. 184. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1961. p. 191. However, folklorist Stith Thompson, in his work The Folktale, doubted the existence of the story as an independent tale type, since, barring a different introduction, its main narrative becomes "the same as in the Goldener tale [tale type 314]". This prompted him to suppose the tale type was a "variety" of "Goldener".
A similar notion is shared by Greek folklorists Anna Angelopoulou, Marianthi Kapanoglou and Emmanuela Katrinaki, editors of the Greek Folktale Catalogue: although they classified the Greek variants under type 532 (Greek: Ο Μπιλμέμ), they still recognized that they should be indexed as type 314 (Greek: Ο Κασίδης), since their only difference seems to lie in the introductory episodes.Angelopoulou, Anna; Kapanoglou, Marianthi; Katrinaki, Emmanuela. "ΚΑΤΑΛΟΓΟΣ ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΩΝ ΠΑΡΑΜΥΘΙΩΝ-4: ΕΠΕΞΕΡΓΑΣΙΑ ΤΥΠΩΝ ΚΑΙ ΠΑΡΑΛΛΑΓΩΝ AT 500-559". Athena: ΚΕΝΤΡΟ ΝΕΟΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΩΝ ΕΡΕΥΝΩΝ, 2004. pp. 15, 389-390. (In Greek). The Hungarian Folktale Catalogue (MNK) also took notice of the great similarity between types 532 and 314, which difficulted a specific classification into one or the other.Dömötör Ákos (szerk.). Magyar népmesekatalógus 2. Budapest, MTA Néprajzi Kutató Csoport, 1988. A magyar tündérmesék katalógusa (AaTh 300-749). p. 306.
Furthermore, German folklorist Hans-Jörg Uther, in his 2004 revision of the international tale type index (henceforth, ATU), subsumed type AaTh 532 under a new tale type, ATU 314, "Goldener", due to "its similar structure and content".
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