The Ebony Horse, The Enchanted Horse or The Magic Horse is a folk tale featured in the
Arabian Nights
''One Thousand and One Nights'' ( ar, أَلْفُ لَيْلَةٍ وَلَيْلَةٌ, italic=yes, ) is a collection of Middle Eastern folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age. It is often known in English as the ''Arabian ...
. It features a flying mechanical horse, controlled using keys, that could fly into outer space and towards the Sun. The ebony horse can fly the distance of one year in a single day, and is used as a vehicle by the Prince of Persia, Qamar al-Aqmar, in his adventures across
Persia
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...
,
Arabia
The Arabian Peninsula, (; ar, شِبْهُ الْجَزِيرَةِ الْعَرَبِيَّة, , "Arabian Peninsula" or , , "Island of the Arabs") or Arabia, is a peninsula of Western Asia, situated northeast of Africa on the Arabian Plate. ...
and
Byzantium
Byzantium () or Byzantion ( grc, Βυζάντιον) was an ancient Greek city in classical antiquity that became known as Constantinople in late antiquity and Istanbul today. The Greek name ''Byzantion'' and its Latinization ''Byzantium'' cont ...
.
Origin
According to researcher Ulrich Marzolph, the tale "The Ebony Horse" was part of the story repertoire of
Hanna Diyab
Antun Yusuf Hanna Diyab ( ar, اَنْطون يوسُف حَنّا دِياب, Anṭūn Yūsuf Ḥannā Diyāb; born ''circa'' 1688) was a Syrian Maronite writer and storyteller. He is the origin of the famous tales of '' Aladdin'' and ''Ali Baba ...
, a Christian Maronite who provided several tales to French writer
Antoine Galland
Antoine Galland (; 4 April 1646 – 17 February 1715) was a French orientalist and archaeologist, most famous as the first European translator of '' One Thousand and One Nights'', which he called ''Les mille et une nuits''. His version of the t ...
. As per Galland's diary, the tale was told on May 13th, 1709.
Summary
A Bengali craftsman and inventor of magical devices arrives in the Persian city of Shiraz at the time of the New Year celebration, mounted upon a splendid artificial horse – surprisingly life-like, despite its mechanical nature. The king is so impressed with this automaton that he decides to present his son, the prince, with the marvellous steed.
The young prince wastes no time in climbing into the saddle and the horse ascends swiftly into the sky. When prince decides that he has flown high enough he tries to make the horse land, but finds that he cannot. Far from landing, the horse instead flies off with the prince, spiriting him away to unknown lands. Later, he rides the flying mechanical horse to the kingdom of Bengal and meets a beautiful princess, who becomes enamoured of him.
The young prince retells his adventures to the princess and they exchange first pleasantries and later sweet nothings as they fall ever more deeply in love. Soon, the Persian youth convinces the Bengali princess to ride the mechanical marvel with him to his homeland of Persia.
Meanwhile, the Indian ''artifex'' had been unjustly imprisoned due to the disastrous test flight of his creation. In his cell, he sees the prince arriving with his beloved maiden. Reunited with his beloved son, the King of Persia releases the craftsman, who seizes the opportunity for revenge, using the horse to abduct the princess and disappearing swiftly over the horizon with her.
They soon arrive in the Kingdom of Cashmere. The king of that country rescues the princess from the Bengali and resolves to marry her.
Saddened by the loss of his beloved, the Persian prince wanders until he reaches Cashmere, where he learns his maiden is alive. He then hatches a plan to escape with his beloved on the mechanical horse back to Persia.
Legacy
Scholarship points that the tale migrated to Europe and inspired similar medieval stories about a fabulous mechanical horse. These stories include ''Cleomades'', Chaucer's ''
The Squire's Tale
"The Squire's Tale" is a tale in Geoffrey Chaucer's ''The Canterbury Tales''. It is unfinished, because it is interrupted by the next story-teller, the Franklin, who then continues with his own prologue and tale. The Squire is the Knight's son, a ...
'', ''
Valentine and Orson
''Valentine and Orson'' is a romance which has been attached to the Carolingian cycle.
Synopsis
It is the story of twin brothers, abandoned in the woods in infancy. Valentine is brought up as a knight at the court of Pepin, while Orson grows up ...
'' and ''Meliacin ou le Cheval de Fust'', by
troubador
A troubadour (, ; oc, trobador ) was a composer and performer of Old Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages (1100–1350). Since the word ''troubadour'' is etymologically masculine, a female troubadour is usually called a ''trobairit ...
Girart d'Amiens (
fr).
Analysis
Tale type
The tale is classified in
Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as ATU 575, "The Prince's Wings". These tales show two types of narrative:
* The first one: a metalsmith and a tinkerer take part in a contest to build a mechanical marvel to impress the king and his son. A mechanical horse is built and delivered to the king, to the delight of the young prince.
*The second one: the prince himself commissions from a skilled craftsman to fashion a winged apparatus to allow him to fly (eg. a pair of wings or a wooden bird).
Ethnologist
Verrier Elwin commented that some folk tales replace the original flying machine for a trunk or a chair, and that the motif of the equine machine is common in Indian folk-tales.
Origins
The tale ''The Ebony Horse'', in particular, was suggested by mythologist
Thomas Keightley
Thomas Keightley (17 October 1789 – 4 November 1872) was an Irish writer known for his works on mythology and folklore, particularly ''Fairy Mythology'' (1828), later reprinted as ''The World Guide to Gnomes, Fairies, Elves, and Other Little ...
, in his book ''
Tales and Popular Fictions'', to have originated from a genuine Persian source, since it does not contain elements from Islamic religion.
The oldest attestation and possible origin of the tale type is suggested to be an 11th century Jain recension of the
Pancatantra
The ''Panchatantra'' (IAST: Pañcatantra, ISO: Pañcatantra, sa, पञ्चतन्त्र, "Five Treatises") is an ancient Indian collection of interrelated animal fables in Sanskrit verse and prose, arranged within a frame story. , in the story ''The Weaver as Vishnu''. In this tale, a poor weaver fashions an artificial likeness of legendary bird mount
Garuda
Garuda (Sanskrit: ; Pāli: ; Vedic Sanskrit: गरुळ Garuḷa) is a Hindu demigod and divine creature mentioned in the Hindu, Buddhist and Jain faiths. He is primarily depicted as the mount (''vahana'') of the Hindu god Vishnu. Garuda is a ...
, the ride of god
Vishnu
Vishnu ( ; , ), also known as Narayana and Hari, is one of the principal deities of Hinduism. He is the supreme being within Vaishnavism, one of the major traditions within contemporary Hinduism.
Vishnu is known as "The Preserver" within t ...
. He uses the construct to reach the topmost room of the princess he fell in love with and poses as Lord Vishnu to impress his beloved.
Henry Parker, who collected some variants of the tale type, identified three different origins for the horse: (1), a wooden flying horse created by a supernatural being; (2), a wooden flying horse made by human hands and "magical art"; and (3) construction of one "by mechanical art". He also suggested that a flying horse, either of wax or wood, appears in
ancient Indian literature (e.g., the
Rig Veda
The ''Rigveda'' or ''Rig Veda'' ( ', from ' "praise" and ' "knowledge") is an ancient Indian collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns (''sūktas''). It is one of the four sacred canonical Hindu texts (''śruti'') known as the Vedas. Only one Sh ...
), and may date from before the time of Christ. He also saw two possible routes of diffusion: either the tale developed in India or in
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...
, and was diffused by Arabs; or the image of a winged quadruped, attested in old Assyria and Mesopotamia, "spread to the early Aryans".
Another line of scholarship sees a possible predecessor of the tale type with Chinese god
Lu Ban
Lu Ban (–444BC). was a Chinese architect or master carpenter, structural engineer, and inventor, during the Zhou Dynasty. He is revered as the Chinese Deity (Patron) of builders and contractors.
Life
Lu Ban was born in the state of Lu; a few ...
, patron deity of carpenters and builders.
Variants
Stith Thompson sees a sparsity of the tale in European compilations, although the elements of the prince's journey on the mechanical apparatus appear in Eastern tales. In addition, Jack V. Haney argued that variants appear "in a number of Western European traditions".
Europe
Romani people
Philologist
Franz Miklosich collected a variant in
Romani language
Romani (; also Romany, Romanes , Roma; rom, rromani ćhib, links=no) is an Indo-Aryan macrolanguage of the Romani communities. According to '' Ethnologue'', seven varieties of Romani are divergent enough to be considered languages of their ...
which he titled ''Der geflügelte Held'' ("The Flying Hero"), about an ''artifex'' that fashions a pair of wings.
In a
Romani
Romani may refer to:
Ethnicities
* Romani people, an ethnic group of Northern Indian origin, living dispersed in Europe, the Americas and Asia
** Romani genocide, under Nazi rule
* Romani language, any of several Indo-Aryan languages of the Roma ...
-
Bukovina
Bukovinagerman: Bukowina or ; hu, Bukovina; pl, Bukowina; ro, Bucovina; uk, Буковина, ; see also other languages. is a historical region, variously described as part of either Central or Eastern Europe (or both).Klaus Peter BergerT ...
tale collected by
Francis Hindes Groome
Francis Hindes Groome (30 August 1851 – 24 January 1902), son of Robert Hindes Groome, Archdeacon of Suffolk, was a writer and foremost commentator of his time on the Romani people, their language, life, history, customs, beliefs, and lore.
Li ...
, ''The Winged Hero'', a skilled but poor craftsman begins to craft a pair of wings, after he saw them in a dream. He then uses the wings to fly to the "Ninth Region", where he sells his work to an emperor's son. The prince uses the wings and flies to another realm, where he learns from an old woman that a princess is locked away in a tower by her own father.
Transylvania
Transylvania ( ro, Ardeal or ; hu, Erdély; german: Siebenbürgen) is a historical and cultural region in Central Europe, encompassing central Romania. To the east and south its natural border is the Carpathian Mountains, and to the west the Ap ...
n linguist
Heinrich von Wlislocki collected and published a "Zigeunermärchen" titled ''O mánusch kástuni ciriklehá'' (''Der Mann mit der hölzernen Vogel'' or ''The Wooden Bird'').
Germany
The
Brothers Grimm
The Brothers Grimm ( or ), Jacob (1785–1863) and Wilhelm (1786–1859), were a brother duo of German academics, philologists, cultural researchers, lexicographers, and authors who together collected and published folklore. They are among the ...
also collected and published a German variant titled ''Vom Schreiner und Drechsler'' ("Of The Carpenter and The Turner"; or "The Maker and the Turner"). This story was published in the first edition of their collection, in 1812, with numbering KHM 77, but omitted from the definitive edition.
A variant exists in the newly discovered collection of Bavarian folk and fairy tales of
Franz Xaver von Schönwerth, titled ''The Flying Trunk'' (German: ''Das fliegende Kästchen'').
In a variant collected from
Oldenburg Oldenburg may also refer to:
Places
*Mount Oldenburg, Ellsworth Land, Antarctica
*Oldenburg (city), an independent city in Lower Saxony, Germany
**Oldenburg (district), a district historically in Oldenburg Free State and now in Lower Saxony
*Olde ...
by jurist Ludwig Strackerjan (
de), ''Vom Königssohn, der fliegen gelernt hatte'' ("About a King's Son who learned to fly"), each of the king's sons learn a trade: one becomes a metalsmith and the other a carpenter. The first one builds a fish of silver and the second fashions a pair of wooden wings. He later uses the wings to fly to another realm, where he convinces a sheltered princess he is the Archangel Gabriel.
Italy
Ignaz and Joseph Zingerle collected a variant from
Merano
Merano (, , ) or Meran () is a city and ''comune'' in South Tyrol, northern Italy. Generally best known for its spa resorts, it is located within a basin, surrounded by mountains standing up to above sea level, at the entrance to the Passeier V ...
, titled ''Die zwei Künstler'' ("The Two Craftsmen"), wherein a goldsmith and a fortune-teller compete to see who can craft a fine work: the goldsmith some gold fishes and the fortuneteller a pair of wooden wings.
Hungary
Journalist
Elek Benedek
Benedek Elek (eastern name order; western name order "Elek Benedek"; 30 September 1859 – 17 August 1929) was a Hungarian journalist and writer, widely known as "The Great Folk-Tale Teller" of The " Szekely Hungarian" Fairy-Tales.
Biography
...
collected a Hungarian tale titled ''A Szárnyas Királyfi'' ("The Winged Prince"). In this story, the king traps his daughter in the tower, but a prince visits her every night with a pair of wings.
Greece
Johann Georg von Hahn collected a variant from
Zagori
Zagori ( el, Ζαγόρι; rup, Zagori), is a region and a municipality in the Pindus mountains in Epirus, in northwestern Greece. The seat of the municipality is the village Asprangeloi. It has an area of some and contains 46 villages known as ...
,
Greece
Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders with ...
, titled ''Der Mann mit der Reisekiste'' ("The Man with the Flying Trunk"): a rich man with an intense
wanderlust commissions a flying trunk form his carpenter friend. The carpenter fills the box with "magic vapours" and the device takes flight. The rich man arrives at the tower of a princess from another realm and pretends to be the Son of God.
Russia
![Деревянный орёл - Нарбут 05](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/95/%D0%94%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%B2%D1%8F%D0%BD%D0%BD%D1%8B%D0%B9_%D0%BE%D1%80%D1%91%D0%BB_-_%D0%9D%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%B1%D1%83%D1%82_05.jpg)
The tale type is known in Russia and Slavic-speaking regions as "Деревянный орёл" (''The Wooden Eagle''), after the creation that appears in the story: a wooden eagle (
ru). Professor Jack Haney stated that the tale type was "widely collected" in Russia.
Another Russian variant of the tale type is ''Märchen von dem berühmten und ausgezeichneten Prinzen Malandrach Ibrahimowitsch und der schönen Prinzeß Salikalla'' or ''Prince Malandrach and the Princess Salikalla'', a tale that first appeared in a
German language
German ( ) is a West Germanic languages, West Germanic language mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and Official language, official or co-official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and the Ita ...
compilation of fairy tales, published by Anton Dietrich in 1831, in
Leipzig
Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as wel ...
. The titular prince becomes fascinated with the idea of flying after reading about it in a book of fairy tales. He wants to commission a pair of wooden wings from a carpenter.
Professor Jack V. Haney translated a variant from raconteur Matvei Mikhailovich Korguev (1883-1943), titled ''The Airplane (How an Airplane in a Room Carried Off the Tsar’s Son)'' and also classified as ATU 575. In this tale, the plane replaces the wooden eagle.
Poland
In a Polish tale, "Об одном королевиче, который на крыльях летал" ("About a prince who flew on wings"), a king commissions a pair of wings from a master craftsman. The prince finds the wings, puts them on and flies to another kingdom where he visits the princess - locked in a tower - by pretending to be an angel.
Estonia
The tale type is registered in Estonia with the title ''Kuningapoja imetiivad'' ("The Magic Wings of the King’s Son"). In Estonian variants, the prince may gain either an iron hawk from the blacksmith, or wooden wings from the carpenter. He uses the contraption to fly to another kingdom.
Lithuania
The tale type also exists in Lithuania with the name ''Karalaičio sparnai'' ("The Wings of the King"). Twelve variants were registered until 1936, when folklorist Jonas Balys (
lt) published his analysis of Lithuanian folktales.
Latvia
The tale type also exists in
Latvia
Latvia ( or ; lv, Latvija ; ltg, Latveja; liv, Leţmō), officially the Republic of Latvia ( lv, Latvijas Republika, links=no, ltg, Latvejas Republika, links=no, liv, Leţmō Vabāmō, links=no), is a country in the Baltic region of ...
, with the title ''Brīnuma spārni'' ("Wonderful Wings"): an artisan fashions the artificial bird for the prince, who travels to another kingdom, falls in love with a princess and escapes with her on the flying device.
In a Latvian variant, "Волшебный конь" ("The Magic Horse"), a blacksmith's apprentice constructs a mechanical horse. The prince convinces the king to give it to him as a gift. He flies on the artificial horse to another kingdom by a manipulating a
panel
Panel may refer to:
Arts and media Visual arts
* Panel (comics), a single image in a comic book, comic strip or cartoon; also, a comic strip containing one such image
*Panel painting, in art, either one element of a multi-element piece of art ...
of
screw
A screw and a bolt (see '' Differentiation between bolt and screw'' below) are similar types of fastener typically made of metal and characterized by a helical ridge, called a ''male thread'' (external thread). Screws and bolts are used to fa ...
s, where a princess is being held at a tower. At the end of the tale, before the princess's father has a chance to execute her and the prince, they escape on the mechanical horse.
Armenia
In
Armenia
Armenia (), , group=pron officially the Republic of Armenia,, is a landlocked country in the Armenian Highlands of Western Asia.The UNbr>classification of world regions places Armenia in Western Asia; the CIA World Factbook , , and ''Ox ...
n variants of the tale type, the prince departs either on a wooden horse or on a big wheel to the princess's kingdom. After the prince loses the flying machine, his family is separated, but reunites at the end of the story, as the princess averts a possible incestual marriage with her own son by the prince.
Georgia
Georgian scholarship registers 3 variants of type 575, "Wooden Horse", in
Georgia: the vehicle is a wooden horse the prince flies on to meet a princess, and sometimes the tale shows a long period of separation for the couple.
In a Georgian tale titled "Царевич и деревянный конь" ("The Tsar's Son and the Wooden Horse"), a childless royal couple has a son at last, and invites the entire kingdom. A carpenter and a metalsmith decide to create presents for the newborn prince, each in their own craft. The carpenter delivers a wooden horse that can fly. The prince delights at the present. The metalsmith, however, warns his colleague that if the prince mounts the horse, he will not know how to control it. So the carpenter returns to the palace and teaches the prince, who ends up flying on the horse to regions unknown. He reaches the roof of an old woman, in another kingdom, and she invites him in. He learns of the princess lockes in the tower and flies towards her on the horse. After escaping an attempted execution, the prince and the princess flee the kingdom and separate; the horse is destroyed in a fire. The princess goes to another kingdom and becomes its sovereign when a bird lands on her head three times. Using her royal powers, she orders a bridge to be made and a picture of her husband to be affixed on it.
Ossetia
In an
Ossetian tale titled "Деревянный голубь" ("The Wooden Dove"), a metalsmith and carpenter argue whose is the more necessary skill: metalworking or woodworking. They bring their dispute to the king to judge. The metalsmith produces a golden purse and the carpenter a wooden dove. The king awards the carpenter. The king's son overhears the decision and decides to play with the wooden dove and flies to another kingdom. He meets the son of the local ''aldar'' (ruler) and learns his sister, the aldar's daughter, lives a sad life in a high tower. The prince decides to fly to her room on the wooden dove and meets her. They fall in love and she becomes pregnant. Her servants notice something amiss with the princess, and fear the aldar may execute them. The princess and the prince escape on the wooden dove and marry. The tale continues with the adventures of the three sons of the couple, who also travel on their father's wooden dove.
Asia
Middle East
A similar story, also named ''The Tale of the Ebony Horse'', can also be found in ''
One Hundred and One Nights
''One Hundred and One Nights'' (french: Les cent et une nuits de Simon Cinéma) is a 1995 French comedy film directed by Agnès Varda. A light-hearted look at 100 years of commercial cinema, it celebrates in vision and sound favourite films fro ...
'', another book of Arab literature and whose original manuscripts were recently discovered.
According to professor
Ruth B. Bottigheimer
Ruth B. Bottigheimer is a literary scholar, folklorist, and author. She is currently Research Professor in the department of English at Stony Brook University, State University of New York , an Arabic-language manuscript mentions a tale titled ''Fars al-abnus'' ('Horse of Ebony'), predating Hanna Diyab's story by two centuries. The tale was apparently part of the second volume of ''Tales of the Marvellous and News of the Strange'', now lost.
Andrew Lang published the story with the name ''The Enchanted Horse'', in his translation of ''
The Arabian Nights'', and renamed the prince ''Firouz Schah''.
Folklorist
William Forsell Kirby published a tale from "The Arabian Nights" titled ''Story of the Labourer and the Flying Chair'': a poor labourer spends his earnings on an old chair. He returns to the seller wanting to know the instructions on how to use the chair. The labourer manages to control the chair, which takes him to a distant terrace. He walks from the terrace into a room where a princess was sleeping. The maiden awakes with a startle with the strange person in the room, and he presents himself as
Azrael, the Angel of Death.
French orientalist François Pétit de La Croix published in the 18th century a compilation of Middle Eastern tales, titled ''Mille et Un Jours'' ("The Thousand and One Days"). This compilation also contains a variant of the tale type, named ''Story of Malek and the Princess Schirine'': the hero Malek receives a bird-shaped box from an artisan. He enters the box and flies away to a distant kingdom. In this realm, he learns of King Bahaman, who imprisoned his daughter, the Princess Schirine, in a tower.
China
Chinese folklorist and scholar Ting Nai-tung (
zh) established a second typological classification of Chinese folktales (the first was by Wolfram Eberhard in the 1930s). According to this new system, in tale type 575, "The Prince's Wings", the main character is not a prince, and the means of transportation is either a horse or an eagle.
Iran
A Persian variant is reported to have been analysed by folklorist
William Alexander Clouston
William Alexander Clouston (1843 – 23 October 1896) was a Scottish 19th century folklorist from Orkney.[Nishapur
Nishapur or officially Romanized as Neyshabur ( fa, ;Or also "نیشاپور" which is closer to its original and historic meaning though it is less commonly used by modern native Persian speakers. In Persian poetry, the name of this city is wr ...]
compete to impress a local woman. The weaver sews a seamless shirt and the carpenter a magic
coffer. The weaver tests the coffer and flies away to another realm. He uses the coffer to reach the castle where the daughter of the king of Oman is being held and introduces himself as the Angel Gabriel. As the story continues, he defeats an army for the King of Oman, but loses the flying coffer. At the end of the story, the king discovers the ruse, but decides to keep it a secret after the angel "Gabriel" achieved wins for him. A similar tale was reported to exist in manuscript version in the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the then Soviet Union.
Uzbekistan
In an
Uzbek variant, titled "Столяр и портной" ("The Carpenter and The Weaver"), a carpenter and a weaver are good friends. One day, they compete against each other to test their abilities to impress a girl: the weaver creates a seamless shirt. Jealous, the carpenter builds a chest and invites the weaver for a test drive. He locks his friend inside the chest, turns a screw and the chest soars to another kingdom. The weaver reaches gets off the chest, hides it and learns the local padishah has a daughter that he locks up in a tower. The weaver uses the chest to fly up to her room, while the padishah is away on a hunt, and presents himself as Azrael.
In another Uzbek tale, "Умелые руки" ("Skillful Hands"), a boy named Rafik is taken to be apprenticed by a carpenter. One night, he has a dream about beautiful maidens. Entranced by such vision, he slowly wither, until his father and the carpenter fashion a flying wooden horse that the boy can use to look for her. He flies on the machine and lands in another place. He learns the maidens come in the shape of doves to bathe in a nearby lake and he must hide the garments of his beloved one. He does, but she escapes with the other doves. He follows her on the wooden horse until a meadow where they rest up. Rafik wakes her up and convinces her to go with him. They return to a village and marry. She gives birth to a son. Rafik flies on the horse to another kingdom, but a fire destroys the apparatus and he is stranded there. Unaware of her husband's fate, she takes their son and goes to a caravan to another city, where they set up shop in hopes of finding Rafik. Years pass, and the family is finally reunited.
South Asia
An
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
n version was published by author
Mark Thornhill with the title ''The Magic Horse''. In this tale, a carpenter and a goldsmith compete over who is the most skilled craftsman. The king announces he will be the judge of the dispute and orders them to bring him their finest works. The goldsmith brings a metal fish that can swim and the carpenter a wooden horse that can move about. The king's son mounts the horse and flies away to another kingdom. In this kingdom, he learns about the princess, secluded in a tower, and who is weighed very morning against
a garland of flowers so that it can be assured no man has touched her.
Charles Swynnerton __NOTOC__
Charles Francis Massy Swynnerton CMG (3 December 1877 – 8 June 1938) was an English naturalist noted for his contributions to tsetse fly research.
Swynnerton was born in Folkestone, Kent on 3 December 1877. His father was a senior ...
published another Indian tale titled ''Prince Ahmed and the Flying Horse'': Prince Ahmed likes to play with the sons of a goldsmith, an ironsmith, an oilman, and a carpenter, much to his father's disgust. The king decided to imprison the four youths, but the prince, their friends, intercedes in their favour: all four should prove their skills. The four fashion, respectively, six brazen fishes, two large iron fishes, two artificial giants and at last a wooden horse. Prince Ahmed climbs the horse and flies to regions unknown, where he romances a princess and brings her back to his homeland.
Henry Parker published another South Asian tale with the title ''The Wax Horse'': a king hides his son from the outside world due to a prophecy that the son would go away from his kingdom. One day, the young prince sees a wax horse with wings in the market and the king buys it for him. The prince climbs on the horse and flies to another kingdom, eventually meeting a princess.
In another Indian tale, ''Concerning a Royal Prince and a Princess'', a carpenter's son fashions a Wooden Peacock, which the Prince test drives and arrives in another kingdom. He hides the Wooden Peacock in the foliages and sees a princes bathing. Later, the prince flies to her window. The princess, then, decides to hide her lover inside her room by commissioning a man-sized lamp with a secret compartment. The princess becomes pregnant and escapes with the prince to the jungle. Her royal lover gets stranded in the sea, due to the machinations of fate, and the princess is forced to raise the child on her own. She, however, gets help from an
ascetic
Asceticism (; from the el, ἄσκησις, áskesis, exercise', 'training) is a lifestyle characterized by abstinence from sensual pleasures, often for the purpose of pursuing spiritual goals. Ascetics may withdraw from the world for their p ...
, who, by performing "an Act of Truth", creates two other children out of flowers for the maiden to rear.
A variant titled ''Uṛhan Ghōṛā'' ("The Flying Horse") was collected from the
Baiga. In this version, the raja sets up a contest between a smith and a carpenter to settle their dispute. The carpenter fashions a winged horse with an internal engine. The raja's young son rides on the horse and is carried over to another kingdom, where he sleeps with the princess. The princess's belly begins to grow and her father discovers the culprit: the foreign prince. On the day of the execution, he escapes with the princess on the winged horse, but the couple must make a hasty descent on an small island for her to give birth. Once their son is born, the family is separated: the young boy is adopted by a royal couple; the princess loss her memory and is adopted as the niece of a lower cast woman, and the prince marries another rani. Their fates converge as the prince stops an incestual marriage between son and the mother.
In another Indian variant, ''The Flying Horse'', a carpenter creates an "airplane with an engine" for his friend, the prince. The prince rides the airplane to a marble palace in a distant kingdom across the ocean, where he meets a princess. They fall in love and she becomes pregnant. After an unfornate accident, the prince separates from the pregnant princess, who gives birth to a boy. The two are also separated: the boy is found by a couple and his mother is rescued by prostitutes. Years later, the boy becomes a youth, buys his mother from the brothel and meets his father, who has become an old man.
Uygur people
In a
Uyghur tale, ''The Wooden Horse'', a carpenter and a metalsmith quarrel about who is the most skilled. The king decides to set a contest to settle their dispute: the metalsmith creates an iron fish and the carpenter a wooden horse that can fly. The king's son, the prince, is delighted at the wooden horse and asks his father to try it. The prince controls the device and begins to ascend to the skies, disappearing in the distance. He arrives at another kingdom whose king has built a "palace in the sky" to hide his daughter in. The prince visits the princess with the horse for three times, which infuriates the king. The king orders a nationwide search for the boy. The princess escapes with the prince on the flying wooden horse, but as soon as they land, the princess wants to go back to get a treasure from her mother. She leaves the prince there and flies back to her kingdom, being captured by her own father, who arranged her marriage to another man. The prince begins to notice her absence and wander about in search of food. He finds an orchard with fruits and eats them, and horns and a white beard appear on his face. He eats other fruits and reverses the transformation. He decides to collect some of them and goes back on the road. He finds a prince's retinue and gives some of the fruits to the prince - who is to marry the princess of the sky palace - to cause a physical transformation. Despairing at the situation, the retinue concoct a plan to replace the prince for the fruit seller (which was the youth's plan all along). The youth-as-the-foreign-prince meets the princess again and, after the wedding celebrations, they escape on the wooden horse.
Africa
Morocco
René Basset
René Basset (24July 18554January 1924) was a French orientalist, specialist of the Berber language and the Arabic language.
Biography
René Basset was the first director of the "École des lettres d'Alger" created in 1879 during the Frenc ...
collected a variant in the Berber language.
Literary variants
Illustrator
Howard Pyle included a tale named ''The
Stool of Fortune'' in his work ''Twilight Land'', a crossover of famous fairy tale characters (
Mother Goose,
Cinderella,
Fortunatus,
Sinbad the Sailor
Sinbad the Sailor (; ar, سندباد البحري, Sindibādu al-Bahriyy; fa, سُنباد بحری, Sonbād-e Bahri or Sindbad) is a fictional mariner and the hero of a story-cycle of Persian origin. He is described as hailing from Baghdad ...
,
Aladdin
Aladdin ( ; ar, علاء الدين, ', , ATU 561, ‘Aladdin') is a Middle-Eastern folk tale. It is one of the best-known tales associated with ''The Book of One Thousand and One Nights'' (''The Arabian Nights''), despite not being part of ...
,
Boots, the
Valiant Little Tailor) that meet in an inn to tell stories. In ''The Stool of Fortune'', a nameless wandering soldier is hired by a magician to shoot some animals. Angry at the unjust payment, the soldier enters the magician hut and sits on a three-legged stool, waiting for his employer. Wishing he was anywhere else, the stool obeys his command and starts to fly away. The soldier then arrives at the tower room of a unsuspecting princess and announces himself as "The King of Winds".
[Pyle, Howard. ]
Twilight Land
'. New York: Harper, 1894. pp. 5-27.
Sufi scholar
Idries Shah
Idries Shah (; hi, इदरीस शाह, ps, ادريس شاه, ur, ; 16 June 1924 – 23 November 1996), also known as Idris Shah, né Sayed Idries el- Hashimi (Arabic: سيد إدريس هاشمي) and by the pen name Arko ...
adapted the tale as the children's book ''The Magic Horse'': a King summons a woodcarver and a metalsmith to create wondrous contraptions. The woodcarver constructs a wooden horse, which draws the attention of the king's youngest son, prince Tambal.
Adaptations
The Russian variant of the tale type ATU 575, "The Wooden Eagle", was adapted into a Soviet animated film in 1953 (
ru).
The tale type was also adapted into a Czech fantasy film in 1987, titled ''O princezně Jasněnce a ševci, který létal'' (''
Princess Jasnenka and the Flying Shoemaker
''Princess Jasnenka and the Flying Shoemaker'' ( cs, O princezně Jasněnce a létajícím ševci) is a 1987 Czechoslovak fantasy film directed by Zdeněk Troška and starring Michaela Kuklová and Jan Potměšil. It is based on a fairy tale by ...
''). The film was based on a homonymous literary fairy tale by Czech author
Jan Drda
Jan Drda (April 4, 1915, Příbram – November 28, 1970, Dobříš) was a Czech journalist, politician, playwright, screenwriter and author of modern fairytales. He was the Czech State Prize Laureate in 1949 and 1953, and was a nominated again fo ...
, first published in 1959, in ''České pohádky''.
See also
* ''
The Flying Trunk
"The Flying Trunk" (Danish: ''Den flyvende Kuffert'') is a literary fairy tale by the Danish poet and author Hans Christian Andersen about a young man who has a flying trunk that carries him to Turkey where he visits the Sultan's daughter. The t ...
'', literary fairy tale by
Hans Christian Andersen
Hans Christian Andersen ( , ; 2 April 1805 – 4 August 1875) was a Danish author. Although a prolific writer of plays, travelogues, novels, and poems, he is best remembered for his literary fairy tales.
Andersen's fairy tales, consisti ...
*
Flying carpet
*
Pegasus
Pegasus ( grc-gre, Πήγασος, Pḗgasos; la, Pegasus, Pegasos) is one of the best known creatures in Greek mythology. He is a winged divine stallion usually depicted as pure white in color. He was sired by Poseidon, in his role as hor ...
, mythological flying horse
*
Haizum
In Islamic tradition, Haizum ( ar, حيزوم) is the horse of the archangel Gabriel. It is a white, flaming, spiritual horse that has wings like that of a pegasus and can fly swiftly from one cosmic plane to another in a second. Haizum was God's ...
*
Qianlima
The ''qianlima'' (; also ''chollima'', ''cheollima'', and ''senrima''; ) is a mythical horse that originates from the Chinese classics and is commonly portrayed in East Asian mythology. The winged horse is said to be too swift and elegant to be m ...
*
Hippogriff
*
Tulpar
*
Tianma
Tianma ( ', "heavenly horse") was a winged flying horse in Chinese folklore. It was sometimes depicted with chimerical features such as dragon scales and was at times attributed the ability to sweat blood, possibly inspired by the parasite ''Par ...
* ''
Le cheval de bronze
''Le Cheval de bronze'' (''The Bronze Horse'') is an '' opéra comique'' by the French composer Daniel Auber, first performed on 23 March 1835 by the Opéra-Comique at the Salle de la Bourse in Paris. The libretto (in three acts) is by Auber's ...
'' (opera)
References
*
*
Bibliography
* Chauvin, Victor Charles. ''Bibliographie des ouvrages arabes ou relatifs aux Arabes, publiés dans l'Europe chrétienne de 1810 à 1885''. Volume V. Líege: H. Vaillant-Carmanne. 1901. pp. 221-231.
Further reading
* Akel, Ibrahim. "Redécouverte d’un manuscrit oublié des Mille et une nuits". In: ''The Thousand and One Nights: Sources and Transformations in Literature, Art, and Science''. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2020. pp. 57-67. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004429031_005
* Bottigheimer, Ruth B. and Claudia Ott. “The Case of the Ebony Horse, part 1”. ''Gramarye''. vol. 5, 2014, pp. 8–20.
* Bottigheimer, Ruth B. “The Case of the Ebony Horse, part 2: Hannā Diyāb’s Creation of a Third Tradition”. ''Gramarye'', vol. 6, 2014, pp. 7–16.
* Cox, H.L. "'L'Histoire du cheval enchante" aus 1001 Nacht in der miindlichen Oberlieferung Franzosisch-Flanders". In: D. HARMENING & E. WIMMER (red.), ''Volkskultur - Geschichte - Region: Festschrift für Wolfgang Brückner zum 60. Geburtstag''. Würzburg: Verlag Königshausen & Neumann GmbH. 1992. pp. 581-596.
* Marzolph, Ulrich. ''101 Middle Eastern Tales and Their Impact on Western Oral Tradition''. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2020. pp. 86-94. muse.jhu.edu/book/77103.
* Olshin, Benjamin B. "Ancient Tales of Flying Machines". In: ''Lost Knowledge''. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2019. pp. 40-113. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004352728_003
* Starostina, Aglaia. "The Prince’s Wings: Possible Origin of the Tale Type and Its Early Chinese Variants". In: ''Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics'',
.l. v. 15, n. 1, pp. 154–169, june 2021. . Available at:
. Date accessed: 19 july 2021.
External links
''The Enchanted Horse''
on Wikisource
Wikisource is an online digital library of free-content textual sources on a wiki, operated by the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikisource is the name of the project as a whole and the name for each instance of that project (each instance usually rep ...
(translation by John Payne)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ebony Horse, The
One Thousand and One Nights characters
Male characters in literature
Male characters in fairy tales
Fictional princes
Medieval literature
Works about automation
Automata (mechanical)
Fictional objects
Magic items
Legendary flying machines
Fictional horses
Fictional Indian people
Indian folklore
Indian literature
Indian legends
Indian fairy tales
ATU 560-649