A ‘dull’ Rom is left behind with his parents while his brothers go out into the world. He sets off to the king’s (or earl’s) estate and by playing the flute he makes three piglets dance in front of the palace, arousing the king’s daughter’s curiosity and greed. One by one he gives her the piglets; in return she has to lift her skirt first up to her knees, then to her stomach and finally over her head. Eager to have the piglets, she agrees. The boy can see two symbols on her breast, the sun and the moon. When the king announces that his daughter will be given to the man who is able to guess the symbols on her breast, the ‘dullard’ knows the answer but has earlier revealed it to a blacksmith in exchange for a golden plough that will be forged for him later. Now the blacksmith is the second person who can tell what the symbols on the breast of the girl are.

Since there are now two suitors who have solved the riddle, the daughter is to marry the one whom she embraces the following day. When the blacksmith has to relieve himself in a bucket because there are no toilets available in the castle and he does not know how to dispose of his faeces, the Rom advises him to conceal them under his clothes. Naturally, the next morning the bride embraces the Rom and not the stinking blacksmith. So, the Rom takes her for his wife. The blacksmith has to forge the golden plough, which results in his economic ruin.

This fairy tale, ‘Hansi the Dullard’, was told many times by Johann ‘Kalitsch’ Horvath and documented on three different sound tracks recorded in 1969 and 1970. Similar versions are told by Roma and Romnja from other groups, for example Gurbet in Kumanovo (Macedonia). The type of story about a princess to be gained through the naming of her hidden distinctive marks, together with the motif of a musical instrument that can make animals dance, is found throughout Europe and the Orient (‘Moles of the Princess’, AaTh/ATU 850), whereby the kind of marks and dancing animals vary considerably. Dancing pigs are to be found in versions from Russia, Germany and Denmark.

The appearance of a rival who knows the answer to the riddle and who has to be defeated by cunning is another important element of these stories. In the version of Johann Horvath, a ‘dirty’ trick is used to humiliate the rival by making him soil himself with his own faeces. At the same time, the cliché of the ‘dumb little brother’ is debunked in a droll manner.

The dialect of the Burgenland Roma in which the story was told is called ‘Romān’ and sometimes ‘Burgenland Romān’ . It belongs to the group of dialects of the so-called ‘Southern Central Romani variants’ (‘Southern Central Dialects’). The dialect is closely related to the ones spoken in the neighbouring part of Hungary and in the so-called border triangle of Slovenia-Austria-Hungary. Romān was codified by speakers of this dialect in the 1990s in collaboration with linguists from the University of Graz.

References

Aarne, Antti; Thompson, Stith. 1961. The Types of the Folktale. A Classification and Bibliography (= FF Communications LXXV), Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia.

Halwachs, Dieter W.; Gärtner-Horvath, Emmerich; Wogg, Michael (ed.). 2000. Der Rom und der Teufel. Märchen, Erzählungen und Lieder der Roma aus dem Burgenland / O Rom taj o beng. Romane pamaristscha, phukajiptscha taj gila andar o Burgenland. Klagenfurt: Drava Verlag (Edited and extended transcript and German translation: pp. 28–37).

Uther, Hans-Jörg. 2004. The Types of International Folktales. A Classification and Bibliography (= FF Communications 85–87), 3 Bände. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fenica.