A young man pays for the funeral of a poor dead man out of pity. The dead man accompanies the young man without being recognized by the latter and helps him to acquire wealth and a wife. With his help, the young man succeeds in winning the king’s mute daughter, who is to be tempted into speaking; he succeeds in doing so by provocatively telling her in her room two stories that contain an unresolved issue.

The first story is about a day-time and a night-time thief. Unbeknownst to them, both have the same wife. When they accidently find out that they share the same wife, they have to compete for the girl’s affections and her final decision with whom to stay. Both are so clever in their profession as thieves that it cannot be clearly decided who has won the girl.

The second story deals with a female wooden figure that has been carved and brought to life step by step by three persons , so that, once again, it is unclear to whom the girl who has come to life now belongs.

Because the princess remains silent, these issues are being discussed in her room by the boy and pieces of furniture (a rug and a mirror). Eventually the girl becomes sick of listening to all this nonsense: she breaks her silence and thus is given in marriage to the youth. The thankful dead man releases her from the spell cast upon her and takes his leave.

Framework stories with several stories incorporated into the main story are to be found, above all, in traditional Oriental fairy tales. The story cycle of One Thousand and One Nights is a well-known example in which numerous narratives by the Sultan’s beloved, who is threatened with death, are embedded into the framework plot. The fairy tale ‘O drugari’ [The Companion] – which was recorded in a similar version by the philologist Alexandre G. Paspati in the Romani dialect from Rumelia (Turkey) as early as 1870 – follows this tradition. The sound recording with the storyteller Fatima Džaferoska was made in Vienna in 1971.

The story combines free motives and narrative strands from various types of fairy tale. The framework plot corresponds to a very popular type of fairy tale (ATU 505). Embedded into this, a tale interlocked in multiple ways develops with several stories within the story, combined with the theme of another tale in which a silent princess must be made to speak. One of the stories within the story told to tempt the girl speak is the one about the day-time thief and the night-time thief, both of whom have the same wife. In this story within the story, one thief tells another story. The subject of a girl who must be made to speak is also known to storytellers among the Turkish Romani group of basket weavers, the Sepečides, from Izmir and its environs.

In many fairy tales, clichés and stereotypes can be found; they are used as a basis for farcical elements and modes of behaviour. A know-all attitude is stereotypically depicted as a female trait. Girls or women – but never men – who cannot be made to speak are unable in the end to refrain from butting into a dispute and thereby break their silence. Thus they may be outwitted through provocation – usually by a cunning suitor who, in most Romani versions, is himself a Rom. In other versions, it is an old, wise Romni who knows about this ‘typical’ trait and thus outwits the young girl. The fact that people who refuse to speak may be provoked to speak through absurd actions is also historically documented in some forms of popular belief, including from Hungary (Dömötör 1981: 125f).

References and further reading

Dömötör, Tekla. 1981. Volksglaube und Aberglaube der Ungarn. Budapest: Corvina Kiadó.

Fennesz-Juhasz, Christiane; Cech, Petra; Halwachs, Dieter W.; Heinschink, Mozes F. (ed.). 2003. Die schlaue Romni. Märchen und Lieder der Roma / E bengali Romni. So Roma phenen taj gilaben. Klagenfurt: Drava Verlag (transcript and German translation of another version by the same storyteller: pp. 26–43).

Paspati, Alexandre G. 1870. Études sur les Tchinghianés ou Bohémiens de l’Empire Ottoman. Constantinople: Antoine Koromélia.

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