The Golden Apple Tree and the Nine Peahens (Serbian folktale)

Author: Traditional

Time Period: 1851 CE–1900 CE

Country or Culture: Serbia

Genre: Folktale

Overview

Based on two common folktale variations—the Swan Maiden and the Quest for the Lost Bride—”The Golden Apple Tree and the Nine Peahens” centers on the story of a young man’s love for one woman and what he will endure and accomplish to keep her, stressing the merits of persevering in the name of love. This Serbian folktale recounts the physical and mental work a king’s youngest son must undertake to find and keep the wife of his desire. One evening, the king’s son, watching over his father’s golden apple tree, sees nine peahens (female peacocks) fly into the tree and take the golden apples. The ninth peahen turns into a beautiful woman and the king’s son waits for her every night, and they eventually fall in love. The transformation from bird to human, a common folktale motif in Swan Maiden tales, suggests the hidden path the king’s youngest son must follow when his jealous brothers plot to scare away the ninth peahen and ruin their happiness. Although the father offers his young son any other woman in the kingdom, the king’s son desires only the ninth peahen and sets off into the world to find her to make her his bride. The search puts him in contact with those who want to help or hinder his devotion. Eventually, the king’s son prevails, proving his worth and uniting with his peahen-maiden.

One day, some time after their marriage, the queen went out to walk, and the king’s son remained in the palace. Before going out, however, the queen gave him the keys of twelve cellars, telling him, “You may go down into all the cellars except the twelfth -- that must on no account open, or it will cost you your head.”

“The Golden Apple Tree and the Nine Peahens”

With the theme of continual hard work rewarded, the tasks a suitor must complete to receive his wife provide the linear structure for this tale. As the king’s son journeys to find his bride, the tasks he completes and the obstacles he encounters combine and allow for a morphological approach to analyzing the folktale. For a character to be successful, the chronological order of a tale—certain events (components or functions) occurring before other events can occur—is much more important than the unity of the plot (Propp 20–21). When the king’s son loses his intended love at the hands of his jealous brothers, he willingly travels all over the world to find her. When he loses her a second time to a dragon he himself has released, he once again searches for her, combining his desire to find her with help from magic animals (a fish, a fox, and a wolf). Every challenge builds on the structure of the tale to reinforce the message that finding love does not guarantee keeping that love; a high level of devotion results in acts that continually prove love is more worthwhile when garnered through hard work. This folktale is a collection of events that secure love at the end. Applied to daily life, challenges continually present themselves, and the audience is reminded that after solving one challenge, another task often lies in the future. It is this hard work that provides the structure for a lasting love relationship.

Summary

A king notices that his golden apple tree grows fruit every night but its apples are picked clean by morning. One by one, the king sends his three sons to see who is taking the apples, but his first two sons fall asleep each night under the tree. The youngest son puts his bed under the tree to nap and wakes up just as nine peahens fly to the tree. Eight of the peahens keep their form as birds, but the ninth turns into a woman whose beauty overwhelms the king’s son. The boy speaks with her and begs her to stay, but she gives him two apples to take home, one for him and one for his father. These meetings continue for several nights, as the two of them talk and eventually fall in love. The two older brothers, jealous of their brother’s ability to stay awake and get golden apples for the father, ask an old woman to hide under the youngest brother’s bed to see how he acquires the golden apples. When the ninth peahen arrives that evening, the old woman cuts off some of the young maiden’s hair, causing her to transform back into a peahen and fly away, never to return to the golden apple tree. The king’s son is heartbroken from not seeing his maiden, and although his father promises him any other beautiful woman as a wife, the king’s son is set on the ninth peahen. He leaves with a servant, beginning his journey to find the beautiful maiden and seek happiness with her.

The young man’s first stop in his search is at a queen’s palace on a lake, where he learns the nine peahens come every midday. The queen’s main objective is to marry off her own daughter, and she pleads with the boy to marry the girl. The king’s son refuses, “burning with desire to see the peahens” (Mijatovies 46). The next day, he waits at the lake for the peahens, but his servant uses a small pair of magic bellows from the queen to put the young suitor to sleep. When the peahens arrive, the king’s son is asleep and no amount of pleading from the ninth peahen can wake him. For two more days, the king’s son falls asleep at the hands of the servant while the ninth peahen tries to wake him. On the third day, the last day the peahens will be at the lake, the ninth peahen leaves a message with the servant: “When your master awakens tell him he ought to strike off the head of the nail from the lower part, and then he will find me” (48). The servant relays this message to the king’s son when he wakes up, and the king’s son quickly cuts off his servant’s head, continuing his searching the world for the peahens alone.

Continuing his quest, the king’s son meets a hermit at a mountain and, following his directions, arrives at the palace of the nine peahens. He tells the guard at the gate his story, and when a young queen runs out of the palace, the young man finds that it is the ninth peahen. The two quickly marry and prepare for what they expect to be a happy life, as the townsfolk are very happy about this marriage. One day, the queen leaves for a walk and gives her new husband a set of keys to twelve cellars in her palace, giving him a warning: “You may go down into all the cellars but the twelfth—that you must on no account open, or it will cost you your head” (Mijatovies 49).

It is at this point that the king’s son becomes a hindrance to himself, unsure of whether he should open the twelfth cellar door. With the keys for the twelfth door in his hand, he begins to “wonder why he [is] forbidden to go into it” (Mijatovies 49). He ultimately cannot resist opening the door to the twelfth cellar and, in doing so, sees a large barrel with three ringed braces around it. A voice from the barrel calls out for a cup of water, and the king’s son pours water into the barrel. The voice calls out for water twice more, and the king’s son obliges each time, even though a brace on the barrel breaks each time he pours in water. With the third cup of water, the bucket explodes and releases a dragon that grabs the young man’s wife on her walk, taking her far away to his kingdom. The king’s son is filled with guilt and “resolved to set out and travel through the world in search of her” (50).

As he renews his journey, the king’s son encounters three animals that will provide him with the magic needed later to resolve his situation. He meets a fish, a fox, and a wolf stuck in various situations, each asking him for assistance. After each is helped, they leave him with a part of themselves (the fish gives him a scale, the fox gives him a hair from his tail, and the wolf gives him a hair from his coat), telling him to rub the item in his hand when he needs their help. Finally, the king’s son finds a man on the road who knows where the dragon-king lives. Following the man’s directions, the king’s son sees the dragon’s palace and his wife. He and his wife ride away from the palace on his horse, but the dragon quickly discovers them. The dragon spares the young man’s life since he had given the dragon water in the twelfth cellar, releasing him with a warning: “[I]f your life is dear to you do not come back here anymore” (Mijatovies 52). But the man’s desire for his wife is too strong and he secretly visits his wife the next day, asking her to find out about the dragon’s magic horse and where he can acquire a similar one. That evening the maiden kindly asks the dragon about his horse, and he tells her that the horse has a brother that is equally fast.

This other magical horse is owned by a woman who will give it to anyone who will watch an old woman’s mare and foal for three nights in a row. After hearing this, the king’s son finds this old woman and asks if he can work for her. She replies, “Well, my son, if you keep my mare safe for three days and three nights I will give you the best horse, and you can choose him yourself; but if you do not keep the mare safe you shall lose your head” (Mijatovies 53–54). The old woman shows him the stakes set outside of her stable with the heads of men who tried and failed to watch her animals. The king’s son is unafraid. Each night he waits in the field with the mare and the foal; even though he falls asleep each night and the mare and the foal disappear, he is able to find them with the help of the fish, fox, and wolf, who appear when he rubs the scale or hair. Each night the mare and her foal come out of hiding, as a fish, a fox, and a wolf. After the third night, the old woman allows the young man to choose the horse he wants, and he chooses the ugliest horse. The old woman tries to talk him out of it, but he insists and she must give him the horse he picks.

The king’s son quickly rides to the dragon’s palace and once again reclaims his wife. The dragon’s horse tells his master that they will never reach the couple because the horse they are riding is his much faster brother. Still, the dragon grabs his horse and tries to catch up with the king’s son and the queen. When he reaches them, the dragon’s horse pleads with his brother to stop; the brother horse tells him to throw the dragon off his back, which he does, killing the dragon. The queen rides the dragon’s horse back to her kingdom with the king’s son, and they reign “together in great prosperity” (Mijatovies 58).

Bibliography

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