The Bashkir Fairy-Tale Tradition: Plot ‘Puss in Boots’ (ATU 545 B)

Abstract

The article aims to attract the attention of researchers to the subject matter consi­dering — at this stage — the existing Bashkir variants, with a view to examine same within other ethnic fairy-tale traditions.
In all the variants considered the following components are stable enough: the boy’s poverty, appearance of a friend (cat, fox, old man) and match-making of a princess (a bay’s / Khan’s daughter), consent of the bride’s father, the drowning scene, arrival of the king’s men with the groom’s clothes, the groom’s surprise over the clothes, a guest at the father-in-law’s house and a way home, the herds and shepherds’ response prompted by the cat (a fox, an old man), the king’s determination — due to the cat’s trick (that of the fox, old man) — that the luxurious house belongs to his son-in-law.
All the fairy tales end with a wedding, and only the fairy tale ‘The Fox and the Eget’ has a small continuation: for some time afterwards the fox lives with the newly married. One day it tells time has come for her to pass away, and requests that they bury it under the bunk. Soon the man finds it dead and throws across the fence. The fox, it turns out, only pretended to have been dead to check the eget. It comes to the guy, speaks its mind freely, and expels him and his young wife from the house. After the marriage of the main character to a daughter of a rich man, the fox neutralizes evil.
The story ‘Puss in Boots’ known worldwide has its own peculiarities in the Bashkir fairy tale tradition: it mirrors features of national lifestyles, wedding customs of the Bashkirs; the main character is distinguished by his close proximity to nature, to the world of animals, dwells in the forest, being engaged in hunting (‘The Fox and the Eget’), fishing (‘Red Ilyas and the Fox’). In eight of the above mentioned tales, the magical assistant of the main character is a fox, in three – a cat, and only in one ― an old man.
A comparative study of the Bashkir variants of plot ATU 545 B (‘Puss in Boots’) shows that most of the content options are similar in that the main character’s assistant leads the bride’s father to 10 animals; only ‘The Old Man and the Eget’ recorded by Bessonov in the late 19th ― early 20th cc. differs in that the old man at the prospective father-in-law takes scales several times to somewhat weigh gold and silver. In both cases, the bride’s father gets convinced that the future son-in-law is very rich. A common feature traced in the two tales is that on the way to the main character’s house they meet a herd of horses, herds of cows and sheep that supposedly belong to the newly appointed son-in-law which serves as another proof of his wealth.
This indicates that further comparative studies of other peoples’ tales based on plot ATU 545 B (‘Puss in Boots’) are necessary enough.