Mr Simigdáli ("The Gentleman Made of Groats", in Max Lüthi's translation)[1] is a Greek fairy tale, collected by Irene Naumann-Mavrogordato in Es war einmal: Neugriechische Volksmärchen.[2] Georgios A. Megas collected a variant Master Semolina in Folktales of Greece.[3] There are about forty known Greek variants on the fairy tale of baking a figure and having it brought to life.[4] It is Aarne-Thompson type 425, the search for the lost bridegroom, in an unusual variation, involving motifs similar to Pygmalion and Galatea.[5]
A king's daughter refuses all her suitors. She takes almonds, sugar, and groats—or semolina—and makes the figure of a man from them. Then she prays for forty days, and God brings the figure to life. He is called Mr Simigdáli (Mr Groats)—or Master Semolina if made from that—and is very handsome. An evil queen hears of him and sends a golden ship to kidnap him. Everyone comes out to see it, and the sailors as instructed- capture Mr Simigdáli. The princess learns how he had been carried off, has three pairs of iron shoes made for herself, and sets out.
With the first pair of iron shoes worn out, she comes to the mother of the Moon, who has her wait until the Moon comes, but the Moon can not tell her where Mr Simigdáli has been taken, and sends her on to the Sun, having given her an almond for her to break upon need. The Sun and its mother give her a walnut and send her on to the Stars. No star has seen him, except for a little star which then takes her to the castle where Mr Simigdáli is prisoner after being given to drink the water of oblivion, and the star gives her a hazelnut. She looks like a beggar and he does not recognize her, so she begs for a job taking care of the geese.
Then she breaks the almond and it holds a golden spindle, reel and wheel. The servants tell the queen, who asks what she wants for her; the princess will trade it only for Mr Simigdáli to spend a night with her. The queen agrees but gives Mr Simigdáli a sleeping potion. The princess tries to talk to him but she cannot wake him. Then she breaks the walnut, which contains a golden hen and her chicks, and she tries and fails again. The hazelnut contains golden carnations, but that day, a tailor, who lives next to the girl who tends to the geese, asks Mr Simigdáli how he can sleep at night what with all the girl's talk. Mr Simigdáli realises something is off so he secretly readies his horse and only pretends to drink the potion; so, when the princess begins to talk to him, he rises and takes her with him on his horse.
In the morning, the queen sends for him, but he is not there. She tries to make her own man, but when the figure is done, she curses instead of praying, and the figure rots. The princess and Mr Simigdáli return home and live happily ever after. And, as the Greek saying has it, they lived happily but we lived even more so!
Although the tale is classified as the more general type ATU 425, "The Search for the Lost Husband", the tale pertains to a cycle of stories found in Italy, Greece and Turkey: the heroine, refusing to marry any suitor chosen for her, decides to fashion her own husband out of materials, and prays to a deity for him to come alive.[6] [7]
It could be considered, therefore, a subtype specific to Italy.[8] The type is also considered a Greek-Turkish oikotype of The Disenchanted Husband, which, according to 's study, falls under type 425B: the artificial husband created by the heroine and the exchange of three nuts for three nights with her husband.[9]
Lüthi remarked that the reference to number forty indicated the presence of the tale in the Orient,[10] since the numeral has cultural significance for Middle Eastern cultures (e.g., indicating a period of maturation or purification).[11]
The heroine, creator and lover of the artificial husband, gains exquisite presents from her supernatural helpers, which she will use to bribe the kidnapping queen for a night with her lover.[12] Also, according to Max Lüthi, the heroine cracks open the nuts and almonds she gets from her helpers and finds beautiful dresses that depict the skies (or heavens), the earth and the seas.[13]
Folklorists and Michael Merakles, as well as researcher Marilena Papachristophorou, noted that in these tales, the hero is named after the materials with which he was created:[14] [15] herbs, musk, amber, cinnamon and sugar.[16]
According to Papachristophorou, the more common names for the hero include Sucrepétri, Moscambaris or Muscambre, after the materials used to build the husband[8] (in the latter two, musk and amber),[17] although the tale is better known as Simigdalenios ("Man of Semolina").[18]
In addition, German scholar Max Lüthi noted that sugar appears to be "the crucial ingredient" in most variants from Greece and Italy,[19] although Papachristophorou remarks that it is the "most common [ingredient] in all versions" of the story.[20]
According to Marilena Papachristophorou and Georgios Megas, 42 variants exist "in all regions of Greece".[21]
German linguist Paul Kretschmer translated a Greek tale into German as Der Mann aus Zucker ("The Man [made] of Sugar").[22]
Greek professor Michael Merakles translated a Greek tale into German with the title Die Moschusknabe ("The Boy of Musk"). In this tale, the heroine is a princess who locks herself up in a church for 40 days, with refined flour and spices, and fashions a seven-year-old son for her. A second king's daughter becomes jealous of the boy and wants her for herself, so asks her father to kidnap him. The first princess goes after the child with iron shoes, and passes by the Moon, the Sun and the Wind, who each gives her a nut, an almond nut and a pistachio nut. The nuts produce golden objects (golden chicks, a golden spindle and a golden yarn) which she tries to use to bribe her way to the boy. At the end of the tale, the princess rescues her son and flies back home on a magic carpet. Merakles noted that the tale was unusual in that the heroine creates a child, instead of a lover, which happens in other variants.[23]
In the Typen türkischer Volksmärchen ("Turkish Folktale Catalogue"), devised by Wolfram Eberhard and Pertev Naili Boratav, both scholars indexed a similar narrative under type TTV 105, "Der Mann aus Wachs" ("The Man [Made] of Wax"), with three variants registered until 1953. In this type, the third and youngest princess is still single, and fashions a male figure made of wax; with her prayers, the figure comes to life; later, the man, now human, is taken by another princess to her kingdom, and his creator/lover goes after him; in her quest, she is given precious objects she will use to bribe the princess for three nights with the man.[24]
In a Turkish tale collected by Turkologist Ignác Kúnos and titled Miszk-amber királyfi ("The Musk-Amber Prince"), an Indian ruler has a daughter who decides to marry no one. She then asks her father to provide forty camels loaded with musk and forty camels loaded with gray amber. After getting the objects, she locks her up in her room and fashions a man with the material and a horse with the leftovers, then spends the next 40 days and nights in deep prayer so both creations gain life. It happens thus, and the princess sends the horse to the stables and the boy to be secluded in a room, under the care and watch of governesses. One day, when the male creation is twelve years old, he uses a leftover chicken bone to crack the glass from his room and see the outside world for the first time. He also sees the horse creation the princess made, and is told the horse, named "Kamer" ('Moon') belongs to him. The boy jumps on Kamer and both ride away from the kingdom. The princess is alerted about the boy's flight, and goes after Miskember (named so after the materials used in his creation). She walks in iron garments and a skirt made of hairs, and with an iron cane. Back to Miskember, he and the horse reach the palace of the Yemeni padishah, and the monarch decides to marry him to his daughter. The princess reaches the Yemeni lands and asks for shelter at the palace kitchen. The Yemeni princess agrees to take her in, if she can make Miskember smile. One day, as soon as Miskember comes back from the hunt, he sights his creatress and smiles at her. The Yemeni princess then places the wanderer in a room just beneath her chambers, where she spends every day and night singing verses of longing and sorrow to make Miskember remember. After a while, the Yemeni princess decides to call off her marriage to Miskember and returns him to his creatress. The pair rides back to the Indian kingdom and find a platoon of her father's soldiers en route. Everyone returns home, and Miskember and the princess celebrate their marriage.[25] The tale was translated to Russian by with the title "Девушка и Мискембер" ("The Girl and Miskember").[26]
Russian professor V. A. Yaremenko translated into Russian an Iraqi tale titled "Султан Анбар" ("Sultan Ambar"): a princess is courted by many men, but she chooses no suitor. Fed up with all the rejected princes and emirs, the king announces he will wed her to the first suitor. The princess, then, decides to build herself a husband, with musk, amber (or ambergris), rose water and Indian perfumes. She prays to Allah to give him a soul and animate him, and her prayers are answered. She takes the artificial man to her father and introduces him as Sultan Ambar, her fiancé. A witch princess from another country hears about Sultan Ambar's beauty and kidnaps him after their wedding. The princess journeys far and wide to find him, and has some adventures on the way there, by helping kings and villages. She is rewarded with a chicken with chicks that eat pearls instead of grains, a dress encrusted with pearls and a saad bird made of diamond and eyes of agate. The princess uses the three items as bribes to buy three nights in her husband's bed in the witch princess's castle.[27]