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Humorous Tales
Another outstanding group of folk tales is the so-called humorous tales (tréfás mese), which form about twelve per cent of the Hungarian folk tale corpus. Although they frequently slip into the world of fairy tales, with which they are interwoven by the presence of the miraculous, they are more robust and more realistic, and at times lash out with rather unsparing humour at the stumblings of the weak. Furthermore, if the villain comes to grief in humorous tales, he receives his punishment soundly. This is a harsh, almost cruel way of amusement. We can immediately see that these jokes were born or became rooted in the tradition of people having a hard, often barely tolerable fate. Thus, in these humorous tales the reigning element is not the miraculous, but the grotesque.
The world often turns topsy-turvy in humorous little stories, but that is not always in order to find solace in the symbols of higher justice, as in the moral lesson of the fairy tales, but rather it is merely to create {565.} discomfiture and to raise a laugh. Certain tales from this genre often rival the most artful, modern, grotesque short stories. As an example, we shall introduce a tale of lying (hazudós mese) that was recorded a hundred years ago in Hódmezõvásárhely (AaTh 852). This tale, by the way, offers not only the simple ridiculing of human vanity, and self-conceit but also a social judgement, the victorious, sardonic laughter of the poor peasantry.
{566.} Once upon a time, beyond the seven seas and beyond their farthest shores, there was a poor man, and he had three sons.
Once the king declared throughout the entire country that he will give his daughter to anyone who can tell him something that he will not believe. The oldest son of the poor man, a boy called Peter, heard of this, prepared himself, and went to the king, where he told the servant that he wanted to talk to the king. The king saw straight away what the young man wanted but said nothing to anybody, only ordered them to let him in forthwith. Although by then as many princes as there are stars in the sky, as there are blades of grass in the meadow, and God knows how many of what kind of great lords, had come before the king–every one among them wanting to marry the princess–still none of them could say anything the king would not have believed. So Peter went in to the king and greeted him:
“God give you a good day, My Lord King!”
“To you too, my son! What brings you here?”
“I would like to get married, my Lord King!”
“Very good, son, but tell me, how would you keep a wife?”
“God knows! I would keep her somehow... my father has a house and also a small field.”
“I believe it, son,” says the king.
“And we also have three cows.”
“Now, not long ago, so much peat collected in our yard that we hardly had any room left.”
“Once, my father said: My sons, carry these weeds out to that little field. Perhaps it will do it some good.”
“However, by mistake we carried it, to the last blade, to the neighbour’s field.”
“When it was all done, I went home and told my father.”
“Then I, my father, and my two younger brothers, the four of us together went out to our field.”
“Then we got hold of the four corners of the neighbour’s four fields, lifted it, as you lift up a table cloth, and turned the weeds from it onto our field.”
“Then we sowed our field with grass seeds.”
“And a thick forest grew on it such that no one has ever seen the like.”
“Then my father was sorry to have those beautiful trees cut down, so he bought a herd of pigs.”
“Then he hired Your Majesty’s grandfather for the swineherd.”
But the king suddenly remembered his wager, called the priest and the hangman, and married his daughter to the poor man’s son. They had a wedding big enough to be heard of beyond seven counties, gave sweetcakes as big as my arm {567.} even to the orphan children, there was soup and soup, and lots of soup without meat!
| Mantle, cape and overcoat, |
| What a lying anecdote! |
That is the end of the humorous tale. Its poetic clincher also demonstrates that humorous tales are not surrounded by the atmosphere of authenticity that surrounds fairy tales. Their character as entertainment is thus more clearly displayed.
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