Udea and her Seven Brothers

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Udea and her Seven Brothers is a Northern African fairy tale collected by Hans von Stumme in Märchen und Gedichte aus der Stadt Tripolis. Andrew Lang included it in The Grey Fairy Book.

It is Aarne-Thompson type 451.

[edit] Synopsis

A couple had seven sons. One day, the sons set out hunting and told their aunt that if their mother had a daughter, to wave a white handkerchief, and they would return at once; but if a son, a sickle, and they would keep on. It was a daughter, but the aunt wished to be rid of the sons, so she waved a sickle. One day, the daughter, Udea, was taunted with her brothers' roaming the world; she questioned her mother and set out to find them. Her mother gave her a camel, some food, a cowrie shell about the camel's neck as a charm, and a negro and his wife to take care of her. On the second day, the negro tried to make her let his wife ride the camel in Udea's place; on the third day, he succeeded.

One day, they passed a caravan, where they were told of the castle where the brothers lived. The negro let Udea ride but smeared her with pitch, so that her brothers would not recognize her. However, she was able to persuade them.

The brothers left her in the castle with strict instructions never to go out, and to eat nothing that the cat did not eat, too. They returned, and found her well. They told her of pigeons, and she asked why they did not have her feed the pigeons, because the food they had laid out had to be old after seven days. They agreed. When they left, she found a bean and ate it. The cat demanded half. Udea said she could not, because she had already eaten it, and offered other beans. The cat refused, and put out the fire. Udea set out to find a fire, to have it eventually from a "man-eater" (cannibal). He demanded a strip of her blood in return for a coal, and she paid it. She bled all the way home; a raven followed her, putting dirt over the blood. The raven startled her at the door, and she cursed it, hoping it would be startled as she was. It told her it had done her a favor, and flew away. The man-eater followed her and broke through the doors, intending to attack Udea. She sent a letter to her brothers by the pigeons, and they trapped the man-eater in a burning pit.

One of the man-eater's fingernails stabbed Udea, at which she fell into a swoon. Her brothers put her on a bier and the bier on a camel, and set it off to their mother, with orders not to stop unless someone said, "string." Three men chased after it, but only when one said that his sandal string was broken did it stop. They pulled off her ring, which freed the fingernail and woke her. The camel brought her back to her brothers.

They set out to see their father and mother again.