English Summary for "Magyar népmesék: A királykisasszony jegyei"

These are a series of Hungarian folk tales that were made into a Hungarian TV series. "Magyar népmesék" just means "Hungarian folk tales."

This particular tale, "A királykisasszony jegyei" is usually translated as "The Princess Units," which doesn't seem to make much sense. After much searching, I found a summary of this episode that instead translates the title as "The Marks of the Princess" (or "The Princess's Marks"). This makes a lot more sense if you understand what is going on.

The episode is available online in Hungarian on several sites.

Here is the summary:

"In the land beyond the glass mountain kings always have daughters and boys are only born to the poor. Princesses tend to be beautiful and empty-headed and men make up for their penniless state with wit and cunning. Our latest offering of Hungarian folk tales, The Marks of the Princess is a social utopia with a touch of perversity.

One day a couple in a remote village get so lucky that they can buy a little pig. As the pig, the couple’s pride and joy grows, they can only wish for one more addition to their family, a baby. Weirdly, when the woman tells her man she thinks she’s in the family way, the man says ‘You may only think so’. So when the excited husband breaks the news that the pig might be with young, the woman replies that he only thinks so. But they both think right, because first a little baby boy then three little piglets arrive into this not very perceptive family. Everybody’s happy and our tale could very well end here; but it doesn’t.

The boy takes the pigs to graze (bare [sic] in mind that this is a tale, and pigs can graze or do whatever they please in tales) to the lower end of the king’s courtyard. He plays his flute to the pigs and they happily dance to the music. When the princess sees the dancing pigs from her window, she goes down to the boy to buy one off the piglets off him. But our boy is a tough haggler. He wants no money, but the girl to pull up her skirts to her knees. In this innovative version of the popular kindergarten game of ‘I’ll show you mine if you show me yours’ the girl shows off her knees, and the blushing boy give her a pig in return. In the evening when his father asks what happened to the pigs, the boy lies without batting an eyelid that the wolf took it.

On the next day, the boy takes the pigs to graze and dance to the king’s courtyard again, and the princess turns up dead on time. She wants another piglet from the boy, as the one she bought the previous day doesn’t dance alone. The cunning lad asks her to pull her skirts up to her bellybutton this time, which she does without much ado. Now princesses at the time didn’t wear panties. And where you’d expect to see some kind of regal underwear, there’s a shining star instead. After another lie to daddy about wolfs [sic], the boy takes the remaining pig to the courtyard of pleasures. The girl comes, the pig and the flute are exchanged for a peek under her garments up to her neck. Oh, and to prove he wasn’t lying, the boy goes to the ‘wolfs’ and collects a sack of gold for the piglets. You see, some silly princesses go really cheap.

As time goes by, the lad is a handsome young fella, and the girl is of marriageable age now. So the king announces whoever can tell the three marks of the princess will get her hand and half a kingdom, and everyone who fails to do so gets 60 beats by a stick. Our boy gets himself a stallion and a nice outfit and sets off to win the girl’s hand in marriage. Along the way he meets a prince and a baron, who, seeing how funny our boy is, rename him ‘Joke’. In reality he’s only rude, not funny, but what do they know… Obviously, Joke knows the three marks of the princess (the star covering her Brazilian wax, the sun and the moon on her chest), but the baron pretends he knows the marks too, Joke only beat him to saying them. A Salamonic [sic] decision is made, all three of them go to bed together, and whoever the princess turns to in the morning gets the girl. Joke is eating cakes and candy in bed but tells the baron he’s nibbling on the heel of his boot instead. So the baron offers a bite of his heel to the princess, and she replies by kicking him off the bed. Joke gives the candy to the princess, and of course she turns toward him in the morning. Joke becomes king and the husband of a candy-eating stripper, and they live happily ever after."


found here:

http://www.funzine.hu/2012-08-once-upon-a-time-the-marks-of-the-princess/

There are still some unexplained elements. Why would the boy be getting a sack of gold by visiting the wolves? Does that explanation make sense to his father? Why did the Princess give him the sack of gold since it seems that the only thing our hero asked for was to be able to see her knees, etc.? Was it because she was so happy with the dancing pigs? How did hero know the princess would give him gold? Our hero now grown up meets with two men, one in green and one in blue, with matching horses. They play a trick on him, but it seems fairly harmless. What's with what our hero does to their horses?

If the Baron is the one in green who tricks our hero into revealing the marks, what happened to the Prince (guy in blue)? There's a visual hint that before our hero & Baron make their claims the Prince may have made an incorrect guess and had to suffer the punishment, but it's not clear if this is stated explicitly in the story, since I don't understand Hungarian.

These are just some of the many questions that may or may not be explained in the narration. Some may just be cultural memes that are unfamiliar to English speakers.

It would be nice if some of the other episodes were translated or at least summarized. A translation of this and the other episodes would be better.