Beschrijving
The youth's clever answers to the king' questions (1 1/2 men and the horse's head, etc. [H561.4, H583]). Among the riddles are: (a1) What do you see? - 1 1/2 men and horse's head (himself, the legs of the king who is horseback in the door way, and the horse's head [H583.1]) or (a2) Are you alone at home? - Not now; I see the half of two quadrupeds (the king's legs and the fore legs of the horse [H583.1.1]); (b) What are you doing? - I boil those coming and going (beans that keep rising and falling in the water [H583.6]); (c) What is your father doing? - He is in the vineyard and is doing good and bad (prunes vines but sometimes cuts good ones and leaves the bad [H583.2]); (d) What is your mother doing? - At daybreak she baked the bread we ate last week; in the morning she cut off the heads of the well to cure the sick; now she is striking the hungry and compelling the satiated to eat (she bakes bread to repay that borrowed from neighbors last week; she cuts off the chicken's head so as to feed her sick mother; she drives away the hungry hens and stuffs the geese [H583.4]); (e) What is your brother doing? - He hunts; he throws away what he catches, and what he does not catch he carries with him (hunts for lice on his body [H583.3]). (For further details see H583.1-H583.6).
Subgenre
sprookje
Literatuur
*BP II 359
*De Vries FFC LXXIII 116ff.
Krohn FFC XCVI 154ff.
*Espinosa II 144ff.
Wesselski Märchen 227
*Basset 1001 Contes II 41
Köhler-Bolte I 84, *87, 151ff.
*Anderson FFC XLII 356 n. 2.