The Horse Lurja (, ; Russian: "Конь Лурджа", "Horse Lurja") is a Georgian folktale published by Georgian folklorist . It tells the story about the friendship between a princess and a magic horse, which sacrifices itself for her after it rescues her from great peril. Although the tale appears in Georgia, some scholars recognize similar narratives in Central Asia and across Europe.
Summary
A king and a queen have a beautiful daughter. One day, an old witch tells the queen she and her husband can regain their youth if they kill their daughter and eat her liver and heart. The princess talks to her pet horse, Lurja, and confides in it about the murderous plan. The horse advises her to trick her parents: she is to ask the king and the queen to be dressed as a man and for her to take a ride on the horse to see the world before she dies.
It happens as the horse predicts and the princess seizes the opportunity to escape to another kingdom, in a male disguise. In this new kingdom, the king's son invites her to a hunt. The king's son suspects she is a girl, but his mother insists otherwise and tells him to test her: first by racing; then by going to the war treasury and choose what most appeals to a masculine mind.
The princess is eventually unmasked, but marries the king's son as she is. Her husband is invited as guest to another king, and borrows his wife's horse, Lurja. While he is away, she gives birth to a golden-haired son and writes a letter to him. A royal messenger takes the letter to deliver to the prince, but he spends the night in a house, where the contents of the letter are altered to say she gave birth to an abomination. The prince receives the letter and writes back that she and her son are to be kept safe until his return. The messenger passes by the same house, and the prince's letter is falsified with a command to burnt the princess and her son in an oven.
The horse Lurja senses that something is wrong with the princess and, despite one leg being tied to a pole, breaks free and races to the save the princess. He reaches the princess in the nick of time, on three legs, takes the princess and her son, and flies far away. At a safe distance, the horse realizes that being a three-legged beast is of no use to the princess, and urges her to kill it, place its three legs on three corners and its head in the middle. Reluctantly, she follows the horse's instructions and chants a spell; a temple is built in their place. The princess raises her son in this new place.
Meanwhile, the prince returns home and learns of the exchanged letters, and falls into despair, thinking that his wife and son were burnt in the oven. His father, the king, seeing his son's grief, decides to wander the world in search of his daughter-in-law and grandson. He eventually reaches the temple and meets his grandson and his mother.
Analysis
Tale type
Georgian scholar T. Kurdovanitze identified a new tale type, not listed in the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index: a magical horse helps mother and son escape from burning and rides into the unknown with them; later, parts of its body (entrails, horsehide, etc.) transform into a castle to shelter mother and son, and her husband finds them.
This tale is classified by Georgian scholarship as an independent tale type in the Georgian Folktale Index, numbered -538*, "The Beauty and her Horse", with 12 variants listed.
Other regions
In a 2013 article, researcher Veronica Muskheli, from University of Washington, took notice of a cycle of stories that she located in Central Asia. In this narrative, which she named Woman's Magical Horse, the heroine rides her magical horse to escape from a great evil, usually wears masculine clothes, and eventually finds a husband. The horse eventually perishes after helping the heroine one last time and she uses the horse's remains to build a new home for her.
According to Basque researcher , Italian folklorist located stories of the crossdressing heroine, her helpful horse and the flight from an unwanted menstruous suitor in Italy, Catalonia and Basque Country - which corresponds to Type C in Lo Nigro's study.
In a study about the European cycle of La Doncella Guerrera ("The Warrior Maiden"), French historian identified a second form of the cycle, which he termed La fille qui a épousé le diable (English: "The girl who married the devil"). In this form, the crossdressing heroine is still put to the test of her gender, but she is helped by her faithful magic horse. Delpech also concluded that the heroine's horse is the one that rescues her from a terrible marriage with a supernatural being and sets her up with a beneficial human partner.