“Harap-Alb” (“the White Moor”) is a classic Romanian wonder tale shaped by village storytelling and set down in literary form in the late nineteenth century. It blends familiar European folk-motifs—kindness to humble creatures, the wise crone who aids the hero, a shape-shifting bride, and a band of marvellous companions—with distinctly Romanian flavour: wry humour, rustic speech, and the bright, contradictory name the hero is forced to bear. Though it follows the universal path of the youngest son who goes forth and returns transformed, “Harap-Alb” is decisively itself—earthy, comic, and generous-hearted.
The tale
There was once an emperor with three sons. One day a letter came from his elder brother, the Green Emperor, who had no heir and begged that a nephew be sent to him, “to be my son and successor.” The old man, prudent and proud, would not send a weakling. He tested his boys.
Disguising himself in a rough bear-skin, he crouched in the palace gateway to frighten them as they rode out. The eldest saw the shaggy hulk, wheeled, and fled. The second did no better. The youngest—slight, thoughtful, and slow to boast—would have turned too, had not a bent old woman at the roadside called, “Don’t shame your fate, lad! Meet danger head-on.” He swallowed his fear, lowered his spear, and met the “bear” with a measured blow. His father stumbled back laughing and gasping, “Enough! You have heart; you shall go.”
That same old woman—none other than Saint Sunday in humble guise—met the youth at the palace gates. Because he had greeted her gently, she counselled him kindly: “Choose the sorriest nag and the rustiest gear from your father’s stables. Fine things fail at the first ditch; the shabby ones have their secrets.” In the straw-littered corner the boy found a skin-and-bones horse with one tattered ear and a saddle green with age. At Saint Sunday’s bidding he fed the nag live coals, and the creature shook itself, brightened, and became a steed of fire. “Hold fast, master,” the horse neighed, “and I shall not fail you.”
Thus the youngest set off toward his uncle’s realm. On a blistering noon he came to a well where a smooth-faced stranger lounged—the Spân, the Bald Man, a trickster with eyes like oiled slate.
“Tired, little brother?” the Spân purred. “Let me draw you water.”
He let the youth descend into the well by a rope—and then, with a shrill laugh, he left him there until weariness turned to dread. At last the Bald Man peered over the rim and said, soft and venomous:
“Swear to serve me as your master and to carry my name, and I’ll draw you up. Refuse, and rot at the bottom.”
The boy’s heart knocked within him. He saw that no help was at hand. He swore. With that oath he lost his princely name and gained the bitter, mocking one the Spân chose for him: Harap-Alb—“White Moor”—the name of a slave in a tongue that laughed while it wounded.
So the two went on: the Spân striding ahead in silks, Harap-Alb following as servant. When they reached the Green Emperor’s court, the Spân presented himself as nephew and hero; and the true prince, under his false name, was sent to the kitchens and the errands yard. Yet the Green Emperor, who was no fool, eyed the pair thoughtfully and set trials—“for a nephew of mine,” he said with a smile, “must be stout of hand and straight of heart.” The Spân, fearing exposure, pushed the burdens on his servant.
First he sent Harap-Alb into the far wood to fetch a basket of salad from the Bear-Mother’s garden, a task that had broken many men. “Go,” the Spân sneered, “or lose your head.” Saint Sunday’s counsel saved him again. “Be gentle to the small, and the great will spare you,” she had said; and that very day, because he lifted aside a burning log from an ants’ hill, the Ant-Queen came with a black river of her folk to gnaw a path through the thorny garden. When the Bear-Mother rushed bellowing, Harap-Alb’s fire-horse struck sparks that dazzled her, and the salad was won.
Then the Spân demanded birds’ milk, “since princes are fed from high and not from low.” Harap-Alb, who had shared his last crumbs with a bee trembling in the road dust, found that same Bee-Queen guiding him to the hidden nest where the miraculous milk lay; and he returned alive where others had perished. The Green Emperor murmured, “So—there is more to the ‘servant’ than meets the eye.”
At last the Spân dared the boldest theft of all. “Go to Red Emperor’s land,” he ordered Harap-Alb, “and bring me his daughter to wife. Return without her, and you die.” The fire-horse tossed its mane. “Hold fast, master,” it said. “This is the road to your fortune.”
The five marvellous companions
On that long road the hero gathered a fellowship such as only wonder-tales know. First he met a gaunt fellow chewing a stone.
“What man are you?” asked Harap-Alb.
“Flămânzilă,” said he. “Hunger-Gullet. When I eat, a dozen ovens faint.”
Next came a hollow-eyed man gulping a brook dry.
“And you?”
“Setilă. Thirst-Gullet. I drink lakes like saucers.”
Then a blue-lipped fellow who breathed on a green tree until it crackled with rime. “Gerilă,” he grinned. “Frostbite. I can freeze midsummer.”
A squinting man appeared, peering at a hill as though at an ant. “Ochilă,” he said. “Sharp-Eyes. I can see the flea’s thoughts.”
And finally a lanky stripling stretched an arm so far it plucked a bird from a cloud. “Păsări-Lăţi-Lungilă,” he laughed—“Wide-Palm Long-Reach, who catches birds by hand.”
“These are wonders,” Harap-Alb said, “but I need friends more than marvels.” He shared his bread, and they shared their powers.
The wooing of Red Emperor’s daughter
Red Emperor, proud and wary, did not give his daughter away for the first cap-and-feather that knocked. He set tasks—and his daughter, quick as quicksilver, sharpened them.
“Let your man eat what my bakers bake,” she said, and they rolled out a mountain of loaves, more than a granary could supply. Flămânzilă sat down and ate until he sighed, “A bite would go well after that.” The court gaped.
“Let him drink what my cellars hold.” Setilă lifted a cask, then a tun, then the moat itself; when he wiped his mouth, the fountains sucked air.
“Let him sit in my bath,” said the princess, and they stoked the furnace under the copper tub till the water reeled. Gerilă stepped in whistling and breathed frost on the brazen lip; steam curdled into snowflakes.
“Let him find me, if he can.” The princess turned into a lark and flew—higher, further—until only a fleck moved in the sun. “There,” said Ochilă, pointing without haste. Păsări-Lăţi-Lungilă’s arm uncoiled to the horizon and closed gently upon a bird that became a laughing girl in his hand.
“Let him keep guard,” she said last, with a sideways look at Harap-Alb, “for if I slip him once he dies.” At midnight she crumbled poppy into sand, scattered millet into ash, and hid a ring in the belly of the sea. Harap-Alb felt his head loosen on his neck. But the Ant-Queen came in a black whisper and sorted seed from seed by dawn. The Bee-Queen lit on the true maiden’s brow when ten brides were dressed alike. And the Crab-King—because Harap-Alb had once set him back in the water instead of letting him dry on a fisherman’s pier—rose from the green depths with a pearl-pale ring in his claw.
Red Emperor stroked his beard. “Well, well,” he said to his daughter. “A servant who does such things is a prince in a thin coat.”
She had already seen as much. On the road back she leaned from the litter and said softly:
“Harap-Alb, I know a free man in a slave’s name when I see him. Bear yourself a little longer; I shall bring truth to light.”
Death and rising
At the Green Emperor’s court the Spân, seeing triumph near, ordered haste to the wedding feast. Yet jealousy pinched him as the princess’s eyes sought the servant. He led Harap-Alb aside to the orchard gate. “Do you remember our oath at the well?” he asked pleasantly.
“I remember,” said Harap-Alb.
“Then kneel and lay your neck on the block, as a sign that you are mine to life and death.”
Harap-Alb, bound by his own word, knelt. The Spân drew his sword and with one wicked stroke struck off the young man’s head. He wiped the blade, called for wine, and went in to the feast.
The princess stepped out into the dusk and found the faithful horse pawing the earth beside the fallen body.
“Is there no help?” she cried.
“There is,” said the steed, “if there is courage. Fetch me Water of Death and Water of Life from the springs beyond the nine lands and the nine seas.” He stamped; the world bent; and in a heartbeat he returned with two flasks—one that seals what is torn, one that wakes what is sealed.
The princess set the head upon the body, sprinkled Water of Death, and the cut closed as if sewn by angels. She sprinkled Water of Life, and colour stormed back into the young man’s cheeks. Harap-Alb opened his eyes. The horse snorted like a trumpet.
Justice and joy
Next day, at the height of the feast, the princess turned smiling to the Spân. “My lord,” she said sweetly, “we have a country custom. When a great deed is done, we show it upon the body so that all may trust the tale. Tell us, how did your servant swear at the well?”
The Spân, drunk with confidence, laughed. “Why, so,” he said, and he knelt and put his neck on the block. Quick as thought, the fire-horse’s iron hoof pinned him. Harap-Alb rose, bright as noon, took the sword that had slain him, and said in a voice all the hall could hear:
“What a man does to another, let him first dare to himself.”
And with one clean stroke he took the Spân’s head, as the law of tales demands. The Green Emperor embraced his true nephew. Red Emperor’s daughter crowned him with her own hands, saying simply, “Now you are yourself.”
The wedding was held with all splendour. The marvellous companions ate and drank till the kitchens ran out of astonishment; the Bee-Queen hummed in the rafters; the Ant-Queen carried crumbs like ships. As for Harap-Alb, he shed the slave’s name and kept it too, for memory: a scar become a crest.
And if you had been there, you would have heard the steed neigh to the bright, blue air:
“Hold fast, master—hold fast, and never fear.”
They lived long and wisely; and the tale, once told by firelight, still warms whoever listens.
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