Hungarian Folk Tales
Hungarian Folk Tales (Magyar népmesék) is a 8-season Hungarian animated series produced by Pannonia Film Studio. It adapts traditional folk tales, many being variants of more well-known stories. It ran from 1977 to 2011, with a total of 100 episodes.
A few episodes were dubbed for two different episodes of the American TV series Long Ago and Far Away
in 1989 and '90, and the full series was uploaded to YouTube in 2017 with a different English dub. Some of the episodes were also translated into Spanish.
Hungarian Folk Tales provides examples of:
- Age Lift: In "One-Eye, Two-Eyes, Three-Eyes", the birth placement is switched around. Two-Eyes is now the youngest child instead of the middle child in the original story, One-Eye is now the middle child instead of the eldest, and Three-Eyes is now the eldest child instead of the youngest.
- Animorphism: In "The Little Puli Dog", the villain is turned into a Puli dog.
- Back from the Dead: If the hero or heroine dies, they will get better:
- In "The Two Princes with Hair of Gold", the evil iron-toothed witch buries the princes in then garden. They become trees, beds, kids and fishes, eventually regaining their human form.
- Bears Are Bad News:
- In "Starving Matthias", the eponymous protagonist tricks the Devil into wrestling with a bear.
- In "The Giant Tree", the Dragon's strength is kept inside a box in a giant bear's head.
- Big Brother Bully: Regularly goes hand in hand with Youngest Child Wins in many of the tales. If a group of siblings aren't working together towards a common goal or interest you can bet that the older siblings will serve as either The Rival or an antagonist to the younger ones. There are even stories where the older siblings straight up murder their young sibling for some petty reason or another, though viewers can expect things to ultimately be set right by the end.
- Big Red Devil: Most of the devils and similar supernatural entities take the form of red humanoid men with the classic demonic characteristics. A few of the "dragons" that appear also share a lot of similarities to this trope as well.
- Brainy Pig: In "The Little Pig and the Wolves", the little pig is a trickster who outsmarts the wolves several times.
- Cool Horse:
- In "The Giant Tree", the hero meets an apparently skinny and weak horse that turns into a five-legged steed with Super-Speed when it eats embers.
- In "The Simple Prince", John tames and bridles a magic horse, and is given three whistles to summon three horses (one copper, one silver, one golden). Later, he rides the horses to climb a very high and steep glass mountain.
- Deal with the Devil: A couple of stories have guile heroes cheating devils after making some kind of a pact with them. In at least one case its implied that divine intervention saved their young child in the form of a couple of wise men who distracted the devil with a talking loaf of bread until morning.
- The Devil Is a Loser:
- The devil appears as an antagonist in some episodes, such as "Starving Matthias", but is always outsmarted by the protagonist.
- In "The Contrary Wife and the Devil", a man gets rid of his obnoxious wife and lets her literally go to the devil. This situation turns out quite unpleasantly... for the devil.
- Disproportionate Retribution: In "The Star-Eyed Shepherd", the evil king executes everyone who doesn't say "Bless you!" when he sneezes.
- Dragons Prefer Princesses: The anthropomorphic dragons usually intend to marry the princesses they kidnap.
- The Face of the Sun: The Sun has a face in some episodes. In the episode where the fox goes from house to house to get poultry and pigs to eat, the sun's expression changes from happy in the first day, to neutral in the second day, to angry in the third day. In the last one, it starts giggling when the fox is attacked by two dogs, having been tricked that he received two fat pigs in his bag.
- Fallen Princess: A quite literal version of this trope happens in "The Salt Princess" where a king asks his young daughters to tell him how much they love him to decide their inheritance. When the titular princess replies that she loves her father as much as the people love salt he perceives it as an insult rather than a compliment and banishes her from the kingdom. Fortunately for her a young prince soon finds her in the woods, takes her as his wife and invites her father over to show him the grave mistake he had made.
- Fantastic Foxes: In "The Fox Princess", the protagonist is helped by a shapeshifting fox.
- Fed to the Beast: The villainous king attempts to do this to the eponymous shepherd in "The Star-Eyed Shepherd", first tossing him into a pit full of boars, then locks him in a tower full of bats and owls. Each time he stops the beasts by playing his flute.
- Floating Limbs: There is a Running Gag where elderly kings are depicted with a bell-shaped body and two floating hands. The only exception is King Mathias, who makes occasional appearances in a few episodes.
- Forbidden Fruit: In "The Diligent Girl and the Lazy Girl", the girls are forbidden to enter one of the rooms in the fairies' house. The diligent girl obeys, but the lazy girl can't resist the urge to look and ends up paying the price.
- Full-Boar Action: In the tale "The Star-Eyed Shepherd", a brave shepherd gets tossed into a pit full of boars. He survives it by playing his flute, making the boars dance to the tune.
- Gag Dub: Three episodes, "Angel Lambs", "Stone Soup" and "The Little Pig and the Wolves", got hilarious Hungarian parody dubs by Youtube user Dandozolika.
- Gender Flip:
- "The Simple Prince" is the male version of "Cinderella".
- "The Witch" is a variant of "Beauty and the Beast", with a princess turned into an old hag and a young boy with two jealous older brothers.
- Go Seduce My Archnemesis: In "The Giant Tree", the protagonist asks the princess to find out the weakness of the dragon by seducing him.
- Have a Gay Old Time: Though produced in 2008, "Pepper Pot Peter" kept the original story's terminology. Köcsög traditionally means jug or pot and is used in the story to denote the hero's diminutive size. But the word is more commonly used as a rude synonym of "jerk". The narrator doubling down on calling him a "little köcsög" in a cheeky tone brings this close to an intentional example. The English dub of course stays clear of all this.
- Hell Hound: In "The Soldier's Luck", a soldier finds a box that can summon three giant black dogs that serve him and grant his wishes.
- Historical Domain Character: King Matthias Corvinus appears in several episodes, usually as The Good King but with a mischievous trickster mentality, challenging peasants to mind games.
- Humiliation Conga: The lazy girl in "The Lazy Girl and the Diligent Girl"; unlike her diligent stepsister, the lazy girl doesn't want to help anyone because she doesn't want to get dirty. When she works for the same fairies her stepsister worked for, she disobeys a rule about going into a forbidden room and gets bitten and stung by several dangerous animals. After she is sent home, she is denied food and drinks and gets chased by a dog.
- Impossible Task: The various kings seem to be pretty fond of giving these out to test their subjects, including the legendary King Matthias Corvinus himself. Usually, this is done for the sake of either trapping their subject or finding out if they're worthy to receive a reward such as their daughter's hand in marriage or a kingdom to rule over.
- Informed Species: The pelican looks like any generic fantasy bird with a normal-sized beak. This is justified though, as the episode in question follows the depictions of pelicans found in medieval bestiaries and religious imagery. People, especially from landlocked countries where pelicans were rare, used to believe these birds bled themselves dry to feed their young, making them symbols of Christ, while their real-life traits were ignored.
- Karmic Jackpot: The diligent girl in "The Lazy Girl and the Diligent Girl" helps a pear tree, a grapevine, an outdoor oven, a well, and a dirty dog, then works for a family of fairies for a year. Once the year is up, the fairies let her take home several coins. Then the dog who helps her lets her take some pearls growing in his fur. Then the oven, the well, the grapevine, and the pear tree reward her with food and drinks to take home with her.
- Manly Facial Hair: Due to the simple and heavily stylized art of the series most adult men (and older teens) are visually distinguished by their large manly mustaches and beards. This even carries over to some of the monsters that appear with both devils and dragons having big bushy mustaches to highlight their violent and ruthless natures.
- Mickey Mousing: There is music used instead of sound effects in all episodes.
- Morphic Resonance: In one tale, a shapeshifting Fantastic Fox disguises itself as a princess, but her true identity is revealed because she has fox eyes. The fox's other morphs also have some vulpine features, but this is the only one that is relevant to the plot.
- Music Soothes the Savage Beast: In "The Star-Eyed Shepherd", the protagonist survives both a boar pit and a flock of bats and owls by playing his flute, which makes the beasts dance.
- Narrator: All episodes are narrated by a single storyteller, who also voices every character in the episode.
- Nipple and Dimed:
- In "The Princess Three Pigs and Three Birthmarks", the protagonist asks the princess to show her stomach and breasts in exchange for selling her the dancing pigs. Two of the three birthmarks depict the moon and the sun, and they're right over her nipples.
- In "The Mayor's Clever Daughter", the titular character is given a riddle by the king: she must come to honor him, but she may not come on foot, ride on an animal, or sit in a coach, she must bring tribute and must not, and she must not come either dressed or naked. As if trying to mock the trope, she solves the last part by dressing down to her undershirt on top, and nothing below the waist, showcasing her buttocks and pubic hair. When the king asks why she chose to hide her bosom, instead of her private parts, she answers that her privates were gifts from God, while it was her who grew her breasts, so she's ashamed of them.
- Not Quite Dead: In "Cerceruska", the heroine's stepmother tries to drown her. Fortunately, a fish swallows her whole, and her husband rescues her.
- Off with His Head!: A fairly common occurrence when the protagonist has to deal with a dangerous supernatural entity or monster, though this fate has also happened to regular human beings as well. There are even some cases of heads being split in half.
- Our Dragons Are Different: Dragons are more or less humanoid, clothed, ride horses and fight with swords. They almost always have multiple heads. They often want to marry the princess they keep captive.
- Pals with Jesus:
- The titular heroine of "Cinderella" is helped by God himself (rather than a fairy godmother) to attend Mass (instead of a royal ball) where she was forbidden to go by her Wicked Stepmother.
- In "The Little Puli Dog", Jesus blesses a child with the powers to perform miracles. The villain of the story kidnaps the child to exploit his powers.
- Plant Person: The rose bush in "Green Peter" transforms into a more humanoid form when the titular hero gives her some water to keep her from withering away. This proves to be a very wise decision on his part as she is the one to save him from being found by the princess later in the story via hiding him inside herself and temporarily blinding the princess with her light.
- Rags to Riches: Even if a protagonist doesn't become king or get to marry a princess there's still a pretty high chance of them walking away from the story with at least a good bit of wealth, treasure or a magical item for their trouble. This is an especially common outcome for poor peasant/farmer types.
- Rags to Royalty: The protagonist of the stories is often a young peasant who in the end becomes a king as part of his Standard Hero Reward.
- Reverse Psychology: In "The Contrary Wife and the Devil", a man uses this to trick and get rid of his wife, who stubbornly does the opposite of whatever she's told.
- Rule of Three: Often the story is about three siblings (from which the Youngest Child Wins), or the protagonist has three helpers, or there are three villains (each more powerful than the previous one).
- Savage Wolves: Wolves often appear in antagonistic roles in the episodes that star animals.
- Sex Shifter: Like many folklore fox spirits the fox in "The Fox Princess" has a very fluid sense of gender. In fox form the English dub at least doesn't mention their gender at all, but they shape shift into several humans (though with some fox traits remaining) including a young man, an old man who is a cobbler, and a beautiful young princess.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: "The Hen and the Sloe Berry" ends like this. When the Hen chokes on a sloe berry, the Rooster goes through a Chain of Deals to get some water for her, but unfortunately it takes too long and by the time he gets the water, she's already dead.
- Shapeshifting Lover: "The Pussycat Princess" is a variant on this tale where the youngest of three princes follows an arrow and, whilst his older brothers find two noblewomen he finds a stray cat in the forest - his father the king instructs each prince to marry who the arrow pointed too so he ends up engaged to the cat who turns out to be a princess under a curse.
- Shout-Out: "Cinderella" is based on the Baranya variant of the famous fairy tale, where the prince recognizes the heroine without any help. The episode borrows the Disney/Perrault ending with the prince using a glass slipper.
- Stingy Jack: In "Starving Matthias", Matthias tricks a devil into giving him 200 pounds of gold, and when the others try to take it back, he tricks them too, and does so, so successfully, they eventually conclude that "he's a bigger devil than all of them". Unfortunately for Matthias, after he dies, Saint Peter won't let him enter Heaven, because he was "pals with the devils", while the devils won't let him enter Hell, because they're still afraid of him. So he's stuck sitting in front of the Gates of Heaven for eternity.
- Stone Soup: In "Stone Soup", a returning soldier uses the soup stone to trick a stingy old woman into sharing her hoarded food, and sells it for 100 florins.
- Soul Jar: In "The Giant Tree", the dragon can be defeated only by destroying a box of bugs that is inside the head of a hare, which is inside the head of a bear.
- Taken for Granite: Many of the characters end up getting turned to stone through various means in several of the stories. Usually, they do something stupid to deserve it such as offending a magical entity.
- Talking Animal: Many of the tales feature this in one form or another. Sometimes its justified by some kind of magic either giving the animal the power to speak or a regular person the ability to understand it. Other times its just treated as a completely natural thing with humans and animals both being able to understand each other perfectly.
- Wicked Witch: A must, given that these are adaptations of old Hungarian folktales. Some examples:
- In The Prince who Turned into Stone, a prince goes to hunt some game for the king, his father-in-law, and meets an old woman on a tree. The old woman tricks the prince into petrifying his three animals companions, then uses the same trick on the prince himself.
- World Tree: The titular tree in "The Giant Tree", which has a whole kingdom on one of its leaves.
- Youngest Child Wins: A very common trope in the episodes. The youngest child's elder sisters can either be cruel or decent, but at the end, the youngest child usually gets the riches or rewards. An example of an Adaptational Youngest Child includes One Eyed, Two Eyed, Three Eyed, which has Two Eyed as the youngest child, instead of the middle child from the original Grimm's tale.
