Greuceanu is a hero of the Romanian folklore. It is a brave young man who finds that the Sun and the Moon have been stolen by zmeu (a serpent/dragon from Romanian folklore). After a long fight with the three zmei and their wives (zmeoaice), Greuceanu sets the Sun and the Moon free so the people on Earth have light again.
"Greuceanu" is also the title of a fairy tale collected by Petre Ispirescu in Legende sau basmele românilor.Petre Ispirescu, Legende sau basmele românilor, Editura Minerva, 1989
Summary In the kingdom of the Red Emperor ("împăratului Roșu"), an ogre has stolen the sun and the moon from the sky, and the Red Emperor promises to give his daughter's hand in marriage and half of his kingdom to anyone brave enough to get them back. A youth named Greuceanu decides to take up on the offer. On his way to the castle, he meets two deserters who are to be beheaded on the king's orders, but Greuceanu thinks he may dissuade the king of his decision and offer them a pardon. The emperor agrees.
Greuceanu takes his brother and visits Faur, the "world's greatest smith" and his sworn brother ("Faurul pământului", in the original). Greuceanu and Faur work together to fashion an iron replica of him. Afterwards, Greuceanu and his brother go to a crossroads and each depart, giving each other a token of life (a kerchief) to signal that one has perished.
Greuceanu reaches the house of the ogre and his family, and turns himself into a dove, perching in a nearby tree. One of the ogresses sees the dove and considers it a bad omen for them. Greuceanu takes the form of a fly, enters the house and spies on their plans. Armed with this new knowledge, he departs to the bridge to the Green Forest, where the ogres will pass, one at evening, another at midnight and the third at dawn.
Time passes, and the ogres (the ogre father and his two sons-in-law) begin to reach the bridge on their horses, just as they have planned. However, each of the ogres' horses alert its rider of Greuceanu's presence. The hero appears and wrestles the three ogres. The last one, the father-ogre, is the fiercest of them all, which Greuceanu has trouble defeating at first. A raven flies over the battle, to whom Greuceanu bids bring him some water to drink, and the raven will gain three ogre corpses to devour.
Greuceanu wins and restores the Sun and the Moon. He returns to the crossroads and meets his brother. They embrace and go home. On the way, they notice a pear tree, and a cold spring of fresh water near a garden. Greuceanu stops his brother from picking up any pear and drinking the water, for they are the ogre's two daughters, disguised as natural things. The hero strikes the pear tree and the stem of a flower in the garden, killing the two ogresses.
Now back on the road, Greuceanu and his brother look behind them and see the mother ogress coming at them like a cloud of smoke. The duo reaches Faur's workshop to put their plan in action: the ogress demands to talk with Greuceanu. Faur and the hero give her the iron likeness to devour, filled with hot coals. The ogress bursts and dies. The trio celebrate their victory.
Greuceanu rides alone to the Red Emperor's kingdom to gain his reward, and meets a lame devil on the road. The lame devil steals Greuceanu's sword, a scimitar (the source of the hero's power), and delivers it to the Emperor's councillor, who has struck a bargain with the devil to take the credit for Greuceanu's job and marry the princess.Vianu, Raymond. Fairy Tales and Legends from Romania. Ardent Media, 1971. pp. 15-26.
Analysis Classification The tale of Greuceanu can be classified in the Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as tale type 328A*, "Three Brothers Steal Back the Sun, Moon and Star".Aarne, Antti; Thompson, Stith. The types of the folktale: a classification and bibliography. Folklore Fellows Communications FFC no. 184. Third Edition. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1973 . p. 120.Uther, Hans-Jörg. The types of International Folktales. A Classification and Bibliography, based on the System of Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson. Volume 1: Animal tales, tales of magic, religious tales, and realistic tales, with an introduction. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia-Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 2004. p. 218. .Ashliman, D. L. A Guide to Folktales in the English Language: Based on the Aarne-Thompson Classification System. Bibliographies and Indexes in World Literature, vol. 11. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1987. p. 72. . The tale also contains type 300A, "Fight on the Bridge", wherein the hero fights three dragons on bridges.Gicu, Daniel. "Who's Telling the Tales? An Analysis of the Sources of Petre Ispirescu's Folk and Fairy Tales". In: Brukenthalia: Romanian Cultural History Review. Supplement of Brukenthal. Acta Musei. No. 2. Sibil/Hermannstadt: Editora Muzeului National Brukenthal. 2012. pp. 60-61. . Romanian scholarship also classifies the tale as types ATU 300A and 328A*, with the last episode falling under type ATU 302B, "(Hero with) Life Dependent on a Sword".Andrei, Alexandru. Valori etice în basmul fantastic românesc. București: Societatea Literară "Relief Românesc", 1979. pp. 229, 266 (footnote nr. 191).Petre Ispirescu - Opere. Volume 1. Ed. Minerva, 1971. p. lxxxviii.
The narrative Hungarian scholar Ágnes Kóvacs recognized some mythical components in the story: the theft of the celestial bodies; the confrontation between heroes and the serpents (dragons, etc.); the revenge of the dragons' wives; the presence of the "World Blacksmith" as the final helper.Kovács Ágnes. "Szépmezőszárnya meséjének magyar redakciói". In: Néprajzi Közlemények V. Évfolyam. 3-4. szám. Kézirat Gyanánt. Budapest: Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum-Néprajzi Múzeum, 1960. pp. 193-195.
According to scholar Linda Dégh, the hero in Hungarian variants can be characterized as a táltos, someone imbued with great power and knowledge, and the blacksmith figure is sometimes described as a smith of God or smith of the world.Dégh, Linda (1965). Folktales of Hungary. University of Chicago Press. pp. 306-307. .
Parallels Similar stories about the theft of celestial bodies and their recovery by a human hero are attested in nearby regions. According to Hungarian scholarship (namely, János Berze Nagy and Ágnes Kovács), versions are attested in Romania, Serbia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Russia, Lithuania, Estonia, as well as some Asian/Siberian variants.Demény, István Pál. "Duel in the Form of a Wheel or Flame in Legends of Belief and Tales". In: Acta Ethnographica Hungarica 48, 3-4 (2003): 357. accessed Aug 21, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1556/AEthn.48.2003.3-4.4
Ágnes Kovács also named this type Szépmezőszárnya ("Beautiful Wing-Field"), with similar tales in Romanian, Czech, Slovak, Ruthenia, Russia, Vogul, Chuvash, Tatar, Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian, Caucasian and South Siberian. German scholar Kurt Ranke is reported to have collected one from East Prussia and another from Schleswig-Holstein.Kovács Ágnes. "Szépmezőszárnya meséjének magyar redakciói". In: Néprajzi Közlemények V. Évfolyam. 3-4. szám. Kézirat Gyanánt. Budapest: Magyar Nemzeti Múzeum-Néprajzi Múzeum, 1960. p. 193.
Hungarian-American scholar Linda Dégh also reported that "parallels" were found in Romania, and stories with its "elements" were located among "the Russians, the Ural-Altaic Turks, and to [the Hungarians'] kindred nations of North Asia".Dégh, Linda (1965). Folktales of Hungary. University of Chicago Press. p. 306. .
Russian folklorist claimed that East Slavic tale type SUS 300A, "Battle on the Bridge" (see below), is "frequent" in East Slavic tales, but located variants in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Livonia.Barag, Lev. Belorussische Volksmärchen. Akademie-Verlag, 1966. p. 594. In addition, according to Barag, in an article in the Enzyklopädie des Märchens, type AaTh 300A* becomes "contaminated" with the release of the celestial lights from devils in Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Czechia, Latvia, Belarus and Ukraine, as well as among the Chuvash and the Mari.Barag, Lev G.. "Drachenkampf auf der Brücke (AaTh 300 A)" [Fight on the Bridge (ATU 300 A)]. In: Enzyklopädie des Märchens Online, edited by Rolf Wilhelm Brednich, Heidrun Alzheimer, Hermann Bausinger, Wolfgang Brückner, Daniel Drascek, Helge Gerndt, Ines Köhler-Zülch, Klaus Roth and Hans-Jörg Uther. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2016 . p. 826. https://doi.org/10.1515/emo.3.148. Accessed 2023-09-06.
Romania Romanian historian Andrei Oișteanu terms this narrative Furarea astrelor or Stealing of the Stars.Oișteanu, Andrei. Motive și semnificații mito-simbolice în cultura tradițională românească [Mytho-Symbolical Motifs and Meanings in Romanian Traditional Culture]. Bucharest: Minerva Publishing House, 1989. p. 16.Oișteanu, Andrei. Cosmos vs. Chaos. Myth and Magic in Romanian Traditional Culture. Bucharest: Romanian Cultural Foundation Publishing House, 1999. p. 58.
In tales In a Muntenian variant collected by Petre Ispirescu with the title Voiniculŭ de plumbă, the Red Emperor's three daughters are kidnapped, and the Sun, the Moon and the Stars also vanish. In the same kingdom, an old man has three sons, the youngest so lazy he spends his days behind the oven, earning his name of "Voiniculŭ de plumbă". He offers to get the princesses back and goes to the Red Emperor to get provisions. He also commissions a large metal mace. Voiniculŭ de plumbă takes his brothers and begins his quest: he passes by a bridge of copper, a bridge of silver and a bridge of gold, and defeats the zmeis there. Later, he turns into a dove and invades the compound of the zmeis' wives and their mother. Still inside the zmeis' house, Voiniculŭ de plumbă breaks open 12 iron locks, and releases the luminaries and the princesses. Voiniculŭ de plumbă convenes with his brothers, and the group makes his way back to the Red Emperor's kingdom, but find on the way a fountain, a rose in bloom and a pear tree with fruits, which are the zmeis' wives in disguise. Voiniculŭ de plumbă strikes them all dead. Then, the zmeis' mother goes after Voiniculŭ de plumbă; he goes to Moşă Călugără, drops a mace into her mouth and kills her. Later, Voiniculŭ de plumbă goes on a quest or Ileana Cosinziana, mistress of the flowers.
In another Romanian variant, Aripă-Frumoasă ("Wing-Beautiful"), three brothers are born on the same day, one in the evening (thus named Evening); another at midnight (thus named Midnight), and lastly the third in the morning (being called Break-of-Day). In this story, their mother reveals to them the king's quest to reclaim the sun, the moon and the star from the hands of the ogres. As they go on their quest, they meet an ogre on a copper horse on the copper bridge; another on a silver horse on the silver bridge, and the third on a gold horse on the golden bridge.
In a tale from Bukovina published by Sbiera with the title Mintă-Creață, Busuioc şi Sucnă-Murgă, the three heroes, named Mintă-Creață, Busuioc and Sucnă-Murgă, find the day star and Saint Peter's Keys to the Kingdom of Heaven, after defeating the villains.Ciubotaru, Silvia. "Elemente de mitologie solară în colindele române" (Eléments de mythologie solaire dans les chansons de Noël). In: Anuarul Muzeului Etnografic al Moldovei [The Yearly Review of the Ethnographic Museum of Moldavia]. 2/2002. pp. 52-53.