to view full paper

needles and die. 19 The girl’s transformation into a hare describes a lack of role for her as a
female who is more physically strong and more capable than men in the society. In most tales,
she has to die and her body to be carried away on elk’s antlers to another land, where, when a
hunter shoots the elk, she is reborn a beautiful maiden whom the hunter or a khan marries. She is
eventually reunited with her brother through her son(s).
A husband in a heroic tale translated in another endangered Turkic language, the Shor
language of the Altay region, needs rescuing through cross-dressing. “Оленг-Тайджи [Oleng-
Taygi]” is named after the protagonist’s husband, even though the tale is definitely focused on
the wife. The wife impersonates her husband at a wedding feast of a neighboring khan, when her
husband ignores the invitation—something that she considers incorrect and dangerous. Not
simply her sartorial transformation of getting into her military garb is presented, but a corporeal
one as well, and it is described in great detail, for example, the floor made out of forty (i.e.
infinite) layers of fired clay bends like a soft leather belt under her heroic weight. Her conduct is
male as well: On the way to the wedding feast, she acquires a sworn brother (a common motif in
heroic tales for batyrs, Motif P311.1.). She becomes instrumental in the plot, when she, as a
senior batyr in her husband’s guise, announces that the bride belongs not to the arranged suitor
but to that sworn brother. (Here is an echo of the motif of a female batyr obtaining a bride for a
brother, a sworn brother in this case.) But as a result, the wife finishes being gone longer than
expected, and her reward is beatings from her husband for her absence. This ideal wife takes the
beatings in stride and softens the husband by her meekness, restoring the domestic harmony. 20
19
“Алтан-Сэсэк и его сестра Эрмэльжин-Гохон-Абаха [Altan-Sesek and his sister Ermelzhin-gokhon-abakha]”
in Ibid., 90-91.
20
In in Кан-Алтай, Алтайские героические сказания в записях XIX-XX вв. [Kan-Altai: Altaic heroic tales
collected in the XIX and XX centuries] edited by Anatolyi Prelovsky (Moscow: Novyi klyuch, 2007), 109-122.
9