Dănilă Prepeleac facts for kids
"Dănilă Prepeleac" ( occasionally translated as "Danilo the Pole", "Dănilă Haystack-Peg" or "Danillo Nonsuch") is an 1876 fantasy short story and fairy tale by Romanian author Ion Creangă, with a theme echoing influences from local folklore. The narrative is structured around two accounts. In the first part, the eponymous peasant hero, shown to be poor, lazy and silly, exposes his incompetence and lack of foresight by becoming in involved in a cycle of barters, which results in him exchanging a pair of oxen for an empty bag. The second portion of the text shows Dănilă's adventures inside a forest, where he decides to become a hermit, unwitting that the land is inhabited by an army of devils. Confronted by the latter, he survives a set of challenges by outsmarting his adversaries, and, although losing one eye to demonic curses, he becomes the recipient of a large fortune awarded by Satan himself.
Noted among samples of 19th century Romanian humor, "Dănilă Prepeleac" earned critical attention for its creative language, the defining traits of its main characters, and echoes of larger themes found throughout European folklore. It also inspired works in other media, such as a 1996 film by Moldovan director Tudor Tătaru.
Name
Prepeleac itself is a Romanian-language word of unattested origin, designating slim wooden poles or pegs. These are used in rural society either for stacking hay (according to a traditional method in which the pole rises above and in the middle of the rounded pile) or for drying out freshly made pottery.
The story carries the name of its main character. The word Dănilă originates with either a hypocorism (the personal name Dan, which changes form after being added the diminutive suffix -ilă) or an antiquated version of the name Daniel (akin to Danilo). According to one fragment of the story, Prepeleac is the character's nickname, because adding a prepeleac was his only contribution to his family's wealth.
Plot summary
Dănilă's misfortunes
The plot of "Dănilă Prepeleac" centers on its eponymous hero, the youngest of two brothers. Unlike his sibling, depicted as a well-to-do peasant (chiabur) and a hardworking man, the destitute Dănilă is also "lazy" and "lackadaisical", resorting to borrowing from his relatives whatever he lacks around the house. The two are each married, and, while Dănilă's wife has all the qualities he lacks, the older brother's is a "shrew". Heeding the advice of his mean wife and upset at always having to provide for Dănilă, the older brother asks him to change his ways. He suggests that Dănilă should sell his only valuable possession, an outstanding pair of oxen, and use the money to buy himself smaller working animals and a cart. The younger brother decides to do so, but on his way to the fair he falls victim to a string of unfair exchanges, partly motivated by his naïvite and indolence. When his oxen have some trouble climbing a hill, he sells them to a passer-by in exchange for a new cart, which he then proceeds to drag on his way to the fair. He then finds himself facing another slope, and frustration leads him to sell the vehicle to another peasant, in exchange for a goat. This trade as well leaves him unsatisfied, as the animal keeps twitching about, and he sells it for a goose. The bird's loud honks annoy him, and, once he has reached the fair, Dănilă exchanges it for an empty bag. After analyzing the chain of events which has led him to transact two oxen for a useless item, he grows despondent and concludes that "the devil [was] o' top o' me all this bargaining day".
Scolded by his brother upon returning home, Prepeleac persuades him to lend him a cart for a final time, and uses it to collect firewood. Once in the forest, he carelessly proceeds to chop of a fully grown tree, which cracks the vehicle and kills the oxen upon falling down. While contemplating the thought of not informing his brother of the loss (and instead deciding to steal his mare and ride his family out into the open world), the protagonist loses his way out of the woods. He arrives on the shore of a pond, where he attempts to hunt coots by throwing his axe at them, with the only result of this being that the tool falls to the bottom. After making his way home, he abides by his earlier plan, telling his brother that the oxen are stuck in thick mud, and that he needs the mare to get them out. His sibling angrily refuses, telling Dănilă that he is unfit for "the worldly life" and urging him to withdraw as an Orthodox hermit. Dănilă instead steals his brother's mare and sets back for the pond, where he aims to start searching for his axe.
Dănilă and the devils
Back in the forest, Dănilă comes to see truth in his brother's advice, and decides to build his own monastery on the spot. While selecting trees to chop down, he runs into a devil "who'd come up fresh from the pond's waters." After engaging the man in conversation, the creature is terrified by his prospects, but fails to convince him that Hell owns both the pond and the forest surrounding it. He runs back to Satan (referred to under the Romanian alternative Scaraoschi), who decides to let Dănilă have a barrel-full of coins in exchange for leaving the place. While the recipient of this gift ponders about how to take the barrel home, Satan's envoy challenges him to a contest of powers. The junior devil proves his own by circling the pond with the mare on his back. Dănilă then tricks him by riding the horse around the same perimeter, and claiming to have been the one carrying it with the inside of his thighs. Prepeleac refuses to take part in the devil's next challenge, which involves a sprint, claiming that it is too much beneath his abilities. Instead, he invites him to race his "youngest child", in reality a rabbit resting in the forest, and then watches as the devil fails to keep up with the animal. Dănilă employs the same type of ruse when the devil asks him to wrestle, by demanding that his interlocutor first try his hand at pinning down "an uncle o' mine, 999 years and 52 weeks of age", and then leading him into a bear's cave. Ruffled up and defeated by the beast, the devil then agrees to Prepeleac's next contest, a shrieking challenge. After listening to the impressive sounds bellowed by the creature and claiming to be unimpressed, the peasant warns him that his own shriek is capable of destroying a brain, and tells him that he should only witness it while blindfolded and with his ears muffled. The devil allows Dănilă to tie a rag over his eyes and ears, after which the protagonist repeatedly hits him over the temples with an oak beam, implying that this is the unheard sound of his own shriek. The terrified creature then runs back into Hell.
The angry Satan sends out another one of his servants, who challenges Prepeleac to a mace-throwing contest. The newly arrived devil demonstrates his power by throwing the object as high up into the sky as to render it invisible to the naked eye, and it takes three full days for the mace to come back down and tunnel to the Earth's core. While his adversary retrieves the weapon, Dănilă desperately ponders a new ruse. Eventually, he tells the devil that he will aim the mace in the direction of the Moon, where his "brothers" the Moon men will catch it, being "in great need for iron to shoe their horses." The alarmed devil pleads with him not to dispose of "an heirloom from our forefather", quickly retrieving the mace and running with it back into the water. This prompts Satan to call upon his soldiers, sending the most skilled among them to do away with the peasant. He decides to confront Dănilă in a contest of curses and spells. He is first to try, and manages to pop out one of Dănilă Prepeleac's eyes (described by the narrator as just retribution for Prepeleac's wrongdoing). The wounded protagonist then tells his adversary that, in order to fulfill his part of the challenge, he must be taken back to his house, where he has left curses and spells inherited from his forefathers. The devil solves his problems by carrying him and his treasure on his back, and, upon reaching his home, Prepeleac calls on his wife and children to come out with the curses, specifying that he means a dog-collar with spikes and the iron combs used for combing. His many young boys then use pounce on the devil and start scraping his skin with the combs. The wounded and terrified creature vanishes, while Dănilă is left to enjoy his treasure "well into his old age".
