D is for the Diamond Prince in a Rubber Suit (WTF Hungary - Weird Things in Hungarian Folktales)

Welcome to this year's A to Z Challenge titled WTF Hungary - Weird Things in Hungarian Folktales! You can find all other participating blogs on the A to Z Challenge main blog.

I came across this one while browsing through the Hungarian Folktale Catalog. It is the kind of title that makes you go "wait... what?", and of course I had to go look up the actual story.

The folktale comes from Chibed in Transylvania; it was collected from a Hungarian-speaking Roma storyteller lady named Ötvös Sára in the middle of the last century (see the book here). It starts out pretty conventionally, as per folktale tropes: An old woman finds a red flower that turns into a beautiful girl, whom she adopts as her own daughter.

And then, one day, the Rubber Man shows up to claim her as his wife.

Of course Marvel has a
diamond superhero (duh)

At first, the old woman's husband chases the Rubber Man away. However, he returns later, when only the girl is at home, and reveals himself to be a Diamond Prince, who only wears the rubber suit to protect himself from all the assassination attempts he had been dealing with since his childhood. This way, all knives, swords, and other weapons simply bounce off him.

The girl, of course, gladly marries the Diamond Prince. The rest of the story tells about how the Prince has to go to battle against his long-time enemies, and how he wins the fight by wearing his rubber suit that bounces off all swords, spears, and arrows. He becomes a hero and a king, and lives happily ever after.

I have two thoughts on this story:
1. What a beautiful metaphor for mental self-defense ("I am rubber, you are glue", anyone?)
2. This tale must have been born at a time when rubber was something new, exciting, and possibly half-magical.

Come on, we were all thinking it.