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Tuesday, July 26, 2022

The Flame-Red Fairy King: a short and weird Hungarian folktale translation

I was commissioned to translate another Hungarian folktale text, so I'm putting it up as a resource too.

The Flame-Red Fairy King 

Once upon a time there was a fairy king, who, for being completely red all over, was called Flame-Red Fairy King, and whomever he touched, he immediately burned. Once upon a time he had a daughter named Tündér Ilona (Fairy Ilona). Once, the devil in the disguise of a merchant asked for Ilona's hand in marriage, and having won her, he took her on his ship to a forest castle by the water, where he had four other ladies locked up in a room. To the same place he invited all the other fairies along with the Fairy King, claiming that he wanted them to visit his wife, but when they arrived, he attempted to murder the Fairy King. However, when he touched the king, he was immediately burned, and the fairies killed him. They kept the castle to themselves, but that magic building collapsed on them, killing all the fairies.

From Ipolyi Arnold's collection.
Text collected by Károly Weber in Szeged, Hungary, in 1835.

Someone needs to turn it into... dunno. A novel, or a movie, or something. Fill in the blanks. :)

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