V is for Villain turned into a puli dog (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.

This tale, titled The Puli Dog, was collected in 1956 from Kis Miklós in Tyukod.

Our Lord Jesus and Saint Peter are traveling the world, and they are welcomed into a rich man's house for the night. In exchange for the hospitality, they decide in the morning to give the man a son, a boy whose every wish will come true. They are overheard by a servant, János. When the baby is born, János steals it, and frames the mother by sprinkling chicken blood on her bed.

The rich man thinks she ate her own baby, and orders her to be buried alive.

Meanwhile, János flees abroad with the baby. The moment the boy is old enough to speak, János tells him what to wish for - a palace, riches, etc., - and they soon grow rich. János marries a princess. One day, she asks him what the source of his wealth is, and János tells the whole story. The boy overhears it, and grows angry. He turns János into a puli dog, and sets out to find his parents.

On the way home, every time he stops for the night, he orders food for himself, and burning embers for the puli. Everyone says "I have never seen such a pretty dog fed on embers before!" to which he always responds "Have you ever seen a woman buried alive?" Eventually, someone says yes, and the boy finds his father. Going to the cemetery, he wishes his mother to revive. The truth comes out, the family is reunited. János is turned back into a man, and is sent home to his princess. A surprisingly light ending to a surprisingly dark tale.

This story was also turned into a children's cartoon, you can watch it here.

Folklore Thursday: Jesus creates puli dogs

Today is Folklore Thursday on social media! If you want to find out more, follow this link, or click on the #FolkloreThursday hashtag on Twitter! Hosted by @FolkloreThursday.

Continuing the theme of the Peasant Bible, Hungarian folk legends about how various things came to be. On today's menu: Puli dogs.
Puli dogs are a "hungarikum," which is the word we use for typically Hungarian things. For more of those, you can visit my other blog... incidentally named MopDog.
Now, on to the story.

Jesus creates the puli dog
(Originally published in this book in Hungarian - folktales from Bács-Kiskun, Heves and Pest counties)

Jesus always loved shepherds; they were the first one to greet him when he came into the world, and they brought him a lamb and cheese and other gifts. In the days when he walked the earth he liked to stop and converse with them; of course they usually didn't know who they were talking to.
One day Jesus stopped to ask for a drink of water from a shepherd. The sheep were running all over the place, the man was chasing after them, and his water skin was empty; and yet he dropped everything and hurried to bring some fresh water for the weary traveler. When Jesus drank his fill and thanked him, the shepherd was ready to lunge after his wandering sheep again... but Jesus stopped him.
"Pick up that bone" he pointed, and the shepherd picked up a leg bone from the ground.
"There you go" he tried to hand it over to the stranger and go after the sheep who were quickly getting away, but Jesus stopped him again.
"Now throw it" he ordered, and the shepherd threw the bone away. The moment it hit the ground it bounced up and turned into a small dog, all fur and all bark, and the dog scampered after the sheep, herding them together in no time at all.
Jesus loved shepherds so much that he created the puli to do the herding for them.

In case you want visual proof, here is a video:

P is for Puli dogs

So, I took a look at my blog statistics and it looks like the search term that brings in the most people is puli dog (go figure, I don't even remember when I wrote about them). So, because they are one of my favorite topics within the broad realm of "Hungarian curiosities", here is a post about puli dogs.

(Picture on the left features a puli mid-jump. The lolling pink tongue signifies the front end.)

Puli is a Hungarian breed; they are basically mid-sized hyperactive bundles of barks and hair that look like the result of an affair between a mop and a rastafarian. They are highly intelligent, bred for herding sheep and barking at things in a very loud high pitched voice.

Puli have recently gained world-wide fame because Mark Zuckerberg (yeah, the Facebook guy) owns one. His name is Beast, and he is a white puli with his very own Facebook page and 7000+ followers. He looks very fluffy on his pictures; as rastafarians no doubt already know, the awesome dreadlocks actually need a lot of work.

I had pulies before it was cool. My grandparents used to breed them so when I was growing up there was always one white mother dog and litters of tiny dogs around. My grandparents still own one, her name is Morzsa and she is a rare brown colored puli (puli dogs usually come in black or white).

There is a Hungarian folk legend that says that when Jesus walked the earth, the only person who gave him water to drink was a shepherd. His sheep were scattered all over the place but he still took the time to go to the well and bring some water, even though he did not know who the weary traveler really was. In return for his kindness, Jesus picked up a bone, tossed it into the air, and turned it into a puli dog that started barking as soon as it landed, and ran to herd the sheep.

If you have ever been on a family hiking trip with a sheepdog involved, you know exactly what I am talking about.