Dănilă Prepeleac
In the first part, the eponymous peasant hero, shown to be poor, lazy and idiotic, 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
[4] The story was described by the influential interwar critic and literary historian George Călinescu as one of Ion Creangă's writings with a transparent moral, in this case "that the stupid man is lucky.
His string of disadvantageous transactions, researcher and theater critic Mirella Nedelcu-Patureau argues, echoes a theme common in Romanian folklore and other European traditions, resonating in particular with "Hans in Luck", the Brothers Grimm story (and, through it, with Bertold Brecht's play Jean la chance).
[8] The recourse to unbalanced exchanges between the naïve and the shrewd is found in traditional accounts from both of two Romanian regions: Creangă's native Moldavia and its southern neighbor Wallachia.
Ethnologist Pavel Ruxăndoiu placed "Dănilă Prepeleac", alongside a fragment of Povestea vorbii ("The Story of the Word"), a poem by the Wallachian Anton Pann, in a category of writings codifying that tradition.
"[7] Briefly reviewing earlier comments made about the work, literary historian Mircea Braga underlines the break between the two sections of the narrative, which seem to portray Prepeleac as two very different characters.
[11] He sees this as direct proof of Creangă's emancipation from the conventions of fairy tales, allowing the writer to progress within his own text and "annul the schematic-simplistic character" presumed by tradition.
Contrasting the sexism he identifies in several of Creangă's stories with the modern standards of political correctness, literary critic Ion Manolescu sees the manner in which Prepeleac's sister-in-law is portrayed as leading to an implicit moral: "if you want to tear a family apart, call for a woman.
Before 1991, while the region was still part of the Soviet Union as the Moldavian SSR, one of the leading Moldovan artists Igor Vieru, contributed original illustrations to local editions of the story.
