Mr Simigdáli ("The Gentleman Made of Groats", in Max Lüthi's translation)[1] is a Greek fairy tale, collected by Irene Naumann-Mavrogordato in Es war einmal: Neugriechische Volksmärchen.
[4] It is Aarne-Thompson type 425, the search for the lost bridegroom, in an unusual variation, involving motifs similar to Pygmalion and Galatea.
Although the tale is classified as the more general type ATU 425, "The Search for the Lost Husband", the tale pertains to a cycle of stories found in Italy, Greece and Turkey: the heroine, refusing to marry any suitor chosen for her, decides to fashion her own husband out of materials, and prays to a deity for him to come alive.
[13] Also, according to Max Lüthi, the heroine cracks open the nuts and almonds she gets from her helpers and finds beautiful dresses that depict the skies (or heavens), the earth and the seas.
[14] Folklorists Georgios A. Megas [el] and Michael Merakles, as well as researcher Marilena Papachristophorou, noted that in these tales, the hero is named after the materials with which he was created:[15][16] herbs, musk, amber, cinnamon and sugar.
[17] According to Papachristophorou, the more common names for the hero include Sucrepétri, Moscambaris or Muscambre, after the materials used to build the husband[8] (in the latter two, musk and amber),[18] although the tale is better known as Simigdalenios ("Man of Semolina").
In this tale, the heroine is a princess who locks herself up in a church for 40 days, with refined flour and spices, and fashions a seven-year-old son for her.
[24] In the Typen türkischer Volksmärchen ("Turkish Folktale Catalogue"), devised by Wolfram Eberhard and Pertev Naili Boratav, both scholars indexed a similar narrative under type TTV 105, "Der Mann aus Wachs" ("The Man [Made] of Wax"), with three variants registered until 1953.
[25] In a Turkish tale collected by Turkologist Ignác Kúnos and titled Miszk-amber királyfi ("The Musk-Amber Prince"), an Indian ruler has a daughter who decides to marry no one.
After getting the objects, she locks her up in her room and fashions a man with the material and a horse with the leftovers, then spends the next 40 days and nights in deep prayer so both creations gain life.
One day, when the male creation is twelve years old, he uses a leftover chicken bone to crack the glass from his room and see the outside world for the first time.
Back to Miskember, he and the horse reach the palace of the Yemeni padishah, and the monarch decides to marry him to his daughter.
The Yemeni princess then places the wanderer in a room just beneath her chambers, where she spends every day and night singing verses of longing and sorrow to make Miskember remember.
The pair rides back to the Indian kingdom and find a platoon of her father's soldiers en route.
[26] The tale was translated to Russian by Nina A. Tsvetinovich-Gryunberg [ru] with the title "Девушка и Мискембер" ("The Girl and Miskember").
The princess, then, decides to build herself a husband, with musk, amber (or ambergris), rose water and Indian perfumes.