"The Pretty Little Calf" is a Chinese fairy tale collected by Wolfram Eberhard in "Folktales of China". It is related to the theme of the calumniated wife and to the tale type ATU 707, "The Three Golden Children", of the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index, in that a woman gives birth to children of wondrous aspect, but jealous relatives conspire to separate them. Similar stories are attested in East Asian literature, specially Mongolian and Korean, wherein the boy is murdered, but is later reborn in the shape of a calf.
Translations The tale was also translated as The Piebald Calf.
Synopsis An official without children leaves home to take a new post. His first wife promised him gold on his return; the second, silver; the third, a son. He was pleased with the third wife, but the other wives were jealous. When she bore a son, they claimed she had borne a lump of flesh; the first wife threw the baby into a pond, but he floated, and so the second wife had him wrapped in straw and grass and fed to a water buffalo. When the official returned, his first wife gave him gold, the second silver, but when he heard that his third wife had borne a horrid lump of flesh, he sentenced her to grind rice in a mill. The water buffalo gave birth to a beautiful calf with a hide like gold. It was fond of its master, who always gave it some of his food. One day, the official said that if it understood human speech, it should bring the dumplings he gave it to its mother. The calf brought them not to the water buffalo but to the repudiated wife. The first two wives realized that it was the son. They claimed to be ill; the first wife said she needed to eat the calf's liver, and the second, that she needed the calf's skin. The official let the calf loose in the woods and bought another to kill. A woman named Huang had announced she would throw a coloured ball from her house, and whoever caught it would be her husband. The calf caught it on its horn. Miss Huang realized that she had to marry it. She hung the wedding robes on its horns, and it ran off. She chased it and found a young man in wedding robes by a pond; he told her to come. She said she had to find her calf, and he told her that he was the transformed calf. He went back to his father and told him the truth. The official was ready to kill his first two wives; his son persuaded him to pardon them, but he had his son bring back his mother from the mill.
Analysis
Tale type The tale is classified in the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as type ATU 707, "The Three Golden Children". This folktype contains the motif of the calumniated wife: a girl promises her husband to bear children with wonderful aspect, but her persecutors (usually her sisters) replace the children for puppies to humiliate her. In the first catalogue of Chinese folktales (devised by Eberhard in 1937), Wolfram Eberhard abstracted a Chinese folktype he indexed as number 33, Der Verwandelte Knabe ("The Transformed Boy"): evil co-wives try to kill the man's youngest wife's child by feeding him to the cow; the cow gives birth to a calf; the calf escapes to another kingdom, marries a human princess and changes back to human form. Eberhard based its typing on a tale published in a book from Jiangsu. The author of the Jiangsu book noted that the tale seemed to hark back to a story of a concubine from the annals of the Song Dynasty.
Motifs Some of the story's motif has similarities with stories from "One Thousand and One Nights", namely "Tale of the Trader" and the "Jinni". The story also contains the motif of the marital transformation, which also appears in European tales of the Animal as Bridegroom cycle of stories, such as "Hans My Hedgehog", "The Pig King" and "The Donkey".
Variants
Literary history Scholarship points that in a compilation of Buddhist teachings dated to the 14th century, titled Shijia rulai shidi xiuxing ji, there exists a story about a king whose third wife gives birth to a boy, and his jealous co-wives replace the baby with a skinned cat and even try to kill him, to no avail. Finally, they give the baby to a cow that eats it, and lie to their husband that the third wife gave birth to a monster. The cow gives birth to a calf (a golden calf in many versions), to which the king takes a liking to, to the horror of the two co-wives. They feign some illness and persuade the king to kill the little calf as cure for them, but the royal butcher spares its life, killing another animal in its place. The calf escapes to another kingdom (Korea), grows up and marries a princess. The calf regains human shape and rescues his mother. This tale can also be known as The Golden Calf, The Calf with the Golden Horns and Silver Hooves or The Marriage of the Calf. Sinologist Wilt Idema states that the earliest appearance of the story is a Buddhist tract titled Foshuo xiaoshunzi xiuxing chengfo jing ("The sutra on how a filial and obedient son achieved Buddhahood by self-cultivation, preached by the Buddha"), dated to the 6th century, since it is mentioned in a catalogue titled Zhongjing mulu, published in 602. Some of its contents were discovered among the Dunhuang manuscripts, but in fragments dated to the 8th century.
Asia Other tales about Prince Golden Calf are attested in historical literature of Taiwan, Manchuria and Mongolia. They contain very similar plot structures: birth of hero by third wife or concubine, the attempts on the young prince by the other wives, his rebirth as a golden-horned and silver-hooved calf (with some difference between versions), his escape to another kingdom, his marriage to a human princess; his transformation to human and eventual return to his homeland.
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