Go I Know Not Whither and Fetch I Know Not What
Go I Know Not Whither and Fetch I Know Not What (, translit. "Poydi tuda, ne znau kuda, prinesi to, ne znau chto") is a Russian fairy tale collected by Alexander Afanasyev in "Narodnye russkie skazki". Synopsis. A royal hunter shoots a bird; wounded, it begs him not to kill it but to take it home, and when it goes to sleep, strike its head. He does so, and the bird becomes a beautiful woman. She proposes that they marry, and they do. After the marriage, she sees how hard  he has to hunt and tells him to borrow one or two hundred rubles. He does so, and then buys silks with them. She conjures two spirits and sets them to make a marvelous carpet. Then she gives the carpet to her husband and tells him to accept whatever price he is given. The merchants do not know how much to pay for it, and finally, the king's steward buys it for ten thousand rubles. The king sees it and gives the steward twenty-five thousand for it. The steward goes to the hunter's house to get another  and sees his wife. He falls madly in love with her, and the king sees it. The steward tells him why, and the king goes himself and sees the hunter's wife. He decides that he should marry her instead and demands the steward devise a way to be rid of the husband. The steward, with a stranger's advice, has him sent to the land of the dead to ask of the former King's behavior, in the hope that he never returns. The hunter being told of this tells his wife. She gives him a magic ring and  says that he must take the king's steward with him as a witness, to prove that he really has visited the Underworld. He does. After their return and seeing how the King's father was punished by the devils for his sins, the hunter thinks he fulfilled his duty, but the King becomes angry and just sends him back home. But who really gets the anger of the monarch, is the steward, who is ordered again to find another way to let the hunter disappear, or else the steward will be executed. The man asks again for advice from  the stranger and he/she tells him to catch a large man-eating magical cat called Bajun who lives on an iron column in the thrice tenth kingdom. But against all their evil plans, the hunter catches the beast, with the help of his wife. The king is enraged with the steward, who again goes to the same stranger. This time, the steward tells the king to send the hunter to "go I know not whither and bring back I know not what." The wife conjures spirits and all the beasts and birds to see if they know how to  go I know not whither and bring back I know not what. Then she goes out to sea and summons all the fish. But none of them can help her, so she gives him a ball, which if rolled before him would lead him where he needs to go, and a handkerchief, with directions to wipe his face with it whenever he washes. He leaves. The king sends a carriage for his "wife". She turns back into a bird and leaves. Her husband finally comes to the old witch Baba Yaga. She gives him food and lets him rest; then  she brings him water to wash. He wipes his face not with their towel but his handkerchief. She recognizes it as their sister's. She questions him, and he tells his story. The witch, who had never heard of something like that, knows an old frog who she thinks may know something. Baba Yaga gives him a jug to carry the frog, which can't walk fast enough. He does so, and the frog directs him to a river, where it tells him to get on the frog, and it swells large enough to carry him across. There, it directs  him to listen to the old men who will arrive soon. He does and hears them summon "Shmat Razum" to serve them. Then the old men leave, and he hears Shmat Razum lament how they treated him. The men ask Shmat Razum to serve the hunter instead, and Shmat Razum agrees. Shmat Razum carries him back. The hunter stops at a golden arbor, where he meets three merchants. With Shmat Razum's directions, he exchanges his servant for three marvels, which could summon up a garden, a fleet of ships, and an army. But after a day, Shmat Razum returns  to the hunter. In his own country, the hunter has Shmat Razum build a castle. His wife returns to him there. The former king of the country sees the castle and marches against the hunter. The new king, with the help of his wife, summons the fleet and the army. They defeat the other king and the hunter is chosen as the king in his place. Translations. In a translation by Bernard Isaacs, "Go I Know Not Where, Fetch I Know Not What", the hunter shoots a turtledove, which transforms into a maiden called Tsarevna Marya. When the hunter goes  on the quest for the "something" the Tsar wants, he meets Baba Yaga, who the narrative describes as the "mother" of his wife. In a translation by Jeremiah Curtin, "Go to the Verge of Destruction and Bring Back Shmat-Razum", one of the king's sharpshooters, named Fedot, spares a blue dove and she becomes a "soul-maiden", a lovely tsar's daughter. When her husband is tasked with bringing back "Shmat-Razum", he meets three princesses and their aged mother - her wife's family. The tale was also translated by Nisbet Bain with the title "Go I Know Not  Whither—Fetch I Know Not What". In a translation by journalist Post Wheeler, "Schmat-Razum", the bowman Taraban, while on a hunt, sees seven white ducks with silver wings beneath a tree. When they alight near the "sea-ocean", the seven birds take off their silver wings and become maidens. Taraban hides the silver wings of one of them. The other six white ducks depart, but one stays behind. The maiden asks the stranger to give her wings back and, if they are a youth, she will marry him. They marry, but Taraban shows up at court to explain to  the Tzar he married without his permission. Taraban presents his wife to the Tzar and his court, and they decide to send the bowman to look for "Schmat-Razum", to try to get rid of him. In another version, the archer is called Petrushka. While on a hunt, he finds an injured dove and brings it home. The dove becomes a human girl named Masha, the Dove Maiden. After a while the emperor becomes enamored with Masha, and sends her husband on an errand to find "I-Know-Not-What" in a place called "I-Know-Not-Where". The archer  completes the task with the help of Baba Yaga and a magical frog named Babushka-Lyagushka-Skakushka ("Grandmother Hopping Frog"). Analysis. Tale type. The tale is classified in the Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index as ATU 465, "The Man persecuted because of his beautiful wife". This tale type involves a unmarried man capturing an animal and bringing it home. When the man is not at home, the animal takes off its animal skin and becomes a beautiful maiden. The hunter returns, burns the skin and marries the maiden. Some time later, an emperor, lord or nobleman of superior rank lusts after  the wife of supernatural origin and sends the mortal husband on impossible quests. In the third revision of the international index, German folklorist Hans-Jörg Uther subsumed subtypes 465A, 465B, 465C and 465D under a single tale type, ATU 465. Role of the animal bride. Professor Susan Hoogasian-Villa mentioned variants where the hero (a prince or a hunter) marries a maiden that becomes an aquatic animal (mostly fish, but sometimes a frog or a tortoise) or a kind of bird. Graham Anderson also noted that the supernatural wife in this tale type appears to show "amphibious connections", since she  wears the disguise of a water animal (fish, turtle, frog). Scholars Ibrahim Muhawi and Sharif Kanaana, in the Arab and Palestinian parallels they gathered, noted that the human husband is a fisherman "in most other [tales]". Likewise, Greek researcher Marilena Papachristophorou described that, in Greek variants, the animal bride comes in the shape of a turtle and the human husband is "usually a fisherman". Folklorist noted the resemblance between a Belarussian variant and tales from Asian peoples wherein a poor and destitute youth marries the daughter of a god. Scholar Joanna Hubbs interpreted the tale under a mythological lens, and  stated that the female characters of the story are representations of a powerful female divinity. Thus, in the tale, the male hunter achieves the happy ending due to the actions of his wife and her magical family. Likewise, scholars Ibrahim Muhawi and Sharif Kanaana stated that "in each case [of every tale]", the male protagonist is helped by his wife and her relatives (mother and/or sisters). Role of the hero's rival. Some scholars point out the hero's main rival may be his own father. The paternal antagonist also occurs in Greek variants, according to scholars Anna Angelopoulou and  Aigle Broskou. Armenian scholarship suggests that tale type ATU 465 underlies a theme of incest, reminiscent of the Greek myth of Oedipus. For instance, Tamar Hayrapetyan argues that an "archaic" version may preserve the hero's father lusting after his own daughter-in-law, while later tradition excises the incest theme altogether and replaces the father for a stranger. Variants. Professor Stith Thompson argued that the tale is "essentially East European", "at home in Russia", but could also be found in the Near East, in Baltic and Scandinavian countries. According to Japanese scholar Seki Keigo, the tale type is "common  in eastern Europe, India, and China". Literary predecessors. The oldest attestation of the tale type is found in ancient East Asian literature of the 7th century, namely Chinese and Japanese. Seki Keigo pinned down its appearance in some literary collections of his country, such as in "Nihongi", the "Ryoi-ki" and the "". Scholar David Blamires argues for the existence of the tale type in the medieval work "Gesta Romanorum". In the tale, an emperor is desirous to possess not the knight's wife, but the knight's "lands", and orders him to bring a black horse, a black falcon, a  black dog and a black horn. The knight's wife guides her husband through the impossible quest. Europe. Professor Jack V. Haney stated that subtypes 465A and 465C appear as the "typical combination" in East Slavic, Baltic and Turkic, but type 465C only appears in Northeastern Europe and in Turkic traditions. In a "Cossack" (Ukrainian) tale, "The Story of Ivan and the Daughter of the Sun", the peasant Ivan obtains a wife in the form of a dove maiden whose robe he stole when she was bathing. Some time later, a nobleman lusts after Ivan's dove maiden wife and  plans to get rid of the peasant. In an Armenian variant, "The Maiden of the Sea" ("La fille de la mer"), a poor widow, on her deathbed, instructs her only son to throw a loaf of bread into the sea, just as she did in life. One day, the youth arrives home and sees the place all clean and tidy. Suspecting something is amiss, the boy stays in waiting and sees a fish coming out of the sea and taking their fishskin off, revealing itself to be a beautiful maiden. The youth seizes her and she screams for help, to  which a voice claims from the sea that the human is its son-in-law. The fish maiden and the youth marry and, one day, the Prince, passing by their cottage, sights the maiden and becomes enamored with her. He then orders her husband to meet his outlandish demands. Baltic variants of the tale type (formerly AaTh 465A), like "Žaibas ir Perkūnas tabokinėje", attest the presence of Baltic thunder god Perkūnas. In one Estonian variant, the human husband acquires a maiden from above as his wife, and in another the mother-in-law is the ruler of the Sun. According  to Marilena Papachristophorou, Greek scholar supposed that the Greek oikotype (the animal wife as a turtle and the human husband as a fisherman) originated from an Oriental source. Kalmyk people. According to Baira Goryaeva, expert on Kalmyk folklore, tale type 465A, in the Kalmyk tale corpus, shows that the hero (of humble origins) marries a daughter of Khurmusta-Tengri, a celestial deity. In a Kalmyk tale, "Tsarkin Khan and the Archer", an Archer steals the robe of a "golden-crowned" swan maiden when she was in human form and marries her. Later, the titular Tsarkin Khan wants to marry the  Archer's swan maiden wife and plans to get rid of him by setting dangerous tasks. Gagauz people. In a tale from the Gagauz people, "Concerning the Sun", collected by Moshkov and translated by , a tsar orders his three sons to shoot three arrows to decide their fates. The elders' arrows land near human maidens; the youngest's falls nears a tortoise. The tsar's son takes the tortoise home and goes hunting. When he returns at night, he sees the place clean and tidy and a meal prepared for him. He discovers that the tortoise changes into a beautiful  human maiden and gets rid of her shell. Some time later, his father, the tsar, sees his daughter-in-law and decides to have her for himself. So he goes to his son and tasks him with getting his dead mother (the tsar's dead wife)'s ring, by going into the other world. The magical wife, now human, instructs her human husband to go to the sea and shout into a hole, her mother will appear and give him the keys to the earth. The tsar's son obeys his wife and uses the keys on the locks of  the earth; the enters the earth and begins a journey. Every stop he is asked by a person about a problem, and the tsar's son promises to bring the questions to God (tale type ATU 461, ""). He reaches a shining castle, and meets the mother of the Sun, who tells him that the Sun has his mother's ring. Coxwell compared the initial episode to the Russian tale "Frog Princess" and German (Grimm) tale "The Three Feathers". Georgia. According to Georgian scholarship, tale type ATU 402, "The Frog as Bride", is "contaminated" with (former) tale type AaTh 465C, "Beautiful  Wife (The Journey to the Other World)": the task the hero's rival sets him is to visit Hell (Other World) in search of something (a soul of a deceased person, an object). In a Georgian tale, "The Frog's Skin", three brothers try their luck in finding a bride by shooting three arrows at random locations. The third brother's arrow falls near a lake; a frong jumps out of it and he takes it home. His elder brothers find human girls as brides, whereas he has to remain with a frog, but such is his fate. One day , after he returns from work, he sees that the house has been swept and cleaned up. He decides to discover who is this mysterious housekeeper: he hides one day and sees that the frog casts off its amphibian skin to become a human maiden. The man takes skin to burn it. Despite his frog-wife's protests, he does it anyway. Some time later, news reach the ears of the lord of the country of the man's beautiful wife. Hellbent on earning her as his wife, the lord threatens the man with nearly impossible tasks or death. His wife  reminds him of her warning, but gives him the means to save himself: he should go to the edge of the lake where he found her and summon for Mother and Father. The last task is to go to the Other World in search of the lord's mother and get from her a ring. In a Georgian tale translated by Caucasologist with the title "Die Tochter der Sonne" ("The Daughter of the Sun"), three friends work together in the fields. One of them loses his harvest and leaves to look for work elsewhere. He works for a rich man  and promises to collect all the hay in one day. He almost fulfills his promise, until he sees the Sun and begs it not to st until he has finished the last one. The sun sets and night comes; the man loses his work and goes to another employer, where he works as a shepherd. A wolf comes and takes a sheep to the woods. The man follows the wolf and rests a bit near a river. He then sees three Sun maidens descending from the sky to bathe in a lake. The man takes one of the Sun maidens  to his poo hut and marries her. The Sun maiden gives him a magical ring. Some time later, the poor man wants to invite the monarch to see his humble houe, but his wife warns against it. He invites the king, who sends his nazirs and viziers in his stead. The nazirs and viziers go the man's hut and see the Sun maiden. They report back to the king that a beautiful maiden is married to a poor man, when she is fit to be a king's wife. The king then sends the poor man to get the  golden ram of the Sun. The man goes to his father-in-law and gets the ram. Next, the king orders the man to go to the Afterlife to retrieve the king's mother's ring. His wife gives him an apple and tells him to follow it wherever it rolls. The man follows the apple and finds a deer with giant antlers, an emaciated bull and a priest carrying a church on his back who ask him the answers for their problems. He also meets a strange couple, a woman building a tower with eggs, a baker who burns  bread in a oven, and they explain they are being punished for misdeeds in their lives. Asia. Turkey. Variants of the tale type in Turkey attest, for example, the coming of the fairy maiden (a "peri") out of a piece of wood the male character (named Mehmet Efendi) took home. In a Turkish tale published by Ignác Kúnos with the title "The Fish-Peri", a young, poor fisherman catches a fish so beautiful it saddens him to sell it or cook it, so he decides to keep it in a well. The next day, after he returns from his fishing  trip at night, he sees the place neat and tidy, and wonders who could have done it. He spies on the person responsible for it, and sees that the fish has become a beautiful maiden. The youth takes the fish skin and throws it in the fire. The fish maiden consents to become his wife. However, news of her beauty reach the ears of the Padishah, who begins to lust after the maiden, and sets the fisherman on three difficult quests: to build a palace of gold and diamond in the middle of the sea in 40 days; to prepare  a feast so grand everyone would eat and there would still be much food left; to have a mule hatch out of an egg, and to find a year-old infant who could talk and walk. Middle East. In the "Arabian Nights" collection, the tale of "Prince Ahmad and the Fairy Peri Banu" is also classified as belonging to the tale type. Preceded by tale type ATU 653A, "The Rarest Thing in the World", the story continues as Prince Ahmad marries the Peri Banou, the daughter of the king of the jinni. The prince, after a while, visits his father , who becomes enamoured by his daughter-in-law. Central Asia. Folklorist stated that the tale type was very popular in Central Asia. In these variants, the hero saves the child of a supernatural entity (e.g., the king of snakes, the king of the underworld, the king of Heaven, Khurbust Khan), and in gratitude their father gives the prince a box or an animal as companion. Either the box contains the supernatural wife, or the animal becomes the supernatural wife. Either way, marital life is not an idyllic one, for they have to fend off the advances of a human lord , who wishes to have the supernatural woman to himself. In a Tuvan tale, "Ösküs-ool and the Daughter of Kurbustu-Khan", poor orphan boy Ösküs-ool seeks employment with powerful khans. He is tasked with harvesting their fields before the sun sets, of before the moon sets. Nearly finishing both chores, the boy pleads to the moon and the sun to not set for a little longer, but time passes. The respective khans think they never finished the job, berate and whip him. Some time later, while living on his own, the daughter of Khurbustu-khan comes from the upper  world in the form of a swan. The boy hides her clothing and she marries him, now that she is stranded on Earth. Some time later, an evil Karaty-khan demands that the youth produces a palace of glass and an invincible army of iron men for him - feats that he accomplishes thanks to his wife's advice and with help from his wife's relatives. Korea. In a Korean tale, "The Snail Woman", a poor farmer laments his solitude, but a woman's voice asks him to live with him. The youth sees no one but a tiny snail  that he brings home. During the day, he toils in the rice fields, while the snail becomes a woman, does the chores and returns to the shell. The youth returns at night and amazes at the cleanliness of the place. He decides to discover who is responsible. On the third day, he sees that the snail becomes a human woman. He stops her before she returns to the shell. The snail woman reveals she is the daughter of the Dragon King, enchanted to be a mollusk. The enchantment is over and they live as husband and wife. A wealthy magistrate  sees the woman and becomes enamoured. He decides to force the farmer to difficult tasks. The Dragon King's daughter says her father will help him. China. Chinese folklorist and scholar established a second typological classification of Chinese folktales (the first was by Wolfram Eberhard in the 1930s). In his new system, he noted that Chinese variants of type 465, "The Man Persecuted Because of his Beautiful Wife", may be preceded with another tale type he dubbed 555*, "The Grateful Dragon Prince (Princess)". In the latter type, the hero rescues an animal (fish, turtle, serpent) or gives offering to a  water deity. The animal reveals he is a Dragon Prince and takes the hero to his father's underwater court. Down there, the hero is given a box with a bird inside (a pheasant, a hen) and takes it with him back to land. The animal leaves the box and becomes a woman; the man sees her and she tells him she is a daughter of the Dragon King (a Dragon Princess). They marry and the tale segues into type 465. Japan. The tale type 465 is also registered in Japan, with the name "Tono no Nandai". Scholar Hiroko Ikeda  reported 28 variants. Seki Keigo reported 39 variants, and noted its popularity in Japanese oral tradition. Seki Keigo indexed in his system of Japanese folktales a tale type he termed "The Wife from the Ryūgū (Dragon Palace)". In this type, a poor flower-dealer gives an offering to the king of the Ryugu (Dragon Palace). A messenger from the underwater palace comes and takes the flower-dealer to the king's presence. The king is pleased by the man's offering, gives him a gift and allows him to marry his daughter. Back on land, a local feudal lord imposes  difficult tasks on the man, otherwise he must forfeit his wife, the underwater king's daughter. He located variants from Ehime, Hiroshima, Iwate, Kagoshima, Kochi, Nagasaki, Niigata, and Shimane. Seki listed a second type, titled "The Flute-player Bridegroom": a woman from the world above descends to earth and marries a human flute player, because she enjoys his flute playing. A local feudal lord imposes three tasks on the flute-player, otherwise he must surrender his wife to the feudal lord. After they deal with the lord's advances, the tale segues into the human's visit to his wife 's home. In a variant from Kagoshima, "The Wife from the Dragon Palace", a human youth marries the daughter of the Dragon God, who lives underwater. When they return to land and create a splendid house for them with a magic mallet, a local feudal lord becomes interested in his supernatural wife and sends the man on seemingly impossible demands. Mongolia. German linguist translated a Mongolian tale from the "Siddi Kur" wherein an Indian king's animal tamer releases a dancing golden frog back to the water and later rescues a white serpent from the clutches of an eagle. The  golden frog and the white serpent each tell the tamer they are the children of the Lord of Dragons that guards the shells with white pearls. The tamer is taken to their father's underwater palace as a thank you and spends some time there. After a while, the tamer wants to return to land, and as a parting gift the Dragon Lord gives the man a red-furred she-dog as companion and a magical jewel. Back on land, the tamer discovers the red-furred she-dog becomes a beautiful woman and burns the canine skin. They marry. One  day, the Dragon Lord's daughter, now human, is kidnapped by a lustful human king who intends to marry her. However, she secretly summons her human husband to concoct a plan to be enacted the following year, during the month of Pausha: the husband disguises himself with a crude and grotesque design and take part in the celebrations. British author Rachel Harriette Busk translated the tale as different chapters of her book "Sagas from the Far East": in the first, titled "The White Serpent-King", the gold frog states the she is the daughter of the Serpent King (who still  lives in an underwater palace); in the second, titled "What became of the Red-coloured Dog", the tamer burns the red dog's skin to keep the woman in human form. Tibet. In a Tibetan tale translated into Russian with the title "Девушка-дракон" ("The Dragon Girl"), a father dies and his three sons, named First Brother, Second Brother and Third Brother divide their inheritance: a golden box, a silver box and a wooden box. Third Brother takes the wooden box and goes to live a humble life. One day, he rescues a little snake from an eagle and places  the animal under his hat. He then walks a bit more and hears two yaks talking about their son. Third Brother goes on a bit more and finds two other yaks commenting about their grandchild. The youth shows them the little snake, who they recognize as their grandchild. The yaks invite the human to their underwater palace. The next day, Third Brother goes to the lake and is taken to the underwater palace. He spends some time there, and meets the grandmother (one of the yaks), who advises him to asks three gifts from the Dragon King: a bull's  tail, a woolen carpet and the Dragon King's little spotted dog. Third Brother follows the instructions and rejects the extravagant gifts of jewels and weapons. He takes the three objects with him to his humble house and sleeps. The next day, the woolen carpet changes his house and the bull's tail generates herds of sheep and cows for him. As for the dog, it does a somersault and becomes a human maiden. Third Brother spies on her becoming human and burns the dog skin. The maiden tells him she is the youngest daughter of the Dragon King and  that she has come to live with him, and that the dog skin was for her protection. Resigned to her fate, the Dragon King's daughter and Third Brother live as husband and wife. However, a local king learns of the humble man and his beautiful wife and decides to have her for himself, so he devises three difficult tasks for Third Brother; if he fails, he shall forfeit his possessions and wife to him. The Dragon King's daughter helps her human husband. In an abridged form of the tale, translated into Russian with the title "Бедняк и дочь  дракона" ("The Poor Man and the Dragon's Daughter"), the poor man rescues the snake and returns the animal to two knights, one on a white horse, and another on a black horse - both emissaries of the marine Dragon King. In the English language translation, titled "The Poor Man and the Serpent's Daughter", the supernatural wife is described as the daughter of the Serpent King (who is still identified as a marine deity). In a Tibetan tale published by A. L. Shelton with the title "The Story of the Violinist", a father sends his three sons into the world  to learn a trade and return home. The oldest becomes a writer, the second one a carpenter and the youngest a violinist. The father expels his youngest son from home, and he travels to another kingdom near a black sea. One day, the violinist sees a black snake and a white snake fighting, and he saves the white snake. Some time later, a white-haired woman appears to thank the youth for saving the son of the king of the lower regions, the white snake, and invites him to go with her to his palace. She also explains that his  daughter is very beautiful, but hides her face underneath a chicken skin. The fiddler is taken by the woman to the king's palace and asks for the hen as his reward. The daughter of the king of the lower regions agrees to go with the human, and takes with her a golden pick, a golden chain, and a brass blessing cup. They return to land and live as husband and wife, and become very rich. The local monarch, a wicked man, is invited by the fiddler to his house for a banquet, and he notices the fiddler's wife . He takes her with him and orders the fiddler to level a mountain, to turn a small pond into a forested lake, and to show him hell. The fiddler accomplishes the outlandish tasks with his wife's help and items she brought with herself to the surface. Khmu people. Another variant, titled "The Orphan and the Sky Maidens", was collected from the Kammu people of Southeast Asia. Chung people. In a tale from the Chung people titled "The Third Son and the Magistrate", three sons, after their father dies, each learn a trade. The youngest brother becomes a fisherman and  catches a carp alongside other fishes, and takes care of it. A man appears some time later, reveals the carp was him, a son of the Dragon King, and takes the fisherman to his father's underwater court. The human gains a white chicken, which is the disguise of a daughter of the Dragon King. The Dragon King's daughter reveals herself and marries the human. A local magistrate sees the human form of the Dragon King's daughter - now on land with her husband - and wishes to possess her, so he sets impossible tasks for the humble fisherman. The  man accomplishes every task with the help of his wife and her underwater family. Buryat people. In a Buryat tale, "Молодец и его жена-лебедь" (Mongolian: "Сагаан шубуугаар haмга хэhэн хубуун"; English: Molodets and his Swan-Wife), a down-on-his-luck boy tries to get a job herding horses in the steppes, lumbering for an old man and even planting crops, but no such luck. He decides to earn his living by fishing in a lake. And thus he spends his days. One day, he sees seven white birds coming down to the lake shore and decides to follow  them. He sees they transforming into seven maidens. He hides and fetches the clothing of one of them, who gets left behind and the other depart. The bird-girl calls for the stranger: if a young man, she'll be his wife; if an old man, she'll be his daughter. The youth reveals himself, returns the birdskin and they marry. One day, the bird maiden draws her portrait on a piece of paper that the wind blows away for seven days and seven nights, until the portrait lands on the lap of Abahai-khan, who falls madly in love  with the maiden depicted and goes on a frantic search for her. He and his ministers discover she is the wife of the poor youth who lives near the lake. The Khan tries to send the poor youth on perilous quests to get rid of him, but, with his wife's help, he prevails and becomes the next khan. Africa. Egypt. Scholar Hasan El-Shamy cited that the tale "Histoire du pêcheur et de son fils" (The Story of the Fisherman and his Son"), collected by Guillaume Spitta-Bey in late-19th century, showed "the undisputable typological character" of type 465 . In this tale, the king falls in love with the wife of a fisherman and conspires with his vizier to send him on dangerous quests. Sudan. In a Sudanese tale, "The fisherman and the prince", a humble fisherman catches a fish, brings to his hut and goes to the market. When he returns, he sees a great palace and a beautiful maiden, who reveals she was the fish, enchanted into that form. They marry. One day, the maiden bathes in the river and draws the attention of a local prince. The prince tries to create impossible riddles for the fisherman , but he answers it with his wife's help. This tale was also classified by scholar Hasan El-Shamy under type 465. German ethnologue Leo Frobenius collected a tale from Kordofan with the title "Das Girdamädchen" ("The Monkey Girl"): an emir gives a spear to each of his three sons. The three sons throw their spears and kill three antelopes. The emir is satisfied and takes his sons through the village, where they are to cast their spears in front of the house with their respective brides. The elder two stick their spears in front of huts of human wives . The youngest bemoans the fact that there is not a beautiful young woman in their village and states he will try his luck in the desert. The youngest throws his spear and it hits a single tree with a Girda (a kind of monkey) on top of it. He takes the Girda home. The emir visits his human daughters-in-law to see their work and looks content with their choices. After he announces he will visit his third son, the youth complains to his wife that she is an animal, and she offers to finds him a good human  spouse by directing him to a village in the desert. The youth thanks her help, but he is her husband, after all. That same night, he spies on his wife's room and notices a light shining out of it. The next day, the emir visits his son and marvels at the wonderful woven carpets and the exquisite food, and invites his three sons and their wives to his palace. The third son bemoans again his luck, but his monkey wife insists to be brought to her father-in-law's court. The third son sees that his monkey wife  takes of the animal skin and he burns it. The now human wife decides to wear a veil to the banquet, and begs her husband to not let her lift her veil. Once there, she asks for some bread, and her veil is lifted. The emir admires his third daughter-in-law and decides to have her for himself and kill his son. Some time later, the emir orders his son to plant a vineyard overnight, to plant an orchard full of watermelons, to eat bread and meat that fill up a house, and to find him a child born  overnight that can talk and walk. Cultural references. In modern Russian, the phrase Poydi tuda, ne znayu kuda, prinesi to, ne znayu chto ( - Go I Know Not Whither and Fetch I Know Not What) refers (usually with irony) to a poorly defined or impossible task. In film. The "Go There, Don't Know Where" is a 1966 feature-length cutout-animated film from the Soviet Union. It was directed by the "Patriarch of Soviet animation", Ivan Ivanov-Vano, at the Soyuzmultfilm studio. In literature. The satirical poem "The Tale of Fedot the Strelets" by Leonid Filatov, written in early 1985 , is based on the tale's storyline. An earlier, although less known story has been written by Vladimir Dal, called "The story of Ivan the young sergeant". In Swedish author Maria Gripe's novel "Agnes Cecilia - en sällsam historia", a copy of "Narodnye russkie skazki" repeatedly falls from its shelf, opening to the page containing the phrase.