Comments

In the present telling, a special emphasis is placed on the dream. The story is explicitly about a search for a dream—the quest is not for a magic bird or a princess (though we have them too) but to make a night's dream come true by day. So the usual dreamlike folktale motifs of transformation (princesses into tree, fruit, bird, and twig) are literally shown to be components of a dream. The king's dream, on the other hand, has shown him something real but not yet actual. The dreamer dreams of what's already real somewhere else, which is why it can be searched for and made present. Meanwhile two sets of sisters (the two old women and the five princesses) are reunited. The usual motifs of the dim-witted elder brother(s) betraying the younger and usurping the bride, quite common in other tellings of AT 550, are absent here because the emphasis is on making a dream actual, not on sibling rivalry.

The youngest brother naturally wins princesses and a kingdom, pursuing another dream, that is, a young man's dream. The old king's caprice turns out to be a test of his son's ability to make an impossible dream come true, a wise test for leadership. Such a tale begins in caprice and ends in wisdom. Beheading the princesses to transform them is a dramatic lesson: every dream has its price. Daring, an appropriate use of violence, and a trust in the ultimate return to normalcy are part of a hero's equipment.

[For a Santali telling of AT 550, see Ramanujan 1991a:181–186.]