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Overview

Twelve travelling brothers come across an iron-nosed old woman ploughing with twelve mares. She offers the brothers her twelve daughters as brides, and the daughters are those same mares. The golden-haired youngest daughter warns the brother sleeping beside her that her mother plans to murder his brothers.

The youth switches the sleepers' places. The hag's sword therefore kills eleven of her own daughters instead. At dawn he escapes on the magic pony with the surviving daughter. The hag discovers the trick, turns a poker into a horse and flies after them.

She gets through two forests that the pony created and then becomes a pigeon to cross the third. The pony turns into a vulture and destroys her. A separate tale, Prince Csihan, includes an iron-toothed Vasfogu Bába, a wealthy castle owner who is drowned by a fox. She is noted here only as a comparable figure, not as the same individual.

An iron nose explicitly described in the taleHer twelve daughters take the form of maresRides a horse made from a poker and later turns into a pigeon
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Origins & earliest records

A collected Magyar tale linked to Erdélyi (ii.10). It is read here as tale XXXIII, pp. 157–160, of the 1889 Jones/Kropf translation. The comparative figure appears in tale I, pp. 1–6, linked to Kriza xvii.

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Records & interpretation

The narrative was read directly in the public-domain Gutenberg text.

Selected bibliography

Documented works and useful reading. This is not a list of every appearance.

  1. 01

    The Folk-Tales of the Magyars

    Collected by Kriza, Erdélyi, Pap and others; translated and edited by W. Henry Jones and Lewis L. Kropf · 1889

    Selected bibliography; tale XXXIII, pp. 157–160, and tale I, Prince Csihan, pp. 1–6, for comparison.

Family & connections

A source-supported family tree or inspiration record has not yet been compiled for this profile. Related reading below indicates a connection in subject matter, not a proven lineage or creative influence.

References

Sources supporting this profile. Linked pages have their own scope and editorial standards.

  1. Public-domain primary translationThe Folk-Tales of the Magyars (Project Gutenberg plain text)Research access: 2026-10-07
  2. Catalogue recordThe Folk-Tales of the Magyars (Project Gutenberg catalogue)Research access: 2026-10-07

Image credits

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