Three Apples Fell from Heaven

Abstract

MANY are familiar with the folktale ending, 'And they lived happily ever after.' Less familiar is the ending, 'Three apples fell from heaven; that closes a number of Armenian folktales. Despite exceptions noted below, this formula is distinctly Armenian.' We shall try to explain how it may have been introduced. After examining many folktales of various countries, we found two Turkish tales using the expression. One is, 'Three apples fell from the sky. One for the teller of this story, another for the hearer of this story, and the third for the child who might some day read it in a book!2 The other is, 'Three apples fell from the sky, one on Giil Nene, one on the teller of the story, and one on the wife of Uncle Riza.3 From Iraq there is a tale that ends, 'There were three apples: One for me, one for the storyteller, and one for the listener, and the peel for the Sultan.' The translator adds, '(Then fearing that she had uttered lise majeste the storyteller said, quickly, No, not that! ... And the peel for the mare.)'4 An Iranian student told me that he knows of only one Persian tale that ends, 'Three apples fell from heaven.'5 It would be safe to consider these examples as derivative. Bishop Karekin Servantsian was the first to publish Armenian folklore.6 In two of his works available to me, Manana' and Hamov Hodov, 8 he includes some folktales that were collected in the environs of Moush, and farther east in the Van area, both now in eastern Turkey. There are nine tales in Manana, three of which contain variants of a formula relating to the attainment of desire. Four tales use the formula, 'Three apples fell from heaven'. Another reads 'Three apples came down from God, one for the teller, one for the one who asked for the tale, and one for the one who gave ear.' In Hamov Hodov, two of the 26 tales use a modified desire formula. Three use the formula, 'Three apples fell from heaven . . .'. When Frederic Macler translated two of these tales into French, he substituted for the ellipsis a distribution that he considered suitable, so his formula reads, 'Et du ciel tomberent trois pommes: une pour moi; une pour le conteur; une pour l'auditeur; les pelures pour celui qui enleve les ordures; les pepins pour le jardinier qui les plantera et en aura l'annee prochaine.'9 The basic work for this study consists of the 214 tales edited by Hovsep Orbeli.'o Within the text of some tales the apple is associated with love, fertility, and immortality, but we focus our attention on the apple as a motif in a terminal formula. In this collection there are 108 tales that have no terminal formula. There are 36 tales that use the formula, 'They reached their desire, may you/we reach yours/ours.' When we examined the apple formula, we discovered that 17 use 'Three apples fell from heaven, followed, with one exception, by a distribution formula. Of these, three used the desire formula to which the apple formula was added. There are 53 tales that specify God, not heaven, as the source of the apples. Thus the formula reads, 'Three apples fell/came from God,' followed by distribution. What may be considered as the standard distribution is this: 'one for the teller, one for the listener, and one for the one who gives heed/ear.' The teller is never left out,