KURAI
In the days of yore there lived a Khan. There were two horas on that Khan's head but he never showed them to anyone. Once when the Khan was bathing in the baths, a shakird* noticed his horns. "You have seen my horns, if you let this secret out to anyone, I shall kill you," said the Khan. The shakird was so eager to share this secret with someone - to relieve himself of this heavy burden. So he went to the forest and started shouting with all his might: "Khan Yosop has horns!.." A shepherd heard these shouts, he went in the direction the sounds were coming from, and at that place he saw two stalks of kurai. He cut off one of them, blew into a hollow stalk, and there was heard a melodious tune of a song about the two-horned Khan.
Thus, as the word goes, kurai1 was created.
1) Besides those registered in the international index of types of fairy-tales (AT 782) Greek, Romanian, Serbo-Croatian, French and Russian verbal texts, are also known Bulgarian, Turkish, Kazakh, Uzbek, Georgian, Mongolian, Indian, Tibet, etc. The history of the plot can be traced back to a totem myth known 4,000 years BC. Later in Greece on the basis of oriental folklore was created a myth of king Midas, who was endowed with donkey's ears by Apollo; -this mythological plot was used by Ovidius (43 BC - 17 AD) In his poem "Metamorphoses" and later on was the subject of many a literary story. independent of the myth of Midas there was created in the epoch of Heflinism a legend - fairy-tale of the two-homed king Iskander (Alexander of Macedonia), which it now well-known in Asia Minor, the Caucasus, Central Asia and the countries of South-Western Asia To this oriental version of the plot refer Bashkort legends - fairy-tales of the AT 782 type. For more details see commentaries by L. G. Sarag and A M. Suleimanov In: BFA, Fairy-tales IV, 1961. P. 361-362 -In Russian (to texts # 35 and 36).
