Moonstruck for a Fortnight: A New Interpretation of the Animal Bridegroom Motif
Moonstruck for a Fortnight: A New Interpretation of the Animal Bridegroom Motif

Summary/Abstract: This article integrates structuralist methodology, evolutionary linguistics and recent developments in paleogenetics to reinterpret a wondertale, The Three Enchanted Princes. The narrative contrasts darkness with light, wilderness with cultivation and bloodthirsty animality with civilized human form, concluding by celebrating the transition to agriculture, purposeful property management and wedlock. The story’s solar and patriarchal stance frames moon-governed enchantment as a state of instability and chaos to be overcome by cultivation and daylight. By examining motifs of lunar periodicity, the study identifies a recurring but under-theorised narrative pattern in which it is the moon which lies behind the transformations. We argue that wondertales can be read through a time-resistant ritual-narrative syntax in which periodic enchantment mediates shifting structures of kinship, subsistence and temporal order, allowing earlier lunar logics to persist, often in marginal or demonised form, within later symbolic systems.

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