Donotknow

Donotknow
Donotknow
Folk tale
Name	Donotknow
Also known as	Neznaiko
Aarne–Thompson grouping	AaTh 532, "I Don't Know" (The Helpful Horse); ATU 314, "Goldener";
Region	Russia
Published in	Russian Fairy Tales by Alexandr Afanasyev
Related	Green-Vanka; Nemtudomka;

Donotknow (Russian: Незнайко, romanized: Neznaiko) is a Russian fairy tale (skazka) collected by folklorist Alexandr Afanasyev in his three-volume compilation Russian Fairy Tales. The tale was also translated as "Know Not" by Jack V. Haney.^[1] It deals with a friendship between a merchant's son and a magic horse that are forced to flee for their lives due to the boy's stepmother, and reach another kingdom, where the boy adopts another identity by only uttering the words "Ne znay" ("I don't know").

According to scholarship, tales where the hero is instructed by his horse to always utter "I don't know" (or a variation thereof) are reported particularly in Russia, in Finland, in the Baltic Countries and in Hungary.

^ Haney, Jack V. (2015). The Complete Folktales of A. N. Afanas'ev, Volume II: Black Art and the Neo-Ancestral Impulse. University Press of Mississippi. pp. 444–458. ISBN 978-1-4968-0278-1. Project MUSE book 42506.

[1] Haney, Jack V. (2015). The Complete Folktales of A. N. Afanas'ev, Volume II: Black Art and the Neo-Ancestral Impulse. University Press of Mississippi. pp. 444–458. ISBN 978-1-4968-0278-1. Project MUSE book 42506.

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