Udea and Her Seven Brothers

Udea and her Seven Brothers
Udea and her Seven Brothers
	The slave Barka forces Udea to walk on foot, while his wife rides the camel. Illustration by Henry Justice Ford (1905).
Folk tale
Name	Udea and her Seven Brothers
Aarne–Thompson grouping	AaTh 451A, "The Sister Seeking her Nine Brothers" (first part); ATU 451, "The Maiden Who Seeks her Brothers" (first part); ATU 709A, "The Sister of Nine Brothers" (second part);
Country	Libya
Region	North Africa
Published in	The Grey Fairy Book by Andrew Lang (1905)
Related	The Girl Who Banished Seven Youths; The Magic Grain (Algerian folktale);

"Udea and her Seven Brothers" is a Northern African (Libyan) fairy tale collected by Hans Stumme in Märchen und Gedichte aus der Stadt Tripolis. Scottish novelist Andrew Lang included it in The Grey Fairy Book.

The tale is classified, in the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index, as type ATU 451, "The Maiden Who Seeks her Brothers" (formerly as tale type AaTh 451A, "The Sister Seeking her Nine Brothers"), and ATU 709A, "The Sister of Nine Brothers". Variants of the first tale type exist in both Europe (Baltic countries and surrounding areas) and North Africa (among the Berbers), although the antagonist differs per region: in Europe, the heroine is substituted by a magic being, while in North Africa the heroine and a black woman change races.