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Russian Folk Fairy Tales – the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
By Vlada 19 October 10
More stories from a Russian teacher, or something that may amuse you, and won’t be mentioned in a Russian course in London!
Do you know what will happen if you go deep into a large Russian forest and you are not careful (and your mobile runs out of battery!)? You will lose your way and start going in circles, led by a Leshiy who does it for fun (you may even hear him laughing…) and then you will come to a clearing in the forest with a curious house standing in front of you: it has giant chicken feet and can turn 180 degrees. The old lady (a witch, really) who lives in the house, Baba Yaga, will come home in a flying wooden bucket, using a broom as a steering wheel, and will trick you into shoving yourself into the Russian stove, where she will quickly cook you for dinner…
Are you scared? I was, as a kid! And although modern kids are probably more scared of monsters from a Harry Potter novel, the Russian fairy tales are still alive and well, and their characters, populating forests and rivers, have inspired popular films, songs, cartoons and advertising.
So who are they, the good, the bad and the ugly of the Russian folklore? Well, let’s start with the good guys.
A very typical representative of the fairy tale population is Ivanushka Durachok (Ivan the Idiot). He is incredibly lazy and incredibly lucky (and not as stupid as he looks). In spite of being totally useless, he manages to catch a magic pike fish who grants all his wishes. So he can stay on his warm stove and things and people will come to him, and of course in the end he will marry a beautiful princess, after passing all the tests invented by her father, the Tzar. They say he is the symbol of the Russian people: simple but resourceful, lazy but ready to act fast if necessary, pretending to be an idiot but being really clever…
And then, of course, there is a permanently depressed princess, Tsarevna Nesmeyana (Tsarina the Unlaughing) who keeps crying, until Ivanushka makes her laugh. She is the Tsar’s daughter, and she is so bored with her easy life at the palace that no one can make her smile, until Ivan comes with his magic touch and silly jokes.
Another female character is Vasilissa Premudraya (Vasilissa the Wise) – a young girl who is both very clever and very beautiful. She gives advice on how to avoid trouble. She can also do a bit of magic and helps people to find what they are looking for. She is the one who tells Ivan how to get the bad guy Kashey out of the way.
Kashey Bessmertnyi (Kashey the Immortal) is one of the baddies. He used to scare me the most. He looks like a skeleton, so when someone is really thin, Russians may say that he looks like a Kashey. Being immortal, he hides his death in the tip of a needle, which is hidden in an egg, which is in a duck, and the duck is in a hare, and the hare is in a wooden trunk suspended from a huge tree in the middle of a forest somewhere… so whoever breaks the needle will kill Kashey, and Ivan of course does it!
Kashey’s good friend and accomplice is Baba Yaga who lives in a little house with chicken feet, in some deep dark forest, and likes to cook people (children especially) for dinner. She travels in a big wooden flying bucket which she steers with a broomstick. While she is away her house is look after by her assistants – a big black cat and an owl. Baba Yaga is sometimes visited by Leshiy – the master of the forest. Needless to say that an encounter with any of these creatures is not good news for anyone. It’s only Ivan who manages to outwit them.
Russia is a land-locked country, rich in forests and rivers, which determines what kind of creatures dominate Russian folklore. Apart from the human-like monsters, it’s forest animals with human characteristics – a cunning fox, a timid hare, a ruthless but slightly dim wolf, a clumsy and really dim bear. Plus a couple of minor characters who look like mushrooms and plants. The rivers are populated by mermaids, and ruled by Vodyanoy, a watery monster who can drown innocent swimmers. The origin of all these fantastic creatures must be in the old Slavic Pagan mythology, with a pantheon of many gods.
I am not going to retell you the plots of any fairy tales – it would be more interesting to read them or watch one of the wonderful old Soviet-era movies or cartoons based on Russian fairy tales. Ivan, of course, gets all the monsters out of the way and marries Vasilissa Premudraya (just as well, since he himself is not very bright, and the Tsar’s daughter is too spoiled) and everything ends well, as it should do in a fairy tale.