Russian Fairy Tale and Folklore
Introduction
to the folklore and fairy tales of Russia
There are but few among those inhabitants of Fairy-land of whom
"Popular Tales" tell, who are better known to the outer world than
Cinderella--the despised and flouted younger sister, who long sits
unnoticed beside the hearth, then furtively visits the glittering
halls of the great and gay, and at last is transferred from her
obscure nook to the place of honor justly due to her tardily
acknowledged merits. Somewhat like the fortunes of Cinderella have
been those of the popular tale itself. Long did it dwell beside the
hearths of the common people, utterly ignored by their superiors in
social rank. Then came a period during which the cultured world
recognized its existence, but accorded to it no higher rank than that
allotted to "nursery stories" and "old wives' tales"--except, indeed,
on those rare occasions when the charity of a condescending scholar
had invested it with such a garb as was supposed to enable it to make
a respectable appearance in polite society. At length there arrived
the season of its final change, when, transferred from the dusk of the
peasant's hut into the full light of the outer day, and freed from the
unbecoming garments by which it had been disfigured, it was recognized
as the scion of a family so truly royal that some of its members
deduce their origin from the olden gods themselves.
In our days the folk-tale, instead of being left to the careless
guardianship of youth and ignorance, is sedulously tended and held in
high honor by the ripest of scholars. Their views with regard to its
origin may differ widely. But whether it be considered in one of its
phases as a distorted "nature-myth," or in another as a demoralized
apologue or parable--whether it be regarded at one time as a relic of
primeval wisdom, or at another as a blurred transcript of a page of
mediaeval history--its critics agree in declaring it to be no mere
creation of the popular fancy, no chance expression of the uncultured
thought of the rude tiller of this or that soil. Rather is it believed
of most folk-tales that they, in their original forms, were framed
centuries upon centuries ago; while of some of them it is supposed
that they may be traced back through successive ages to those myths in
which, during a prehistoric period, the oldest of philosophers
expressed their ideas relative to the material or the spiritual world.
But it is not every popular tale which can boast of so noble a
lineage, and one of the great difficulties which beset the mythologist
who attempts to discover the original meaning of folk-tales in general
is to decide which of them are really antique, and worthy, therefore,
of being submitted to critical analysis. Nor is it less difficult,
when dealing with the stories of any one country in particular, to
settle which may be looked upon as its own property, and which ought
to be considered as borrowed and adapted. Everyone knows that the
existence of the greater part of the stories current among the various
European peoples is accounted for on two different hypotheses--the one
supposing that most of them "were common in germ at least to the Aryan
tribes before their migration," and that, therefore, "these traditions
are as much a portion of the common inheritance of our ancestors as
their language unquestionably is:"[11] the other regarding at least a
great part of them as foreign importations, Oriental fancies which
were originally introduced into Europe, through a series of
translations, by the pilgrims and merchants who were always linking
the East and the West together, or by the emissaries of some of the
heretical sects, or in the train of such warlike transferrers as the
Crusaders, or the Arabs who ruled in Spain, or the Tartars who so long
held the Russia of old times in their grasp. According to the former
supposition, "these very stories, these _Maehrchen_, which nurses still
tell, with almost the same words, in the Thuringian forest and in the
Norwegian villages, and to which crowds of children listen under the
pippal trees of India,"[12] belong "to the common heirloom of the
Indo-European race;" according to the latter, the majority of European
popular tales are merely naturalized aliens in Europe, being as little
the inheritance of its present inhabitants as were the stories and
fables which, by a circuitous route, were transmitted from India to
Boccaccio or La Fontaine.
On the questions to which these two conflicting hypotheses give rise
we will not now dwell. For the present, we will deal with the Russian
folk-tale as we find it, attempting to become acquainted with its
principal characteristics to see in what respects it chiefly differs
from the stories of the same class which are current among ourselves,
or in those foreign lands with which we are more familiar than we are
with Russia, rather than to explore its birthplace or to divine its
original meaning.
We often hear it said, that from the songs and stories of a country we
may learn much about the inner life of its people, inasmuch as popular
utterances of this kind always bear the stamp of the national
character, offer a reflex of the national mind. So far as folk-songs
are concerned, this statement appears to be well founded, but it can
be applied to the folk-tales of Europe only within very narrow limits.
Each country possesses certain stories which have special reference to
its own manners and customs, and by collecting such tales as these,
something approximating to a picture of its national life may be
laboriously pieced together. But the stories of this class are often
nothing more than comparatively modern adaptations of old and foreign
themes; nor are they sufficiently numerous, so far as we can judge
from existing collections, to render by any means complete the
national portrait for which they are expected to supply the materials.
In order to fill up the gaps they leave, it is necessary to bring
together a number of fragments taken from stories which evidently
refer to another clime--fragments which may be looked upon as
excrescences or developments due to the novel influences to which the
foreign slip, or seedling, or even full-grown plant, has been
subjected since its transportation.
The great bulk of the Russian folk-tales, and, indeed, of those of
all the Indo-European nations, is devoted to the adventures of such
fairy princes and princesses, such snakes and giants and demons, as
are quite out of keeping with ordinary men and women--at all events
with the inhabitants of modern Europe since the termination of those
internecine struggles between aboriginals and invaders, which some
commentators see typified in the combats between the heroes of our
popular tales and the whole race of giants, trolls, ogres, snakes,
dragons, and other monsters. The air we breathe in them is that of
Fairy-land; the conditions of existence, the relations between the
human race and the spiritual world on the one hand, the material world
on the other, are totally inconsistent with those to which we are now
restricted. There is boundless freedom of intercourse between mortals
and immortals, between mankind and the brute creation, and, although
there are certain conventional rules which must always be observed,
they are not those which are enforced by any people known to
anthropologists. The stories which are common to all Europe differ, no
doubt, in different countries, but their variations, so far as their
matter is concerned, seem to be due less to the moral character than
to the geographical distribution of their reciters. The manner in
which these tales are told, however, may often be taken as a test of
the intellectual capacity of their tellers. For in style the folk-tale
changes greatly as it travels. A story which we find narrated in one
country with terseness and precision may be rendered almost
unintelligible in another by vagueness or verbiage; by one race it may
be elevated into poetic life, by another it may be degraded into the
most prosaic dulness.
Now, so far as style is concerned, the Skazkas or Russian folk-tales,
may justly be said to be characteristic of the Russian people. There
are numerous points on which the "lower classes" of all the Aryan
peoples in Europe closely resemble each other, but the Russian peasant
has--in common with all his Slavonic brethren--a genuine talent for
narrative which distinguishes him from some of his more distant
cousins. And the stories which are current among the Russian peasantry
are for the most part exceedingly well narrated. Their language is
simple and pleasantly quaint, their humor is natural and unobtrusive,
and their descriptions, whether of persons or of events, are often
excellent.[13] A taste for acting is widely spread in Russia, and the
Russian folk-tales are full of dramatic positions which offer a wide
scope for a display of their reciter's mimetic talents. Every here and
there, indeed, a tag of genuine comedy has evidently been attached by
the story-teller to a narrative which in its original form was
probably devoid of the comic element.
And thus from the Russian tales may be derived some idea of the
mental characteristics of the Russian peasantry--one which is very
incomplete, but, within its narrow limits, sufficiently accurate. And
a similar statement may be made with respect to the pictures of
Russian peasant life contained in these tales. So far as they go they
are true to nature, and the notion which they convey to a stranger of
the manners and customs of Russian villagers is not likely to prove
erroneous, but they do not go very far. On some of the questions which
are likely to be of the greatest interest to a foreigner they never
touch. There is very little information to be gleaned from them, for
instance, with regard to the religious views of the people, none with
respect to the relations which, during the times of serfdom, existed
between the lord and the thrall. But from the casual references to
actual scenes and ordinary occupations which every here and there
occur in the descriptions of fairy-land and the narratives of heroic
adventure--from the realistic vignettes which are sometimes inserted
between the idealized portraits of invincible princes and irresistible
princesses--some idea may be obtained of the usual aspect of a Russian
village, and of the ordinary behavior of its inhabitants. Turning from
one to another of these accidental illustrations, we by degrees create
a mental picture which is not without its peculiar charm. We see the
wide sweep of the level corn-land, the gloom of the interminable
forest, the gleam of the slowly winding river. We pass along the
single street of the village, and glance at its wooden barn-like
huts,[14] so different from the ideal English cottage with its windows
set deep in ivy and its porch smiling with roses. We see the land
around a Slough of Despond in the spring, an unbroken sea of green in
the early summer, a blaze of gold at harvest-time, in the winter one
vast sheet of all but untrodden snow. On Sundays and holidays we
accompany the villagers to their white-walled, green-domed church, and
afterwards listen to the songs which the girls sing in the summer
choral dances, or take part in the merriment of the social gatherings,
which enliven the long nights of winter. Sometimes the quaint lyric
drama of a peasant wedding is performed before our eyes, sometimes we
follow a funeral party to one of those dismal and desolate nooks in
which the Russian villagers deposit their dead. On working days we see
the peasants driving afield in the early morn with their long lines of
carts, to till the soil, or ply the scythe or sickle or axe, till the
day is done and their rude carts come creaking back. We hear the songs
and laughter of the girls beside the stream or pool which ripples
pleasantly against its banks in the summer time, but in the winter
shows no sign of life, except at the spot, much frequented by the
wives and daughters of the village, where an "ice-hole" has been cut
in its massive pall. And at night we see the homely dwellings of the
villagers assume a picturesque aspect to which they are strangers by
the tell-tale light of day, their rough lines softened by the mellow
splendor of a summer moon, or their unshapely forms looming forth
mysteriously against the starlit snow of winter. Above all we become
familiar with those cottage interiors to which the stories contain so
many references. Sometimes we see the better class of homestead,
surrounded by its fence through which we pass between the
often-mentioned gates. After a glance at the barns and cattle-sheds,
and at the garden which supplies the family with fruits and vegetables
(on flowers, alas! but little store is set in the northern provinces),
we cross the threshold, a spot hallowed by many traditions, and pass,
through what in more pretentious houses may be called the vestibule,
into the "living room." We become well acquainted with its
arrangements, with the cellar beneath its wooden floor, with the
"corner of honor" in which are placed the "holy pictures," and with
the stove which occupies so large a share of space, within which daily
beats, as it were the heart of the house, above which is nightly taken
the repose of the family. Sometimes we visit the hut of the
poverty-stricken peasant, more like a shed for cattle than a human
habitation, with a mud-floor and a tattered roof, through which the
smoke makes its devious way. In these poorer dwellings we witness much
suffering; but we learn to respect the patience and resignation with
which it is generally borne, and in the greater part of the humble
homes we visit we become aware of the existence of many domestic
virtues, we see numerous tokens of family affection, of filial
reverence, of parental love. And when, as we pass along the village
street at night, we see gleaming through the utter darkness the faint
rays which tell that even in many a poverty-stricken home a lamp is
burning before the "holy pictures," we feel that these poor tillers of
the soil, ignorant and uncouth though they too often are, may be
raised at times by lofty thoughts and noble aspirations far above the
low level of the dull and hard lives which they are forced to lead.
From among the stories which contain the most graphic descriptions of
Russian village life, or which may be regarded as specially
illustrative of Russian sentiment and humor those which the present
chapter contains have been selected. Any information they may convey
will necessarily be of a most fragmentary nature, but for all that it
may be capable of producing a correct impression. A painter's rough
notes and jottings are often more true to nature than the most
finished picture into which they may be developed.
The word skazka, or folk-tale, does not very often occur in the
Russian popular tales themselves. Still there are occasions on which
it appears. The allusions to it are for the most part indirect, as
when a princess is said to be more beautiful than anybody ever was,
except in a skazka; but sometimes it obtains direct notice. In a
story, for instance, of a boy who had been carried off by a Baba Yaga
(a species of witch), we are told that when his sister came to his
rescue she found him "sitting in an arm-chair, while the cat Jeremiah
told him skazkas and sang him songs."[15] In another story, a
_Durak_,--a "ninny" or "gowk"--is sent to take care of the children of
a village during the absence of their parents. "Go and get all the
children together in one of the cottages and tell them skazkas," are
his instructions. He collects the children, but as they are "all ever
so dirty" he puts them into boiling water by way of cleansing them,
and so washes them to death.[16]
There is a good deal of social life in the Russian villages during the
long winter evenings, and at some of the gatherings which then take
place skazkas are told, though at those in which only the young people
participate, songs, games, and dances are more popular. The following
skazka has been selected on account of the descriptions of a
_vechernitsa_, or village _soiree_,[17] and of a rustic courtship,
which its opening scene contains. The rest of the story is not
remarkable for its fidelity to modern life, but it will serve as a
good illustration of the class to which it belongs--that of stories
about evil spirits, traceable, for the most part, to Eastern sources.