A Russian Fairy Tale Story “The Witch”
In a certain far-off country there once lived a king and queen.And they had an only son, Prince Ivan, who was dumb fromhis birth. One day, when he was twelve years old, he went intothe stable to see a groom who was a great friend of his.That groom always used to tell him tales [_skazki_], and onthis occasion Prince Ivan went to him expecting to hear somestories [_skazochki_], but that wasn't what he heard."PrinceIvan!" said the groom, "your mother will soonhave a daughter, and you a sister. She will be a terrible witch,and she will eat up her father, and her mother, and all their subjects.So go and ask your father for the best horse he has—asif you wanted a gallop--and then, if you want to be out of harm'sway, ride away whithersoever your eyes guide you."Prince Ivan ran off to his father and, for the first time in his
life, began speaking to him.At that the king was so delighted that he never thought of
asking what he wanted a good steed for, but immediately orderedthe very best horse he had in his stud to be saddled for theprince.
Prince Ivan mounted, and rode off without caring where hewent. Long, long did he ride.
At length he came to where two old women were sewingand he begged them to let him live with them. But they said:"Gladly would we do so, Prince Ivan, only we have nowbut a short time to live. As soon as we have broken that trunkful
of needles, and used up that trunkful of thread, that instantwill death arrive!"
Prince Ivan burst into tears and rode on. Long, long didhe ride. At length he came towhere the giant Vertodub was,and he besought him, saying:
"Take me to live with you."
"Gladly would I have taken you, Prince Ivan!" replied thegiant, "but now I have very little longer to live. As soon as Ihave pulled up all these trees by the roots, instantly will comemy death!"
More bitterly still did the prince weep as he rode farther andfarther on. By-and-by he came to where the giant Vertogorwas, and made the same request to him, but he replied:
"Gladly would I have taken you, Prince Ivan! but I myselfhave very little longer to live. I am set here, you know, tolevel mountains. The moment I have settled matters with theseyou see remaining, then will my death come!"Prince Ivan burst into a flood of bitter tears, and rode onstill farther. Long, long did he ride. At last he came to thedwelling of the Sun's Sister. She received him into her house,gave him food and drink, and treated him just as if he had beenher own son.
The prince now led an easy life. But it was all no use; hecouldn't help being miserable. He longed so to know what wasgoing on at home.He often went to the top of a high mountain, and thencegazed at the palace in which he used to live, and he could seethat it was all eaten away; nothing but the bare walls remained!
Then he would sigh and weep. Once when he returned afterhe had been thus looking and crying, the Sun's Sister askedhim:
"What makes your eyes so red to-day, Prince Ivan?"
"The wind has been blowing in them," said he.
The same thing happened a second time. Then the Sun'sSister ordered the wind to stop blowing. Again a third timedid Prince Ivan come back with a blubbered face. This timethere was no help for it; he had to confess everything, and thenhe took to entreating the Sun's Sister to let him go, that he might satisfy himself about his old home. She would not lethim go, but he went on urgently entreating.
So at last he persuaded her, and she let him go away tofind out about his home. But first she provided him for thejourney with a brush, a comb, and two youth-giving apples.
However old any one might be, let him eat one of these apples,he would grow young again in an instant.Well, Prince Ivan came to where Vertogor was. There was
only just one mountain left! He took his brush and cast itdown on the open plain. Immediately there rose out of theearth, goodness knows whence, high, ever so high mountains,their peaks touching the sky. And the number of them was
such that there were more than the eye could see! Vertogorrejoiced greatly and blithely recommenced his work.
After a time Prince Ivan came to where Vertodub was, andfound that there were only three trees remaining there. So hetook the comb and flung it on the open plain. Immediately fromsomewhere or other there came a sound of trees,[222] and forth fromthe ground arose dense oak forests! each stem more huge thanthe other! Vertodub was delighted, thanked the Prince, andset to work uprooting the ancient oaks.
By-and-by Prince Ivan reached the old women, and gaveeach of them an apple. They ate them, and straightway becameyoung again. So they gave him a handkerchief; you only hadto wave it, and behind you lay a whole lake! At last Prince
Ivan arrived at home. Out came running his sister to meet him,caressed him fondly.
"Sit thee down, my brother!" she said, "play a tune on thelute while I go and get dinner ready."
The Prince sat down and strummed away on the lute [_gusli_].Then there crept a mouse out of a hole, and said to him in ahuman voice:
"Save yourself, Prince. Run away quick! your sister hasgone to sharpen her teeth."
Prince Ivan fled from the room, jumped on his horse, andgalloped away back. Meantime the mouse kept running overthe strings of the lute. They twanged, and the sister neverguessed that her brother was off. When she had sharpened
her teeth she burst into the room. Lo and behold! not a soulwas there, nothing but the mouse bolting into its hole! Thewitch waxed wroth, ground her teeth like anything, and set offin pursuit.
Prince Ivan heard a loud noise and looked back. There washis sister chasing him. So he waved his handkerchief, and adeep lake lay behind him. While the witch was swimming acrossthe water, Prince Ivan got a long way ahead. But on she came
faster than ever; and now she was close at hand! Vertodubguessed that the Prince was trying to escape from his sister.So he began tearing up oaks and strewing them across the road.A regular mountain did he pile up! there was no passing by for
the witch! So she set to work to clear the way. She gnawed,and gnawed, and at length contrived by hard work to bore herway through; but by this time Prince Ivan was far ahead.
On she dashed in pursuit, chased and chased. Just a littlemore, and it would be impossible for him to escape! But Vertogorspied the witch, laid hold of the very highest of all the mountains,pitched it down all of a heap on the road, and flung
another mountain right on top of it. While the witch wasclimbing and clambering, Prince Ivan rode and rode, and foundhimself a long way ahead. At last the witch got across themountain, and once more set off in pursuit of her brother. By-and-by
she caught sight of him, and exclaimed:
"You sha'n't get away from me this time!" And now she isclose, now she is just going to catch him!
At that very moment Prince Ivan dashed up to the abode ofthe Sun's Sister and cried:
"Sun, Sun! open the window!"
The Sun's Sister opened the window, and the Prince boundedthrough it, horse and all.
Then the witch began to ask that her brother might be givenup to her for punishment. The Sun's Sister would not listento her, nor would she give him up. Then the witch said:
"Let Prince Ivan be weighed against me, to see which is theheavier. If I am, then I will eat him; but if he is, then let himkill me!"
This was done. Prince Ivan was the first to get into one ofthe scales; then the witch began to get into the other. But nosooner had she set foot in it than up shot Prince Ivan in the air,and that with such force that he flew right up into the sky, and
into the chamber of the Sun's Sister.But as for the Witch-Snake, she remained down below onearth.
[The word _terem_ (plural _terema_) which occurs twicein this story (rendered the second time by "chamber")deserves a special notice. Inits antique sense, as "a raised, lofty habitation, orpart of one--a Boyar's castle--a Seigneur's house—thedwelling-place of a ruler within a fortress," &c. The"terem of the women," sometimes styled "of the girls,"used to comprise the part of a Seigneur's house, onthe upper floor, set aside for the female members ofhis family. We’ve compared it with the Russian_tyurma_, a prison, and the German _Thurm_. But it
seems really to be derived from the Greek +teremnon+,"anything closely shut fast or closely covered, aroom, chamber," &c.
That part of the story which refers to the CannibalPrincess is familiar to the Modern Greeks. In theSyriote tale of "The Strigla" (Hahn, No. 65) aprincess devours her father and all his subjects. Herbrother, who had escaped while she was still a babe,
visits her and is kindly received. But while she issharpening her teeth with a view towards eating him, amouse gives him a warning which saves his life. As in
the Russian story the mouse jumps about on the stringsof a lute in order to deceive the witch, so in theGreek it plays a fiddle. But the Greek hero does not
leave his sister's abode. After remaining concealedone night, he again accosts her. She attempts to eathim, but he kills her.
In a variant from Epirus (Hahn, ii. p. 283-4) thecannibal princess is called a Chursusissa. Her brotherclimbs a tree, the stem of which she gnaws almost
asunder. But before it falls, a Lamia comes to his aidand kills his sister.
Afanasief (viii. p. 527) identifies the Sun's Sisterwith the Dawn. The following explanation of the skazka(with the exception of the words within brackets) is
given by A. de Gubernatis ("Zool. Myth." i. 183)."Ivan is the Sun, the aurora [or dawn] is his [true]sister; at morning, near the abode of the aurora, that
is, in the east, the shades of night [his witch, orfalse sister] go underground, and the Sun arises tothe heavens; this is the mythical pair of scales. Thusin the Christian belief, St. Michael weighs humansouls; those who weigh much sink down into hell, andthose who are light arise to the heavenly paradise."]As an illustration of this story, Afanasief (_P.V.S._ iii. 272) quotesa Little-Russian Skazka in which a man, who is seeking "the Isle inwhich there is no death," meets with various personages like thosewith whom the Prince at first wished to stay on his journey, and at
last takes up his abode with the moon. Death comes in search of him,after a hundred years or so have elapsed, and engages in a strugglewith the Moon, the result of which is that the man is caught up intothe sky, and there shines thenceforth "as a star near the moon."The Sun's Sister is a mythical being who is often mentioned in the
popular poetry of the South-Slavonians. A Servian song represents abeautiful maiden, with "arms of silver up to the elbows," sitting on asilver throne which floats on water. A suitor comes to woo her. Shewaxes wroth and cries,
Whom wishes he to woo?
The sister of the Sun,
The cousin of the Moon,
The adopted-sister of the Dawn.
Then she flings down three golden apples, which the"marriage-proposers" attempt to catch, but "three lightnings flashfrom the sky" and kill the suitor and his friends.
In another Servian song a girl cries to the Sun--
O brilliant Sun! I am fairer than thou,
Than thy brother, the bright Moon,
Than thy sister, the moving star [Venus?].
In South-Slavonian poetry the sun often figures as a radiant youth.But among the Northern Slavonians, as well as the Lithuanians, the sunwas regarded as a female being, the bride of the moon. "Thou askest meof what race, of what family I am," says the fair maiden of a songpreserved in the Tambof Government--
My mother is--the beauteous Sun,
And my father--the bright Moon;
My brothers are--the many Stars,
And my sisters--the white Dawns.[223]
A far more detailed account might be given of the Witch and her near
relation the Baba Yaga, as well as of those masculine embodiments ofthat spirit of evil which is personified in them, the Snake, Koshchei,and other similar beings. But the stories which have been quoted willsuffice to give at least a general idea of their moral and physicalattributes. We will now turn from their forms, so constantlyintroduced into the skazka-drama, to some of the supernatural figureswhich are not so often brought upon the stage--to those mythicalbeings of whom (numerous as may be the traditions about them) theregular "story" does not so often speak, to such personifications ofabstract ideas as are less frequently employed to set its conventionalmachinery in motion.
As our work is dedicated to the investigation of language units and national-cultural specificities, in practical part of our paper we attempted to provide the most effective analysis of various “Language Pictures” and “National-Cultural Specificities” through the comparative analysis of Oral and Written forms of Text of different languages and cultures. For these purposes, we divided our practical part into 2 chapters.
In the first chapter “Comparative analysis of Language World Pictures and National-Cultural Specificities in Oral and Written forms of Text” we attempted to show maximum examples of language peculiarities, to examine the concepts and values of different nations, specifically English, Kazakh, Russian and Chinese nations.
In the second chapter “Determination of Kazakh and Russian World Pictures through conceptual analysis of the Folklore” we analyzed the national and Russian World Pictures by the conceptual analysis of folktales and folksongs which optimally reflect the specificities of given cultures. Also we analyzed the basic values and cultural peculiarities, in a word, Kazakh and Russian nation’s mentalities.
We revealed the influence of culture to language and established that they are inseparable phenomena as we mentioned in our theoretical part.
Conclusion
As the theme of our thesis paper is “Language World Picture and National-Cultural Specificities in Oral and Written forms of Text” we maximum attempted to reveal the concepts “Language World Picture” ,“National-Cultural Specificities” and their interaction through analysis of oral and written forms of text.
To achieve our goal, first of all, we gave the definition to the concept “Language World Picture”, examined Language as a mirror of social life in the concept of cross-cultural communication, revealed the problems of Language and Culture interaction and determined “Folklore” as the most important and well-acclaimed component of the cultural heritage of the nation in the theoretical part of our thesis paper. In the first chapter “Different points of view on the term “Language World Picture” we presented you various approaches to the concept “Language World Picture”, notably given definitions of outstanding linguists as W. Humboldt, who wrote that “Different languages serve for nation as organs of their original thinking and perception”, Wittgenstein who wrote one of the most significant works in the field of lingvoculture, Russian linguist Maslova who also made a huge investigation of “Language World Picture”, especially Russian World Picture.
In the theory of “Language and Culture: problems of interaction” the relationship between language and culture have shown and that these two concepts are inseparable phenomena. Also we analyzed nowadays condition of “Lingvoculture”: the science which directly studies the relationship between language and culture, and came to conclusion that it’s a new science and there are many problems and aspects which are not studied yet, especially in our Kazakhstan this field of linguistics is poor developed.
In the third chapter “Folklore as the most important and well-acclaimed component of the cultural heritage of the nation” we gave the brief observe to the concept “Folklore” and regarded it as the main reflector and keeper of the cultural heritage. Also we made a subtitle “Expression of Folklore in Oral and Written forms of Text” where we discerned the ways of folklore expression; defined the oral and written forms of text.