Myth and Immortality in Russian Folktales

Abstract

As Russian folklorist Vladimir Propp already set out in his monograph Theory and History of Folklore (1984), folktales, and in particular fairy tales, could preserve the remnants of myths and rites from very ancient stages of human civilisation, dating back to Prehistoric times themselves. The great Indoeuropeanist Georges Dumézil managed to confirm that the Slavic cultures are perhaps those which have best preserved the ancient rites to this day. As José Manuel Losada pointed out, the encounter with transcendence is one of the essential dimensions of myth that defines it and distinguishes it from other manifestations of human creativity. In this article, we will study the idea of immortality that can be found in Russian folktales as published by Aleksandr Afanasyev in his compilation (1855–1863) and trace back the remnants of the Indo-European religion and mythology that they can conceal.

1. Introduction

As Russian folklorist Vladimir Propp already set out in his monograph Theory and History of Folklore (1984), folktales, and in particular fairy tales, could preserve the remnants of myths and rites from very ancient stages of human civilisation, dating back to Prehistoric times themselves. In his study, Propp warned that folktales, just like the very folklore of which they form part, are a continuum within human culture, and it is not possible to carry out partial studies by nationalities or independent peoples. However, the author himself recognises that, for his research, he started from the popular stories from his country, which were the ones he knew best, and then drew parallels from the most diverse cultures and civilisations, both ancient and contemporary.

The great Indoeuropeanist Georges Dumézil managed to confirm that “the Slavic lands are perhaps those which have best preserved the ancient form and meaning of the rites to this day” (Dumézil 1929, p. 10). However, we must always treat the data taken from folklore with a lot of precaution because we cannot forget that they have not come to us directly from the native speakers themselves but have rather been filtered and compiled by folklorists and anthropologists belonging mostly to the 19th century and early decades of the 20th century, and they are therefore susceptible to being influenced by the ideologies and prejudices of their time.

The largest collection of Russian folktales was accomplished by the folklorist Alexander Afanasyev, who brought together a total of six hundred tales, published in eight volumes between 1855 and 1863, and is, in fact, the largest collection of short stories in the history of literature. Unlike other collections of folktales from the time, Afanasyev included different variations of the same tale and tried to respect as much as possible the original language of the tales, reflecting, at times, the various regional dialects. In his collection, fairy tales occupy a prominent place, followed by animal tales and a smaller number of traditional folktales that complete the collection.

Finally, the Spanish philologist José Manuel Losada (2022) in his monograph on cultural myth criticism pointed out that the encounter with transcendence is one of the essential dimensions of myth that defines it and distinguishes it from other manifestations of human creativity.

2. Discussion

In the work mentioned at the beginning, as well as in Morphology of the Folktale (Propp [1968] 2009), Vladimir Propp made it clear that all the fairy tales share the same fixed recurring structure, which essentially consists of a journey made by the protagonist to a faraway kingdom in order to find some magic object (functions XIV and XV according to Propp’s typology), rescue some relative who has been kidnapped (function VIII), or find their fiancée in the case of male protagonists and, occasionally, all three at once. As it were, the tale always begins with a misfortune that befalls the hero’s family, whether it be a death of one of their parents (or both), a kidnapping (of the protagonist or of some relative), or their expulsion by a wicked stepmother. This misfortune will be the cause of the hero´s journey (functions IX and XI). If this is the approach, the ending will always be happy and come together with the marriage of the hero or heroine (function XXXI). The climax of the tale will always be set against the backdrop of a deep dark wood, on the edge of which or in a clearing in the middle of the bushes you will find an izba, the typical Russian rural cabin, which in this case will present very particular characteristics: it is hen-legged and rotates on itself. There lives a sinister supernatural character, the Baba-Yaga, the wicked witch of Russian folktales. However, this character has an ambivalent nature, since, while threatening to eat the hero and putting him through tough tests, finally, the Baba-Yaga becomes generous enough to provide him with some magical object that will make his endeavours easier (functions XIV and XV).

However, the original and lasting meaning of all fairy tales goes much further than that. Vladimir Propp presents his hypothesis that all of them would in fact be reflecting an ancient rite that would be present in all human cultures, dating back to the earliest stages of civilisation. It is an initiation rite, by which an adolescent child would enter adulthood and, as such, become a full member of his or her community. As a rite, it might comprise specific steps that should always be followed in the same order, as described in the fairy tales. However, also, in their development, this rite and its literary reflection are charged with all the easily recognisable signs of death. This is not by chance, since the initiation rite of the adolescent is really a rite of passage, which might involve the symbolic death of the child and his or her rebirth as an adult for the society to which he or she belongs.

Next, we shall describe these signs of death. Before leaving, the child, usually a male protagonist, who is always called “Ivan”, is provided with a series of objects that will be useful during his journey. This corresponds to function XIV according to Propp’s typology of functions (Propp [1968] 2009, pp. 43–50). Normally, this tends to be an iron stick, like in the tale of Ivan the Cow´s Son1, which is sometimes completed with a hat and special shoes for the journey, as well as some food, usually bread. As Propp points out (Propp [1984] 1997, p. 117), all these elements have been found in the burial sites of various ancient cultures, as objects that the dead will need in their journey to the Other World. In the tale of Vasilissa the Beautiful2, the quintessential female protagonist, the object is much more disturbing, since it is a living doll that her mother gave her on her death bed, and not only does it talk, but it also eats and will help her carry out the tasks that the witch orders her to do. According to Propp ([1984] 1997, p. 207), in primitive cultures, dolls are the substitutes for the dead in this world. The link between dolls with the Other World becomes clear in the tale of the Prince Danila Govorila3, where four dolls given to the Prince´s sister, Catherine, by two little old women help her escape from incest that had been caused by a witch´s curse by means of a magic ring.

Going back to the journey, the protagonist suddenly finds themselves in a deep dark wood. In both Indo-European and many non-Indo-European cultures, the wood was a sacred place. Furthermore, it was in the wood, and above all in one with these characteristics, where the entrance to the Other World was found. Without going further, we find this motif in Ovid´s Metamorphoses or in book VI of Virgil´s Aeneid, both works cited by Propp ([1984] 1997, p. 111). It is precisely on the edge of the forest or in a clearing in the forest that the protagonist comes across the witch’s hut. Its very location already tells us about its liminal character, of a border between two worlds. In this sense, the witch´s hut is the gateway to the Other World, and its owner, the guardian of the gateway.

However, its link to the Beyond is expressed through the very form of the hut, which adopts zoomorphic characteristics: the famous hen legs. A lot has been speculated about the origin of these legs, but the most likely hypothesis, also mentioned by Propp ([1984] 1997, p. 207), would be an ancient totemic worship of animals by primitive societies. This would include the belief that the souls of the dead were transferred to animals or became animals and, more specifically, birds. In some tales, the Other World would be inhabited by thirty-three heron-princesses4 or by the Princess White Swan5. However, the choice of a hen is not by chance, especially in the Slavic area. As we know from the most ancient sources about pre-Christian Slavic religion, they sacrificed cocks and hens to different pagan deities, and especially to spirits of nature called Vily, who are called in a 14th century sermon “the thirty little sisters” (Santos Marinas 2014, pp. 137–38; Álvarez-Pedrosa 2021, p. 382, n. 316), which would be equivalent to nymphs in Greek-Roman culture, and whose number almost coincides with the number of heron-princesses in the tales. There are also testimonies of cock sacrifices at funeral rites for the dead on the battlefield practised by the warriors of Prince Sviatoslav of the Kievan Rus´ in his campaign in the Balkans in 969 A.D., as told by Leo the Deacon (Álvarez-Pedrosa 2014, p. 150; 2021, pp. 42–43).

In any case, Baba-Yaga´s hut standing on hen’s legs is very reminiscent of the funeral urn on wooden poles where some East Slavic tribes used to place the ashes and bones of the deceased on roadsides, as we learn from the oldest East Slavic chronicle, the Primary Chronicle (Santos Marinas 2014, pp. 132–33). Furthermore, if there is any doubt about the link between Baba-Yaga´s hut and death, it suffices to read the description of it in the tale of Vasilissa the Beautiful (Afanasyev 1983, I, p. 129). In order to enter, the hero has to say some magic words, meaning, a fixed formula. As we find in many ancient traditions and cultures, the soul of the deceased must pronounce precise formulas in order to be able to enter the world beyond the grave. In this case, it is the phrase: “Hut, hut (…) turn your back to the wood and your front to me” (Propp [1984] 1997, pp. 89–90). In this way, the izba turns around, allowing the boy to enter. As far as the female protagonist is concerned, instead of a formula, she will have to perform ritual actions in order to gain access to the house, which will basically consist of winning the good will of her guardians (Afanasyev 1983, I, p. 123)6.

There is some doubt as to whether the hero is dead or alive, but the story itself clears it up, taking into account the phrase that the witch utters when she senses the arrival of the stranger: “Fee-fo-fum! I smell the blood of a Russian! “ or, more specifically, “a Russian spirit” (Propp [1984] 1997, p. 117). Thus, we can deduce that the witch finds the smell of the child unpleasant because he is alive, producing a reversal of what happens in the world of the living with the smell of the dead. It is also striking that she senses him by smell, and according to Propp (ibid.), it is clear that the witch neither sees nor hears.

The physical image of the Baba-Yaga also incorporates some features of death. Her name is made up of the word baba, which means “old”, and the second element Yaga, which can be traced back to the Indo-European root nasalised *aig- > *ing-, which means “bad-tempered, sullen, sickly”, and which has parallels in old Slavonic jędza “illness”, in Slovenian jeva “anger”, in Polish jędza “witch, fury”, or in Czech jezinka, which would also describe a female deity of the wood (Pokorny 1959/I, p. 13; cf. Kononov 1973, pp. 118–19; Valentsova 2023, pp. 68–75). Although the first element of the name is rather neutral, one cannot help but associate it with the kamennye baby, the “old stone women”, idols inside which the nomadic peoples of Central Asia placed the ashes of the deceased. The epithet given to the sorceress in the fairy tales is even clearer: “Baba-Yaga boney legs” (Propp [1984] 1997, pp. 95–97; cf. Toporov 1963, pp. 32–37; Kabakova 2016, pp. 11–12). Some stories show her lying on the cooker and occupying the whole room with her body. As we are not told at any point that she is a giant, it is possible to imagine that the little house is very small, which reinforces its correspondence with the funerary urn (cf. Solyanik 2018, p. 106).

The Baba-Yaga is split into two in the figure of a young girl who is sometimes her maid and sometimes her daughter, but who is always weaving or spinning. It will be this alter ego of the Baba-Yaga who will help the hero or heroine. Here, the figure of the weaver or spinner refers to the mythical figure of the goddesses of destiny in various Indo-European traditions, such as the Greek Moirai, the Roman Parcae, or the Scandinavian Norns. In the tale of the Princess White-Swan, Baba-Yaga is multiplied by three “yaguishnas”.

Once inside the izba, the witch will offer the newcomer food, drink, and a bath. Here, we see a difference between male and female protagonists. While the former is the one being asked to eat, drink, and bathe, the young girl will not eat, giving the food to her doll and asking the witch’s maid to put out the fire in the bathroom and to throw the water out. The reason for this divergence is that the hero’s goal is also different. Ivan wishes to enter the Other World to rescue or find his fiancée, and for this, he has to take the food, drink, and bath intended for the dead. On the other hand, the girl wants to return to the world of the living. If she performs these actions, she will become part of the world of the dead and will not be able to return. This is the same motif that we find in other traditions, for example, in the Greek-Latin tradition, with the goddess Persephone or Proserpine who eats pomegranate seeds and must remain in Hades. These three actions would be part of the process that the souls of the dead would follow on their journey to the afterlife. At the same time, the living celebrate the tryzna or “funeral feast” in the oldest attested funeral rite among the East Slavs (Santos Marinas 2014, p. 132). Conversely, if the dead return to this world, they must perform exactly the same rites. This is because in the Slavic mentality, the dead can return to this world, but only on specific dates and according to specific rules—specifically, during a pre-Christian festival called Radunica, which was dedicated to the dead and celebrated in spring, coinciding with Christian Easter week. In this respect, we have very valuable testimony in several 14th century sermons, in which clergymen angrily condemn these practices (Santos Marinas 2014, pp. 135–36). In describing the bath that was prepared for the dead, even leaving them a towel and a shirt to change into, we are told that on the ashes on the floor, the demons left “chicken” footprints, deceiving the pagans into believing that they were the footprints of the spirits of the dead, whom they call navĭę. Here, we find a new link with the hen’s feet of the Baba-Yaga hut and with the bird-like form, which, according to Slavic beliefs, the souls of the dead would take.

In addition, food, drink, and bathing, together with cremation, are found in the triple revenge of Princess Olga of Kievan Rus’ against the Drevlian murderers of her husband Prince Igor, as recorded in the Primary Chronicle in the entry for the year 945 A.D. These have been identified by Inés García de la Puente (2005, pp. 255–72) as part of a triple sacrifice ritual corresponding to the trifunctional ideology of Indo-European religion outlined by Georges Dumézil. And curiously, triple is the revenge planned by the three daughters of a witch when they become widows of the polycephalic monsters killed by Ivan the Cow’s Son and his two brothers, which consists of making them very hungry to feed them from an apple tree with silver and gold fruit that will make them burst, making them very thirsty to give them water to drink with silver and gold dippers from a well in which to drown them, and making them very sleepy to make them lie down on a bed of gold to be set on fire (Afanasyev 1983, I, p. 195).

However, the parallelism does not end here. In the same tale (Afanasyev 1983, I, pp. 196–99), after having outwitted the traps of the widowed sorceresses, Ivan the Cow´s Son has to face the test given to him by the old witch’s husband, who lies in an iron bed under the ground, thus showing the same features of death, and whose aim is to get the Tsaritsa with the golden curls. To fulfil the test, Ivan the Cow´s Son will count on the help of three old men with very peculiar abilities: one knows how to eat bread, another knows how to drink vodka and beer, and the third knows how to take steam baths. Here, again, we see the three ritual actions represented. The three old men will be done with the huge quantities of bread and drink, as well as the bath heated for three years that the Tsaritsa with the golden curls had arranged to dissuade Ivan the Cow´s Son from his plans to take her away with him. Finally, the hero defeats the old sorcerer and marries the Tsaritsa.

The tripartite division so dear to the Indo-European peoples is found profusely in Russian folktales. However, we must distinguish the simple repetitions of a structural or narrative nature, which are characteristic of folktales, from the tripartitions with a more symbolic value. A more symbolic value, for example, is the fact that the protagonist himself is multiplied by three in the case of Tsarevich Ivan, Ivan the Cook’s Son, and Ivan the Cow´s Son. The different origins of each sibling would reflect different functions. According to this tale about Ivan the Cow´s Son (Afanasyev 1983, I, p. 189), the Tsaritsa of a distant kingdom who wished to have children was told in a dream that she would beget a son if she ate a golden spiked perch fish7 that lived in a nearby still pond. After being caught by fishermen, the Tsaritsa ordered her favourite cook to cook it. However, while preparing the fish, the cook left the water for washing it in the courtyard, which a cow ended up drinking. The Tsaritsa then ate the fish, and the cook scraped the plate. In this way, the three of them simultaneously conceived three identical children, who would only differ in their habits when they returned from their walks: Tsarevich Ivan asked for a change of clothes, Ivan the Cook’s Son asked for something to eat, and Ivan the Cow´s Son lay down to rest. Tsarevich Ivan proposed tests to his brothers to determine which of them was the eldest, which ended up with Ivan the Cow´s Son coming out the winner, who turned out to be the strongest of the three. At the end of the story, it will be Ivan the Cow´s Son who takes over the Tsar’s throne and the Princess with the golden curls. In short, both Tsarevich Ivan and Ivan the Cow´s Son represent the two aspects of the first Dumézilian function, the sovereignty and sacredness of the bull, who also stands out for his strength and also encompasses aspects of the second warrior function, as it is he who single-handedly defeats the three polycephalous monsters. Ivan the Cook´s Son would belong to the third function related to feeding and reproduction, as would the fish and the aquatic element.

In tales starring three brothers, it tends to be the youngest, who is usually also the simplest and the dumbest, who will win the princess and the kingdom, triumphing over the others, who will betray him and leave him trapped in the Other World. In some tales, the older brothers go so far as to kill and dismember Ivan, as in the story about the apples of youth and the water of life8. Ivan will be brought back to life by his horse, which will gather the pieces of his body and sprinkle them with the water of life that Ivan had previously taken from Princess White-Swan. In other tales, the water of death also exists, which serves to weld the pieces of the body together, and it is the water of life that finally revives him. Focusing on the story about the apples of youth and the water of life, we have identified another element that would be related to the Dumézilian method of analysis and that was already mentioned by Professor Julia Mendoza Tuñón (1995, p. 133) commenting on the tension between the three functions and the disaster that results from placing the third function before the other two. Professor Mendoza cited the famous Judgement of Paris as an example, who preferred the goddess Aphrodite, the symbol of beauty and sexuality, and thus representative of the third function, over the goddesses Hera (sovereignty) and Athena (warrior function), thus provoking the Trojan War. Professor Mendoza also related this story to the good choice made by the protagonist of Germanic folktales, which leads to happiness. Thus, in the aforementioned Russian tale about the apples of youth and the water of life, the protagonist Ivan, who is the youngest and least intelligent of the three brothers, sets off in search of these magical objects for his father the Tsar, and it is he who makes the right decision when he reaches the crossroads where the following dilemma is written on a post: “If you go to the left, you shall eat and drink; if you go to the left, you shall lose your head” (Afanasyev 1983, I, p. 332). Before him, his two older brothers Fyodor and Egor had taken the right-hand road to food and drink, where a beautiful young woman awaited them, proposing to share her bed, thus putting the third function before them, which led to their undoing. On the other hand, Ivan will take the left road, determined to lose his head for the good of his father. Therefore, Ivan correctly chooses the first function of sovereignty, which will lead him to inherit his father´s kingdom.

Another of the best-known characters in Russian folktales, Koshchei “the Immortal”, is paradoxically a personification of evil and death in all his characteristics, and his supposed immortality is not so, since his secret is that he does not have a soul, or, rather, that he has separated it from his body, hidden in a kind of set of Russian dolls on an island in the middle of the sea (Propp [1984] 1997, p. 195). Whoever discovers his soul will have power over his life, hence the fragility of his immortality. His own name is very apparent, meaning “He of the bones”. He is portrayed in this way, as a bony old man, or directly, as a skeleton. Although his epithet is “the Immortal”, in reality, he is not. It is simply that he is hard to kill, as he has what could be called an “external” soul, as Frazer already remarked (Frazer 1913, pp. 108–11). In this way, his soul can be found hidden in a kind of set of Russian dolls on an island in the middle of the sea. There stands an oak tree; under the oak tree, there is a buried chest; inside the chest, there is a hare; inside the hare, a goose; inside the goose, an egg; and inside the egg is his soul, or his death. For Frazer (loc. cit.), this would be an example of transferring the soul to an animal, which would correspond to the beliefs of ancient animistic societies. In the tale named after him (Af. 93 a–c), Ivan Tsarevitch manages to find Koshchei´s soul with the help of the abducted princess and kills him by bursting the egg. This corresponds to functions V (“reconnaissance”) and VIIIa (“lack”) according to Propp’s typology of functions (Propp [1968] 2009, pp. 28, 35). However, Propp only mentioned the character of Koshchei and his external soul tangentially, without explaining in depth his relationship with immortality. Here, the egg appears as a symbol of life and animal reproduction. The principles of life and death are thus linked. Likewise, in this tale, the egg and the hare are connected, a legend that still prevails in many contemporary European towns during the Christian Easter celebrations. Unlike the previous tale, in the tale of Marya Morevna (Af. 94), Koshchei is killed by his own horse (belonging to Baba-Yaga’s herd of horses), who gives him a blow and cuts his head open, and by Ivan Tsarevitch, who finishes him off with his sword and burns his body on a bonfire, scattering his ashes in the wind. Here, the cremation of the dead, or rather, of the “undead” or “living dead”, may remind us of the pre-Christian funeral rite, which was thought to be the only way to get rid of the “restless dead” (Álvarez-Pedrosa and Santos Marinas 2023, p. 102).

3. Conclusions

In this article, we saw how folktales dealing with immortality reflect the ancient funerary rites of Slavic pre-Christian religion, highlighting their relevance and prevalence for the collective imagination and psychology. This way, to enter the Other World, the main characters must accomplish the ritual actions of the ancient funerary rites belonging to the pre-Christian religion, as attested by historical sources. Unlike Propp and Frazer, who dealt mostly with anthropological testimonies, we quoted several historical passages to provide evidence. Moreover, we remarked that, in Russian folktales, the main characters, heroes, and heroines can always access immortality with the help of a magic helper or of a magic object after having overcome a rite of passage related to the ancient funerary rites. On the contrary, some alleged immortal characters, such as Koshchei, can be killed by some magical and ritual actions, finding and destroying his external soul and burning his body in a bonfire, thus fulfilling the ancient funerary ritual of cremation, according to the historical sources. Finally, we showed that Dumézil’s trifunctional theory on Indo-European religion can be useful in interpreting Russian folktales too, proving the antiquity of some of their elements and motifs that could date back to the Indo-European legacy.