Propp historical roots of fairy tales download pdf. Presentation: Historical roots of a fairy tale

The so-called mythological school proceeded from the premise that the external similarity of two phenomena, their external analogy testifies to their historical connection. So, if the hero grows by leaps and bounds, then the hero’s rapid growth supposedly stems from the rapid growth of the sun rising on the horizon. Firstly, however, the sun does not increase for the eyes, but decreases, and secondly, an analogy is not the same as a historical connection.

One of the premises of the so-called Finnish school was the assumption that the forms that occur more often than others are also inherent in the original form of the plot. Not to mention the fact that the theory of plot archetypes itself requires proof, we will have occasion to repeatedly see that the most archaic forms are found very rarely, and that they are often supplanted by new ones that have become widespread.

...the first premise states that among fairy tales there is a special category of fairy tales, usually called fairy tales. These tales can be isolated from others and studied independently. The very fact of isolation may raise doubts... Although fairy tales form part of folklore, they do not represent a part that would be inseparable from this whole.

Studying the structure of fairy tales shows the close relationship of these tales with each other. The kinship is so close that it is impossible to accurately distinguish one plot from another. This leads to two further, very important premises. Firstly: not a single plot of a fairy tale can be studied without the other, and secondly: not a single motif of a fairy tale can be studied without its relationship to the whole.

It has long been noted that a fairy tale has some connection with the area of cults, with religion... But just as a fairy tale cannot be compared with any social system in general, it cannot be compared with religion in general, but must be compared with specific manifestations of this religion ... The fairy tale has preserved traces of many rituals and customs: many motifs receive their genetic explanation only through comparison with rituals... A fairy tale is not a chronicle. Between a fairy tale and a ritual there are various forms of relationships, various forms of connection...

The simplest case is the complete coincidence of ritual and custom with a fairy tale. This case is rare. So, in a fairy tale they bury bones, and in historical reality this is also how they did it. Or: the fairy tale says that the royal children are locked in a dungeon, kept in the dark, food is served to them so that no one can see it, and in historical reality this is also how it was done. Finding these parallels is extremely important for a folklorist... More often there is another relationship, another phenomenon, a phenomenon that can be called a rethinking of the ritual. Reinterpretation here will be understood as the replacement by a fairy tale of one element (or several elements) of a ritual that has become unnecessary or incomprehensible due to historical changes with another, more understandable one. Thus, rethinking is usually associated with deformation, with a change in form. Most often, the motivation changes, but other components of the ritual may also change.

The term “rethinking” is convenient in the sense that it indicates the process of change that has taken place; the fact of rethinking proves that some changes have occurred in the life of the people, and these changes entail a change in motive... We should consider the preservation of all forms of ritual with giving it in a fairy tale an opposite meaning or meaning, a reverse interpretation. We will call such cases conversion.

As a rule, if a connection is established between a ritual and a fairy tale, then the ritual serves as an explanation of the corresponding motif in the fairy tale. With a narrowly schematic approach, this should always be the case. In fact, sometimes it's just the opposite. It happens that, although a fairy tale goes back to a ritual, the ritual is completely unclear, and the fairy tale has preserved the past so completely, faithfully and well that a ritual or other phenomenon of the past only receives its real illumination through a fairy tale. In other words, there may be cases when a fairy tale from the phenomenon being explained, upon closer study, turns out to be an explanatory phenomenon; it can be a source for studying the ritual.

The variety of available interpretations and understandings of the concept of myth forces us to define this concept precisely. Myth here will be understood as a story about deities or divine beings in whose reality people believe. The point here is faith not as a psychological factor, but a historical one... A myth cannot be formally distinguished from a fairy tale. A fairy tale and a myth (especially the myths of pre-class peoples) can sometimes coincide so completely with each other that in ethnography and folklore studies such myths are often called fairy tales... Meanwhile, if you examine not only texts, but also the social function of these texts, then most of them will have to be considered not fairy tales, but myths.

...Asia is the oldest cultural continent, a cauldron in which streams of peoples moved, mixed and displaced each other. In the space of this continent we have all stages of culture from the almost primitive Ainu to the Chinese who reached the highest cultural peaks... Therefore, in Asian materials we have a mixture that makes research extremely difficult... To a lesser extent this applies to Africa. Here, however, there are also peoples at a very low level of development, like the Bushmen, and pastoral peoples, like the Zulus, and agricultural peoples, peoples who already know blacksmithing. But still, mutual cultural influences are less strong here than in Asia. Unfortunately, African material is sometimes recorded no better than American material.

The ideas of the Egyptians are known to us through tombstone inscriptions, through the “Book of the Dead,” etc. We mostly know only the official religion, cultivated by the priests for political purposes and approved by the court or nobility. But the lower classes could have different ideas, other, so to speak, subjects than the official cult, and we know very little about these popular ideas.

Primitive thinking does not know abstractions. It is manifested in actions, in forms of social organization, in folklore, in language. There are cases when a fairy tale motif is inexplicable by any of the above premises. So, for example, some motifs are based on a different understanding of space, time and multitude than the one to which we are accustomed. Hence the conclusion that forms of primitive thinking should also be involved to explain the genesis of a fairy tale.

From the very first words of the tale - “In a certain kingdom, in a certain state” the listener is immediately seized by a special mood, a mood of epic calm. But this mood is deceptive. Events of the greatest tension and passion will soon unfold before the listener. This calmness is only an artistic shell, contrasting with the internal passionate and tragic, and sometimes comic-realistic dynamics.

The elders somehow know that the children are in danger. The very air around them is filled with a thousand unknown dangers and troubles. A father or husband, leaving himself or letting his child go, accompanies this absence with prohibitions. The ban, of course, is violated, and this causes, sometimes with lightning-fast surprise, some terrible misfortune: naughty princesses who went out into the garden for a walk are carried away by snakes; naughty children who go to the pond are bewitched by a witch - and now they are already swimming like white ducks. With the disaster comes interest, events begin to develop.

Among the... prohibitions, we will be occupied for now by one: the ban on leaving the house... Here we could think about ordinary parental care for their children. Even now, when parents leave home, they forbid their children to go outside. However, this is not quite true. There's something else going on here. When the father persuades his daughter “not even to go out onto the porch,” “not to leave the high tower,” etc., then this is not a simple apprehension, but some deeper fear. This fear is so great that parents sometimes not only forbid their children to go out, but even lock them up. They also lock them in an unusual way. They put them in high towers, “in a pillar,” they imprison them in a dungeon, and this dungeon is carefully leveled with the ground.

Frazer, in The Golden Bough, showed the complex system of taboos that once surrounded kings or high priests and their children. Their every movement was regulated by a whole code, extremely difficult to comply with. One of the rules of this code was to never leave the palace. This rule was observed in Japan and China until the 19th century. In many places, the king is a mysterious creature, never seen by anyone.

...let us consider some other prohibitions surrounding the king, and we will select the most characteristic ones, characteristic of all varieties of this custom. Among these prohibitions, Frazer points out the following: the king should not show his face to the sun, so he is in constant darkness. Further, it should not touch the ground. Therefore, his home is raised above the ground - he lives in a tower. No one should see his face, so he is completely alone, and he talks to his subjects or associates through a curtain. Eating is surrounded by a strict system of taboos. A number of products are generally prohibited. Food is served through a window.

I wonder where the ban on sunlight comes from?..

It must be said that Frazer makes no attempt to situate or explain his material historically. He begins his examples with the Japanese Mikado, then moves on to Africa and America, then to the Irish kings, and from there he jumps to Rome. But from his examples it is clear that this phenomenon is relatively late. In America, it was observed in ancient Mexico, in Africa - where small monarchies had already formed. In a word, this is a phenomenon of early statehood. The leader or king is credited with magical power over nature, over the sky, rain, people, livestock, and the well-being of the people depends on his well-being. Therefore, by carefully guarding the king, they magically protected the well-being of the entire people. “The king, the fetish of the Benings, revered by his subjects as a deity, should not have left his palace.” “King Loango is attached to his palace, which he is forbidden to leave.” “The kings of Ethiopia were idolized, but they were kept locked in their palaces,” etc. If such monarchs tried to leave, they were stoned.

The royal children are kept in complete darkness. “They built a prison for her.” “Only dad and mom didn’t tell (their two sons) to show any light for seven years.” “And the king ordered to build rooms in the ground so that she could live there, day and night, all with fire, and so that she would not see the male sex.” The prohibition of light here is completely clear. In Georgian and Mingrelian fairy tales, the princess is called mzeфunaqav. This term can have two meanings: “not seen by the sun” and “not seen by the sun.” The ban on sunlight is also present in the German fairy tale, but the light of the sun is reinterpreted here as the light of a candle. The girl here became the wife of a lion, she is happy with him, but she asks him to visit her parents with her. “But the lion said that it was too dangerous for him, because if a ray of light touched him there, he would turn into a dove and would have to fly with the pigeons for seven years.” He nevertheless leaves, but the girl “ordered to build a hall with such thick and strong walls that not a single ray could penetrate, and he had to sit in it.”

Closely related to this ban on light is the ban on seeing anyone. Prisoners should not see anyone, and no one should see their faces either... The same ideas that lead to the fear of the evil eye are at play here. Popadya was put in a dungeon. “Perhaps someone will put the evil eye on her” (357). The Vyatka fairy tale has preserved the consequences that can occur if you look at the prisoners. “She lived in the basement. Anyone who looks at the Muskov regiment (i.e., men), young people, will see that the people were very sick.”

...one more detail: the way the food is served. “They just put it there for her, and don’t go inside”... the royal children are given provisions for five years at once. This, of course, is a fantastic deformation... The Abkhaz fairy tale very well preserved two more prohibitions: the ban on touching the ground and the ban on ordinary food. The royal children are fed food that promotes their magical qualities: “They kept their sister in a high tower. They raised her so that her foot did not touch the ground or soft grass. They fed her only with the brains of animals” (Abkhazian fairy tales). In Russian fairy tales, the prohibition not to touch the ground is not directly stated, although it follows from the seat on the tower.

The connection between restrictions and “magical qualities” is interesting...

Thus, we see that the fairy tale has preserved all types of prohibitions that once surrounded the royal family: the prohibition of light, sight, food, contact with the earth, communication with people. The coincidence between the fairy tale and the historical past is so complete that we have the right to claim that the fairy tale here reflects historical reality.

If we compare the materials collected from Frazer with those materials provided by the fairy tale, we can see that Frazer talks about kings, leaders, and the fairy tale sometimes talks about royal children. But it must be said that in fairy tales sometimes the king himself and his children are in the dungeon...: “the king built himself a huge basement and hid in it and buried him there,” and secondly, in historical reality, prohibitions were mandatory not only for kings, but also for heirs. From Frazer we find: “The Indians of Granada in South America keep future leaders and their wives in captivity until the age of seven. The conditions of imprisonment were harsh: they were not allowed to see the sun - otherwise they would lose the right to the title of leader.”

The tale preserves another type of prohibition, which is not attested in this connection, but is attested in a somewhat different connection. This is a ban on cutting hair. Hair was considered the seat of the soul or magical power. Losing hair meant losing strength... The prohibition of cutting hair is not stated directly anywhere in the fairy tale. However, the long hair of the imprisoned princess is a frequently encountered feature. This hair gives the princess a special attractiveness. The ban on cutting hair is not mentioned in descriptions of the imprisonment of kings, royal children and priests, although it is quite possible. But the ban on cutting hair is known in a completely different connection, namely in the custom of isolating menstruating girls. It is well known that menstruating girls were imprisoned.

Often the deity or serpent does not kidnap the girl, but visits her in prison. This is how things happen in the myth of Danae, and this is how it sometimes happens in Russian fairy tales. Here a girl becomes pregnant from the wind... The seat in the tower clearly prepares for marriage, moreover, for marriage not with an ordinary being, but with a being of divine order, from whom a divine son is born, in the Russian fairy tale - Ivan the Wind, and in the Greek myth - Perseus. More often, however, it is not the hero's future mother who is imprisoned, but the hero's future wife. But in general, the analogy between custom and fairy tale is much weaker here than the analogy of the motive for the imprisonment of kings and royal children. In the fairy tale, both girls and boys, and brothers and sisters together, are subjected to exactly the same conclusion.

The imprisonment of girls is older than the imprisonment of kings. It is already present among the most primitive, most primitive peoples, for example among the Australians. The tale retains both types. These two forms flow from one another, layer on top of each other and assimilate with each other, and the isolation of the girls is preserved in paler forms and is more weathered. The isolation of the royal heirs is of later origin; a number of historically attested details have been preserved here.

The imprisonment of kings in historical reality was motivated by the fact that “a king or priest is endowed with supernatural powers or is an incarnation of a deity, and in accordance with this belief, the course of natural phenomena is assumed to be more or less under his control. He is held responsible for bad weather, bad harvests and other natural disasters.” This is what led to special care for him, led to protecting him from danger. Frazer accepts this fact, but does not try to explain why the influence of light or the eye or contact with the earth is fatal. The fairy tale has not preserved motivations of this nature for us. The life of the surrounding people in the fairy tale does not depend on the prisoners. Only in one case do we see that the violation of the ban “made the people very sick.” In the fairy tale, it is only about the personal safety of the prince or princess.

But the concern for preserving the king is itself based on a more ancient... idea that the air is filled with dangers, forces that can break out over a person at any moment... Nilsson already pointed to it: everything is filled with the unknown, inspiring fear. The taboo arises from the fear that contact will cause something like a short circuit... “For the Maya,” says Brinton, “the forests, air and darkness are filled with mysterious creatures who are always ready to harm or serve him, but usually to harm, so that the predominant number of these the creatures of his fantasy are malicious creatures.” It is safe to say that ethnographers like Brinton and Nilsson are mistaken in only one thing: the forces and spirits surrounding a person seem “unknown” only to ethnographers, and not to the peoples themselves - these know them well and imagine them very concretely and call their names. In a fairy tale, fear, it is true, is often undefined, but just as often it is defined and precise: they are afraid of creatures that can kidnap the royal children. This religious fear, in the refraction of the fairy tale, creates concern for the royal children and results in an artistic motivation for the misfortune that follows the violation of the ban. It is enough for the princess to leave her imprisonment, take a walk in the garden, breathe some fresh air, so that “out of nowhere” a snake appears and carries her away. In short, children are protected from kidnapping. This motivation appears quite early...

Of all the types of prohibitions with which they tried to protect themselves from demons who appear in fairy tales in the form of snakes, ravens, goats, devils, spirits, whirlwinds, koshchei, yagas, and kidnapping women, girls and children - of all these types of prohibitions the best in a fairy tale the ban on leaving the house is reflected. Other types of cathartics (fasting, darkness, prohibition of looking and touching, etc.) are reflected less clearly. But still, not everything is clear here. Thus, based on some indirect signs, one can judge that being underground or in the dark or on a tower contributed to the accumulation of magical powers not due to prohibitions, but simply as such...

...in ancient Peru they kept “solar maidens” locked up. People have never seen them. They were considered the wives of the sun, in fact serving as the wives of the deputy sun god, i.e. Inca.

The prohibition “not to leave the high chamber” is invariably violated. No locks, no constipations, no towers, no basements - nothing helps. Immediately after this comes trouble... Some kind of trouble is the main form of closure. Out of adversity and opposition a plot is created. The forms of this disaster are extremely diverse...

After imprisonment or imprisonment, kidnapping usually follows. To study this abduction, we will have to study the figure of the abductor. The main, main kidnapper of girls is snakes. But the snake appears twice in the tale. He appears with lightning speed, takes the girl away and disappears. The hero goes after him, meets him, and a fight takes place between them. The nature of the snake can only be clarified from an analysis of snake fighting. Only here can one get a clear picture of the snake and explain the abduction of the girls... While the beginning of the tale is varied, the middle and end are much more uniform and constant.

Another type of fairytale beginning does not contain disaster. The tale begins with the king announcing a national cry, promising the hand of his daughter to the one who jumps to her window on a flying horse. This is one type of difficult task. This task can only be explained in connection with the study of the magical assistant and the figure of the old king, and the assistant is usually obtained in the middle of the tale. Thus, here too, the middle of the tale will explain to us its beginning.

...is there some kind of unity hidden behind this diversity? The middle elements of the tale are stable. Kidnapped

Whether it is a princess, whether a stepdaughter is expelled, or whether a hero goes for rejuvenating apples - in all cases he ends up with the yaga. This uniformity of the middle elements gives rise to the assumption that the initial elements, with all their diversity, are united by some kind of uniformity.

...something bad happens. The course of action requires that the hero somehow learn about this misfortune. Indeed, this moment in the fairy tale appears in very diverse forms: here is the national cry of the king, and the story of the mother or random people we meet, etc. We will not dwell on this moment. How the hero finds out about the trouble is unimportant for us. It is enough to establish that he has learned about this misfortune and that he is setting off. At first glance, setting off does not contain anything interesting. “The shooter went on a journey,” “The son mounted a horse, went to distant kingdoms,” “The well-done Sagittarius mounted his heroic horse and rode to distant lands,” - this is the usual formula for this dispatch. Indeed, these words do not seem to contain anything problematic. However, it is not the words that are important, but the fact that the hero sets off on his journey is important. In other words, the composition of a fairy tale is based on the spatial movement of the hero. This composition is characteristic not only of fairy tales, but also of epics (Odyssey) and novels; This is how, for example, Don Quixote is built. A wide variety of adventures can await the hero along this path. Indeed, the adventures of Don Quixote are very diverse and numerous, just like the adventures of the heroes of other, earlier knightly semi-folklore novels (“Vigalois” and others). But unlike these literary or semi-folklore novels, a genuine folklore tale does not know such diversity. Adventures could be very diverse, but they are always the same, they are subject to some very strict pattern. This is the first observation.

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112
Chapter I. BACKGROUND 113
I. Main question. 113
2. The significance of the premises. 113
3. Identification of fairy tales. 114
4. A fairy tale as a phenomenon of a superstructural nature. 116
5. Fairy tale and social institutions of the past.118
6. Fairy tale and ritual.119
7. Direct correspondence between fairy tale and ritual. 120
8. Rethinking the ritual with a fairy tale. 120
9. Conversion rite. 121
10. Fairy tale and myth. 123
11. Fairy tale and primitive thinking. 127
12.Genetics and history. 128
13.Method and material. 129
14. Fairy tale and post-fairy tale formations. 130
15.Prospects. 130
Chapter II. TIE 132
I. Children in prison 132 1. Absence. 132
2.3 restrictions associated with absence.133
3. Frazer on the isolation of kings.133
4. Isolation of the royal children in the fairy tale.134
5.The conclusion of the girl.136
6.Motivation for the conclusion. 138
7.Results.140
II. Trouble and opposition 141
8.Trouble.141
9.Equipping the hero on the road. 142
Chapter III. MYSTERIOUS FOREST 146
1. Further composition of the tale. Getting a magic remedy. 146
2.Types of yati. 147
3.Rite of Passage.147
4.Forest.151
5. Hut on chicken legs. 152
6.Fu, fu, fu.158
7. Gave me something to drink and feed. 160
8.Bone leg.163
9. Blindness of Yaga.165
10. Mistress of the forest. 168
11. Yaga tasks. 172
12.Sleep test.173
13.Children expelled and taken into the forest. 175
14. Kidnapped children.178
15.Resale.178
16.Bila-bila.180
17.Madness.182
18. Severed finger. 183
19.3 signs of death. 184
20. Temporary death. 185
21.Chopped and revived. 186
22. Yagi oven. 190
23. Tricky science. 194
24. Magic gift. 197
25. Yaga - mother-in-law. 198
26. Travesty.199
27.3 conclusion. 202
Chapter IV. BIG HOUSE 203
I.Forest Brotherhood 203 1.House in the Forest.203
2. Big house and small hut.207
Z. Set table.208
4.Brothers.208
5.Hunters.209
6.Robbers.209
7.Distribution of responsibilities.210
8."Sister".211
9. Birth of a child. 215
10.Beauty in the coffin.216
11.Cupid and Psyche.219
12.Wife at her husband's wedding.221
13. Unwashed.223
14. Dunno.225
15. Bald and covered with a sheath.226
16. Husband at his wife’s wedding.228
17.3prohibition of boasting.229
18.3closet closet. 230
19.3 conclusion.234
II. Afterlife donors 235 20. Deceased father.235
21.Dead mother.239
22.Grateful Dead.239
23.Death's head.240
24.3 conclusion.241
III. Donor-helpers 243 25. Grateful animals. 243
26.Copper Forehead.246
27. Ransomed captives, debtors, etc. 252
Chapter V. MAGICAL GIFTS 253
I.Magic assistant 253 1.Helpers.253
2. Transformed hero.254
Z. Orel.254
4. Winged horse.257
5.Feeding the horse.258
6.Grave horse.259
7. Rejected and exchanged knight.260
8.Horse in the basement .261
9. Horse suit.262
10.Fiery nature of the horse.263
11.Horse and stars.266
12.Horse and water.266
13.Some other assistants.267
14.Development of ideas about the assistant 271
II.Magic item 277
15.Item and assistant 277
16. Claws, hair, skins, teeth.278
17.Items-tools.279
18.Items that summon spirits.281
19.Flint.281
20.Wand.282
21.Items that give eternal abundance.282
22. Living and dead, weak and strong water.283
23.Pupae.285 24.3conclusion.286
Chapter VI. CROSSING 287
1.Crossing as a compositional element.287 2.Crossing in the form of an animal.287
Z. Sewing into skin.288
4.Bird.292
5.On horseback.294
6.On the ship.295
7. On wood.296
8.By stairs or straps.297
9.With the help of a counselor.298
10. Conclusion. 298
Chapter VII. BY THE RIVER OF FIRE 299
I. The snake in the fairy tale 299 1. The appearance of the snake. 299
2.Connection with water in a fairy tale.300
Z. Connection with the mountains.300
4.3mei-kidnapper.301
5. Extortion of the snake.301
6. Serpent - guardian of borders.302
7.3mei-absorber.302
8.Danger of sleep.303
9.Original opponent .303
10.Fight.304
11. Literature about the snake. 305
12. Prevalence of snake fighting. 306
II. Snake-devourer 307
13.0 ritual absorption and coughing up. 307
14. The meaning and basis of this ritual.309
15.Bird tongue. 311
16.Diamonds.313
17. Absorbent-transporter.314
18. Fighting fish as the first stage of snake fighting. 316
19. Traces of absorption in late cases of snake fighting. 322
20.3 conclusion.324
III.Hero in a barrel 324 21. Carrier boat. 324 IV. Snake-stealer 327
22.The Form of a Serpent.327 23.Death the Thief.329
511
24.Introducing an erotic moment.332
25.Abduction in myths.333
V.Water Serpent 334
26. Water nature of the snake.334
27. Extortion of the snake .339
28.Myths.342
VI. The Serpent and the Kingdom of the Dead 344
29. Guardian serpent. 344
30.Kerber.345
31. Transfer of the serpent to heaven. 346
32. The guard role of the heavenly serpent; Yakuts.349
33.Serpent in Egypt.351
34.Psychostasis.353
35. Connection of the serpent with birth.354
36. The death of the serpent from the serpent.356
37.3 conclusion. 358
Chapter VIII. FAR NINE EARTHS 360
I. The Thirtieth Kingdom in a fairy tale 360 1. Locality. 360
2.Connection with the sun.362
3.Gold.363
4.Three kingdoms. 364
5. Theriomorphism of the thirtieth kingdom.365
II.That light 366
6.Early forms of the other world.366
7. Mouth and pushing mountains.367
8.Crystal.368
9. Land of abundance.369
10. Solar kingdom. 371
11. Antiquity. 374
Chapter IX. BRIDE 376
I. Seal of the princess 376 1. Two types of princess. 376 2. Branding of a hero. 377
II.Hard problems 381 3.Hard problems 381
4. National cry 381
5. Tasks in response to matchmaking. 382
6. The tasks of the fleeing and newly found princess.382
7.3 tasks of the princess kidnapped by false heroes.383
8. Problems of Vodyanoy.383
9.Tasks of the teacher-sorcerer. 384
10. Hostile father-in-law. 385
11. 407
III.The accession of a hero 408
21. Frazer on the change of kings.408
22.Succession to the throne in a fairy tale.410
23. Old age.411
24.Oracles.411
25. The killing of the king in a fairy tale.413
26. False hero.415
27.Rope bridge.415
28. Boiling milk.416
29.3 conclusion. 417
IV.Magical escape 418
30. Escape in a fairy tale.418
31. Escape with throwing a scallop, etc. 419
32. Escape with transformations.420
33. Transformation of snakes into wells, apple trees, etc. 422
34. Escape and pursuit with successive transformations.422
35. Decisive obstacle. 426
Chapter X

The proposed work is provided with an introductory chapter, and therefore the preface can be limited to some technical remarks.

The book often contains references to fairy tales or excerpts from them. These excerpts should be considered as illustrations and not as evidence. Behind the example lies a more or less common phenomenon. When analyzing the phenomenon, one should give not one or two illustrations, but all available cases. However, this would reduce the book to an index that would be larger than the entire work. This difficulty could be circumvented by reference to existing indexes of plots or motifs. However, on the one hand, the distribution of fairy tales by plot and plot by motive, adopted in these indexes, is often very arbitrary; on the other hand, references to fairy tales appear several hundred times in the book, and it would be necessary to provide references to the indexes several hundred times. All this forced me to abandon the tradition of giving a type number for every plot. The reader will understand that the materials provided are samples.

The same applies to examples from the field of customs, rituals, cults, etc. All the given facts are nothing more than examples, the number of which could be arbitrarily increased or decreased, the given examples could be replaced by others. Thus, the book does not report any new facts, only the connection established between them is new, and it is the center of gravity of the entire book.

It is necessary to make another reservation regarding the method of presentation. The motifs of a fairy tale are so closely related to each other that, as a rule, not a single motif can be understood in isolation. It has to be presented in parts. Therefore, at the beginning of the book there are often references to what will still be developed, and from the second half - to what has already been stated above.

The book is one whole and should not be read from the middle for reference on individual topics.

In this book the reader will not find an analysis of many of the motives that he has the right to look for in such work. Much did not fit in it. The emphasis is on the analysis of the main, most important fairy-tale images and motifs, the rest has been partly published before and is not repeated here, and partly, perhaps, will appear in the form of separate essays in the future.

The work came out of the Leningrad Order of Lenin State University. Many of my workmates supported me, willingly sharing their knowledge and experience. I especially owe a lot to the corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences, prof. Ivan Ivanovich Tolstoy, who gave me valuable instructions both on the ancient material I used and on general issues of the work. I offer him my deepest and sincere gratitude.

Chapter I. Background

1. Main question

What does it mean to specifically research a fairy tale, where to start? If we limit ourselves to comparing fairy tales with each other, we will remain within the framework of comparativism. We want to expand the scope of our study and find the historical basis that brought the fairy tale to life. This is the task of studying the historical roots of a fairy tale, formulated so far in the most general terms.

At first glance, it seems that there is nothing new in the formulation of this problem. Historically, there have been attempts to study folklore before. Russian folkloristics knew a whole historical school headed by Vsevolod Miller. Thus, Speransky says in his course on Russian oral literature: “When studying the epic, we try to guess the historical fact that underlies it, and, starting from this assumption, we prove the identity of the plot of the epic with some event known to us or their circle "(Speransky 222). We will neither guess historical facts nor prove their identity with folklore. For us, the question is fundamentally different. We want to explore what phenomena (not events) of the historical past the Russian fairy tale corresponds to and to what extent it actually conditions and causes it. In other words, our goal is to find out the sources of the fairy tale in historical reality. The study of the genesis of a phenomenon is not yet the study of the history of this phenomenon. The study of history cannot be carried out immediately - this is a matter of many years, the work of more than one person, it is a matter of generations, a matter of the Marxist folkloristics that is emerging in our country. The study of genesis is the first step in this direction. This is the main question posed in this work.

2. Importance of premises

Each researcher proceeds from some prerequisites that he has before he starts work. Veselovsky, back in 1873, pointed out the need, first of all, to understand one’s positions and to be critical of one’s method (Veselovsky 1938, 83-128). Using the example of Gubernatis's book "Zoological Mythology", Veselovsky showed how the lack of self-examination leads to false conclusions, despite all the erudition and combinatorial abilities of the author of the work.

Here we should give a critical outline of the history of the study of fairy tales. We won't do this. The history of the study of the fairy tale has been outlined more than once, and we do not need to list the works. But if we ask ourselves why there are still no completely solid and universally accepted results, we will see that this often happens precisely because the authors proceed from false premises.

The so-called mythological school proceeded from the premise that the external similarity of two phenomena, their external analogy testifies to their historical connection. Thus, if the hero grows by leaps and bounds, then the hero’s rapid growth supposedly responds to the rapid growth of the sun rising on the horizon (Frobenius 1898, 242). Firstly, however, the sun does not increase for the eyes, but decreases, and secondly, an analogy is not the same as a historical connection.

One of the premises of the so-called Finnish school was the assumption that the forms that occur more often than others are also inherent in the original form of the plot. Not to mention the fact that the theory of plot archetypes itself requires proof, we will have occasion to repeatedly see that the most archaic forms are very rare, and that they are often replaced by new ones that have become widespread (Nikiforov 1926).

There are a lot of such examples that can be cited, and in most cases it is not at all difficult to find out the fallacy of the premises. The question arises: why didn’t the authors themselves see their mistakes, which were so clear to us? We will not blame them for these mistakes - the greatest scientists made them; the fact is that they often could not think differently, that their thoughts were determined by the era in which they lived and the class to which they belonged. In most cases, the question of prerequisites was not even raised, and the voice of the brilliant Veselovsky, who himself repeatedly revised his premises and retrained himself, remained a voice crying in the wilderness.

For us, this implies that we need to carefully check our premises before starting the study.

At the same time, there is a significant difference between the two approaches: Meletinsky proposes to consider action as the basis of motive; Propp starts from the properties of the creature or object being studied. In other words, Meletinsky considers motives as predicates of action, and Propp in “Historical Roots...” studies predicates of state. It can be noted that Propp's presentation corresponds to modern ideas that formed the basis of object programming (OP). In the OP, the main element of the program is not an action, but an object that can perform specified actions and has certain properties.

All of V. Ya. Propp’s works, as many researchers note, are written very clearly, logically and convincingly, which is greatly facilitated by the fact that the scientist constantly explains the methods he uses. For example, V.I. Eremina writes:

In the diversity of the material, in the variety of problems associated with its study, V. Ya. Propp always sought to reveal the unity, understand the system, and find the direction in which structural, genetic or historical research could be carried out. The method of analyzing folklore works emerges clearly from his works, and yet V. Ya. Propp considered it his duty to explain to the reader again and again the principles on which his research is based. It is no coincidence that almost every book or article of his begins with a question about the method**.

One can agree or argue with the specific results obtained by Propp. In his own words, “every solved problem immediately raises new problems.”***. The solutions to these new problems facing humanitarian knowledge are largely based and will continue to be based on the ideas and methods of V. Ya. Propp, proposed, in particular, in his works “The Morphology of the Fairy Tale” and “The Historical Roots of the Fairy Tale.”

* Meletinsky E.M. Paleo-Asian mythological epic: The Raven Cycle. M" 1979. P. 146. See also the listing of archetypal fairy tale motifs in the monograph: Meletinsky E. M. On literary archetypes. M., 1994.

** Eremina V. I. The book of V. Ya. Propp “Historical. roots of a fairy tale” and its significance for modern research of fairy tales // Propp V. Ya. Historical roots of a fairy tale. L., 1986. P. 6.

*** Propp V. Ya. Historical roots of a fairy tale. L., 1986. P. 361.

Scientific reprinting of a book is not an easy task. Moreover, the republication of a world-famous author’s works, especially in the collection of WORKS, which in itself implies a certain academic accuracy. Just how to determine the level and quality of this accuracy... It would seem that if a work has already been published two or three times, then it is worth taking the latest edition, where, logically, there should be a multiply verified corpus of texts, all errors, typos, etc. etc. In reality, as our experience of working with reprints of Russian humanitarian classics has taught us, every subsequent edition not only improves, but also worsens the text. Editors correct pseudo-typos and pseudo-errors, improve the author's style, make opportunistic (i.e., determined by general political considerations, and sometimes a particular scientific understanding of the subject) corrections, not to mention additional typographical errors of their own. Therefore, a painstaking textual verification of all available publications is required. To somehow avoid subjectivity, We We usually present almost all divergent places in the text in a special page-by-page commentary.

In relation to this volume, the textual problem was aggravated by the fact that the publication of two of the most famous works of V. Ya. Propp in one binding is being carried out for the first time: being repeated in its parts, the work as a whole turns out to be new. Here we directly follow the equally directly expressed will of the author: “Morphology and Historical Roots are like two parts or two volumes of one large work. The second directly follows from the first, the first is a prerequisite for the second” (Propp 1998, 214 ). By the way, in the just cited work there is also a justification for the clarified title of the first part of the dilogy: “... another violation of the author’s will was committed not by the translator, but by the Russian publishing house that published the book; its title was changed. It was called “Morphology of a Fairy Tale”" ( 212) The clarified title also indirectly emphasizes the dilogical nature of the entire work.

But parts of the duology had different publishing fates. "Morphology" was published twice during the author's lifetime. It seems that there can be no questions about the author’s last will, but anyone familiar with the Soviet publishing system clearly understands that there can be no talk of any absolute author’s will (however, it cannot exist under any publishing system, but the Soviet one is a special case : the Brezhnev era is the era of editing). Therefore, there is absolutely no confidence that the text of 1969 fully reflects the will of the author. In addition, the book, apparently, is specially adapted for reading in isolation from “Historical Roots”. Some edits say this. Reconciliation with the 1st edition (1928, in a sense, was more liberal in terms of published works) turned out to be necessary.

As for “Historical Roots,” the only lifetime edition was published in the harsh year of 1946, which explains the incompleteness of the reference apparatus and possible opportunistic insertions. They tried to eliminate these shortcomings in the second edition of the book (responsible editors V. I. Eremina and M. N. Gerasimova):

“This book is the 2nd edition of V. Ya. Propp’s study “Historical Roots of a Fairy Tale,” published in 1946. The author, who completed the work during the war years, did not have the opportunity to once again turn to primary sources to check quotations and clarify the bibliographic apparatus , he was forced to use extracts made earlier or indicate source data from memory.The complex and painstaking work of restoring the book’s reference apparatus was done by M. Ya. Melts, for which the editors express their deep sincere gratitude to her.

In this edition, quotations have been clarified and footnotes have been checked and supplemented. They are designed in accordance with new publishing standards. Thus, numerous references to various fairy tale collections were again verified, errors in quoting fairy tale texts and numbering of fairy tale variants were corrected.<...>References to D. Frazer's study "The Golden Bough" are also given according to the latest edition (M., 1983), except in cases where there is no corresponding citation in the latest translation. The spelling of foreign words and names is checked, their translation is given in the text. Abbreviations have been expanded and clarified. The latest editions of the literature cited by V. Ya. Propp are indicated.<...>

The editors sought to treat the text of the first edition as carefully as possible: single and minor cuts concern only those parts of the book that were a tribute to the time when the study was published. They do not in any way affect the content of the study. In some cases, the text contains outdated ethnographic terms and geographical names, which are given according to the first edition" (V. Ya. Propp. Historical roots of a fairy tale. A., 1986, p. 4).

We continued to verify and clarify the bibliographic apparatus, but almost everywhere, if it did not concern quotations, we restored Propp’s author’s text according to the first edition (where the correction of the second edition was adopted, this is specifically stated in the page-by-page comments). For example, in some cases, when the editors of the second edition combined Propp's text with Frazer's new translation, part of Propp's text was omitted. We consistently restore in such places both the old translations and Propp’s dialogue with them according to the 1st ed.

Now about the bibliographic notes. In both books Propp used two ways: 1) in brackets gave abbreviations of the bibliographic description with a number indicating the number of the volume, part, etc. and with a number indicating the page (if there was a need), or 2) placed a bibliographical (rarely other) footnote at the bottom of the page. We leave first method only for bibliographic footnotes, together with the abbreviations used by Propp, using the surname of the author of the work mentioned, and, if in the list of cited literature there was more than one title of the work of a given author, the year of publication, and, if the year was the same for different works, a small Russian letter alphabet, its order showing the place of work in the list. In consecutive references to the work just mentioned in the text, only page numbers were given. Second the method is reserved for non-bibliographic or non-exclusively bibliographic footnotes.

We always keep punctuation according to the last lifetime editions.

niyam, removing only commas before “as” in the meaning “as”. The Russian version of the spelling of the surname “Levi-Strauss” has been unified (also written with two “s” at the end) both in Propp’s texts and in the comments.

The fonts distinguish between our commentary and the text of the book of different editions; in bold, for clarity, in some places the versions of the first (1st ed.) and second edition (2nd ed.) are distinguished.

P. 5: 1st ed. begins like this: The word "morphology" means the study of forms. In botany, morphology is understood as the study of the constituent parts of a plant, their relationship to each other and to the whole, in other words, the study of the structure of the plant.

But “morphology of a fairy tale”—hardly anyone thought about the possibility of such a concept.

And yet, consideration of the forms of a fairy tale is possible with the same accuracy as the morphology of organic formations is possible.

If this cannot be asserted about the fairy tale as a whole, in its entire volume, then in any case this can be asserted about the so-called fairy tales, about fairy tales “in the proper sense of the word.” The real work is dedicated to them only.

Preface

The proposed work is provided with an introductory chapter, and therefore the preface can be limited to some technical remarks.

The book often contains references to fairy tales or excerpts from them. These excerpts should be considered as illustrations and not as evidence. Behind the example lies a more or less common phenomenon. When analyzing the phenomenon, one should give not one or two illustrations, but all available cases. However, this would reduce the book to an index that would be larger than the entire work. This difficulty could be circumvented by reference to existing indexes of plots or motifs. However, on the one hand, the distribution of fairy tales by plots and plots by motives, adopted in these indexes, is often very arbitrary, on the other hand, references to fairy tales appear several hundred times in the book, and it would be necessary to give references to the indexes several hundred times . All this forced me to abandon the tradition of giving a type number for every plot. The reader will understand that the materials provided are samples.

The book is one whole and should not be read from the middle for reference on individual topics.

Chapter I. Background

1. Main question.

At first glance, it seems that there is nothing new in the formulation of this problem. Historically, there have been attempts to study folklore before. Russian folkloristics knew a whole historical school headed by Vsevolod Miller. Thus, Speransky says in his course on Russian oral literature: “When studying the epic, we try to guess the historical fact that underlies it, and, starting from this assumption, we prove the identity of the plot of the epic with some event known to us or their circle "(Speransky 222). We will neither guess historical facts nor prove their identity with folklore. For us, the question is fundamentally different. We want to explore what phenomena (not events) of the historical past the Russian fairy tale corresponds to and to what extent it actually conditions and causes it. In other words, our goal is to find out the sources of the fairy tale in historical reality. The study of the genesis of a phenomenon is not yet the study of the history of this phenomenon. The study of history cannot be carried out immediately - it is a matter of many years, the work of more than one person, it is a matter of generations, a matter of the Marxist folkloristics that is emerging in our country. The study of genesis is the first step in this direction. This is the main question posed in this work.

2. The meaning of premises.

The so-called mythological school proceeded from the premise that the external similarity of two phenomena, their external analogy testifies to their historical connection. Thus, if the hero grows by leaps and bounds, then the hero’s rapid growth supposedly responds to the rapid growth of the sun rising on the horizon (Frobenius 1898, 242). Firstly, however, the sun does not increase for the eyes, but decreases, and secondly, an analogy is not the same as a historical connection.

One of the premises of the so-called Finnish school was the assumption that the forms that occur more often than others are also inherent in the original form of the plot. Not to mention the fact that the theory of plot archetypes itself requires proof, we will have occasion to repeatedly see that the most archaic forms are very rare, and that they are often replaced by new ones that have become widespread (Nikiforov 1926).

For us, this implies that we need to carefully check our premises before starting the study.

3. Isolation of fairy tales.

We want to find and explore the historical roots of a fairy tale. What is thought of as historical roots will be discussed below. Before doing this, it is necessary to define the term “fairy tale”. The fairy tale is so rich and varied that it is impossible to study the entire phenomenon of the fairy tale in its entirety and among all peoples. Therefore the material must be limited, and I limit it to fairy tales. This means that I have the premise that there are some special fairy tales that can be called magical. Indeed, I have such a premise. By fairy tales I will understand those fairy tales whose structure I studied in “Morphology of Fairy Tales.” In this book, the fairy tale genre is highlighted quite accurately. Here we will study the genre of fairy tales that begins with the infliction of some kind of damage or harm (kidnapping, exile, etc.) or with the desire to have something (the king sends his son for the firebird) and develops through the hero’s departure from home, meeting with a donor who gives him a magical remedy or an assistant with the help of which the object of the search is found. In the future, the fairy tale gives a duel with the enemy (its most important form is snake fighting), return and pursuit. Often this composition gives a complication. The hero is already returning home, his brothers throw him into the abyss. Subsequently, he arrives again, is tested through difficult tasks and becomes king and marries either in his kingdom or in the kingdom of his father-in-law. This is a brief schematic presentation of the compositional core that underlies so many and varied subjects. Fairy tales that reflect this scheme will be called fairy tales here, and they form the subject of our study.

So, the first premise says: among fairy tales there is a special category of fairy tales, usually called fairy tales. These tales can be isolated from others and studied independently. The very fact of isolation may raise doubts. Isn't the principle of connection in which we must study phenomena violated here? However, in the end, all the phenomena of the world are interconnected, meanwhile, science always distinguishes the phenomena that are subject to its study from among other phenomena. It's all about where and how the border is drawn.

Although fairy tales form part of folklore, they do not represent a part that would be inseparable from this whole. They are not like a hand in relation to a body or a leaf in relation to a tree. They, being a part, at the same time constitute something whole and are taken here as a whole.

not a single plot of a fairy tale can be studied without the other, and secondly: not a single motif of a fairy tale can be studied without its relationship to the whole.

This puts the work on a fundamentally new path.

Until now, the work was usually carried out like this: one particular motif or one particular plot was taken, all the recorded options were collected if possible, and then conclusions were drawn from the comparison and comparison of materials. Thus, Polivka studied the formula “it smells of the Russian spirit,” Radermacher studied the motif about those swallowed and vomited by a whale, Baumgarten studied the motif about those sold to the devil (“give back what you don’t know at home”), etc. (Polivka 1924, 1-4 ; Radermacher 1906; Baumgarten 1915). The authors do not come to any conclusions and refuse to draw any conclusions.

Individual plots are studied in the same way. Thus, Mackensen studied the tale of the singing bone, Liljeblad - of the grateful dead, etc. (Mackensen 1923; Liljeblad 1927) There are quite a lot of such studies, they have greatly advanced our knowledge of the prevalence and life of individual plots, but questions of origin in these works have not been resolved. Therefore, for now, we completely abandon the plot-by-plot study of the fairy tale. For us, a fairy tale is something whole; all its plots are interconnected and conditioned. This also makes it impossible to study the motive in isolation. If Polivka had collected not only all the varieties of the formula “it smells like the Russian spirit,” but had asked himself the question of who makes this exclamation, under what conditions it is issued, who is greeted with this exclamation, etc., that is, if he studied it in connection with the whole, it is very possible that he would come to the right conclusion. The motive can be studied only in the plot system; plots can only be studied in their connections relative to each other.

4. A fairy tale as a phenomenon of a superstructural nature.

These are the premises gleaned from a preliminary study of the structure of a fairy tale. But the matter does not stop there.

It was stated above that the premises from which the authors proceed are often a product of the era in which the researcher lived.

We live in the era of socialism. Our era has also developed its own prerequisites on the basis of which it is necessary to study the phenomena of spiritual culture. But unlike the preconditions of other eras that lead the humanities to a dead end, our era has created the preconditions that lead the humanities to the only correct path.

The premise in question here is a general premise for the study of historical phenomena: “The method of production of material life determines the social, political and spiritual processes of life in general” (Marx, Engels 13; 7). From this it follows quite clearly that we must find in the past the mode of production that determines the fairy tale.

What was this method of production? A very cursory acquaintance with a fairy tale is enough to say that, for example, capitalism does not condition a fairy tale. This, of course, does not mean that the capitalist mode of production is not reflected in the fairy tale. On the contrary, here we will find a cruel factory owner, a greedy priest, an officer-secun ("sec-major"), an enslaving master, a runaway soldier, and a poor, drunken and ruined peasantry. Here it must be emphasized that we are talking specifically about magical, and not novelistic fairy tales. The real fairy tale with winged horses, fiery snakes, fantastic kings and princesses, etc. is clearly not caused by capitalism, it is clearly older than it. Without wasting unnecessary words, let's say that a fairy tale is older than feudalism - this will be clear from the entire course of the study.

However, what happened? It turned out that the fairy tale does not correspond to the form of production in which it widely and firmly exists. We will also find an explanation for this discrepancy in Marx. “With a change in the economic basis, a revolution occurs more or less quickly in the entire enormous superstructure” (ibid.). The words "more or less quickly" are very important. A change in ideology does not always occur immediately after a change in economic fundamentals. The result is a “discrepancy” that is extremely interesting and valuable for the researcher. It means that the fairy tale was created on the basis of pre-capitalist forms of production and social life, and which ones exactly should be investigated.

Let us remember that it was precisely this kind of discrepancy that allowed Engels to shed light on the origins of the family. Quoting Morgan and referring to Marx, Engels writes in “The Origin of the Family”: “The family,” says Morgan, “is an active principle; it never remains unchanged, but moves from a lower to a higher form as society develops from a lower to a higher stage. In contrast, kinship systems are passive; only at long intervals do they register the progress made by the family during this time, and undergo radical changes only when the family has already radically changed." "And in exactly the same way," adds Marx, "the situation is with political, legal, religious , philosophical systems in general" (21, 36). Let us add that the situation is exactly the same with a fairy tale.

So, the emergence of a fairy tale is not connected with the production basis on which it began to be written down from the beginning of the 19th century. This leads us to the next premise, which for now is formulated in a very general form: the fairy tale must be compared with the historical reality of the past and its roots must be sought in it.

Such a premise contains an unexplored concept of the “historical past.” If the historical past of the pony/is given as Vsevolod Miller understood it, then it is very possible that we will come to the same thing that he came to, arguing, for example, that the snake-fighting of Dobrynya Nikitich developed on the basis of the historical fact of the baptism of Novgorod.

We, therefore, need to decipher the concept of the historical past, determine what exactly from this past is necessary to explain the fairy tale.

5. Fairy tale and social institutions of the past.

If a fairy tale is considered as a product that arose on a known production basis, then it is clear that it is necessary to consider what forms of production are reflected in it.

Very little and rarely is produced directly in the fairy tale. Agriculture plays a minimal role, hunting is more widely reflected. They usually plow and sow only at the beginning of the story. The beginning is the easiest to change. In the subsequent narrative, archers, royal or free hunters, play a large role, and all kinds of forest animals play a large role.

However, the study of forms of production in a fairy tale only from the side of its object or technique advances us little in the study of the sources of the fairy tale. What is important is not the production technique as such, but the social system corresponding to it. This is how we get the first clarification of the concept of the historical past in relation to the fairy tale. The whole study comes down to determining under what social system the individual motives and the entire fairy tale were created.

But “system” is a very general concept. We need to take specific manifestations of this system. One such manifestation of a system is the institutions of this system. Thus, one cannot compare a fairy tale with the tribal system, but one can compare some motifs of the fairy tale with the institutions of the tribal system, since they are reflected in it or conditioned by it. From this follows the premise that the fairy tale must be compared with the social institutions of the past and its roots must be sought in it. This introduces further clarification into the concept of the historical past, in which the origin of the fairy tale must be sought. So, for example, we see that the fairy tale contains different forms of marriage than now. The hero is looking for a bride in the distance, and not at home. It is possible that the phenomena of exogamy are reflected here: obviously, for some reason the bride cannot be taken from one’s own environment. Therefore, the forms of marriage in a fairy tale must be examined and the system, that stage or phase or stage of social development in which these forms actually existed must be found. Further, for example, we see that the hero very often reigns. Whose throne does the hero occupy? It turns out that the hero takes the throne not of his father, but of his father-in-law, whom he very often kills. Here the question arises about what forms of succession of power are reflected in the fairy tale. In short, we proceed from the premise that the fairy tale has preserved traces of vanished forms of social life, that these remains need to be studied, and that such study will reveal the sources of many of the fairy tale's motifs.

But that's not all, of course. Many motifs in the tale, however, are explained by the fact that they reflect institutions that once existed, but there are motifs that are not directly related to any institutions. Therefore, this area is not enough as a material for comparison. Not everything is explained by the presence of certain institutions.

6. Fairy tale and ritual.

It has long been noted that fairy tales have some connection with the area of cults, with religion. Strictly speaking, a cult, a religion, can also be called an institution. However, just as the system is manifested in institutions, the institution of religion is manifested in certain cultic actions; each such action can no longer be called an institution, and the connection between the fairy tale and religion can be isolated into a special issue arising from the connection between the fairy tale and social institutions. Engels in Anti-Dühring quite accurately formulated the essence of religion. “But every religion is nothing more than a fantastic reflection in the heads of people of those external forces that dominate them in their everyday life - a reflection in which earthly forces take the form of unearthly ones. At the beginning of history, the objects of this reflection are, first of all, forces of nature... But soon, along with the forces of nature, social forces also come into play - forces that confront man as just as... inexplicable to him as the forces of nature... Fantastic images, in which initially reflected only the mysterious forces of nature, now also acquire social attributes and become representatives of historical forces" (328-329).

But just as a fairy tale cannot be compared with any social system in general, it cannot be compared with religion in general, but must be compared with specific manifestations of this religion. Engels establishes that religion is a reflection of the forces of nature and social forces. This reflection can be twofold: it can be cognitive and result in dogmas or teachings, it is manifested in ways of explaining the world, or it can be volitional and result in acts or actions aimed at influencing nature and subjugating it. We will call such actions rituals and customs.

Rite and custom are not the same thing. So, if people are buried by burning, then this is a custom, not a ritual. But custom is surrounded by rituals, and it is methodologically incorrect to separate them.

The fairy tale has preserved traces of many rituals and customs: many motifs receive their genetic explanation only through comparison with rituals. For example, the fairy tale says that a girl buries the bones of a cow in the garden and waters them with water (Aph. 100). There really was such a custom or ritual. For some reason, animal bones were not eaten or destroyed, but buried (Propp 1934). If we could show what motives go back to such rituals, then the origin of these motives would, to a certain extent, already be explained. It is necessary to systematically study this connection between fairy tales and rituals.

Such a comparison may turn out to be much more difficult than it seems at first glance. A fairy tale is not a chronicle. Between a fairy tale and a ritual there are various forms of relations, various forms of connection, and these forms should be briefly considered.

7. Direct correspondence between fairy tale and ritual.

The simplest case is the complete collapse of ritual and custom with a fairy tale. This case is rare. So, in a fairy tale they bury bones, and in historical reality this is also how they did it. Or: the fairy tale says that the royal children are locked in a dungeon, kept in the dark, food is served to them so that no one can see it, and in historical reality this is also how it was done. Finding these parallels is extremely important for the folklorist. These correspondences need to be developed, and then it may often turn out that a given motif goes back to one or another rite or custom, and its genesis can be explained.

8. Rethinking the ritual with a fairy tale

But, as already indicated, such a direct correspondence between a fairy tale and a ritual does not occur so often. More often there is another relationship, another phenomenon, a phenomenon that can be called a rethinking of the ritual. Reinterpretation here will be understood as the replacement by a fairy tale of one element (or several elements) of a ritual that has become unnecessary or incomprehensible due to historical changes with another, more understandable one. Thus, rethinking is usually associated with deformation, with a change in form. Most often, the motivation changes, but other components of the ritual may also change. So, for example, the fairy tale tells that the hero sews himself into the skin of a cow or horse in order to get out of the pit or get into the thirtieth kingdom. He is then picked up by a bird and carries the skin along with the hero to that mountain or beyond the sea where the hero cannot otherwise get. How can we explain the origin of this motif? There is a well-known custom of sewing dead people into the skin. Does this motive go back to this custom or not? A systematic study of this custom and the fairy tale motif shows their undoubted connection: the coincidence is complete, not only in external forms, but also in internal content, in the meaning of this motif in the course of action and in the meaning of this ritual in the historical past (see below, Chap. VI, § 3), with one exception, however: in a fairy tale he sews himself alive into the skin, in the ritual they sew up a dead man. This discrepancy is a very simple case of rethinking: in custom, sewing into a skin ensured that the deceased would enter the kingdom of the dead, but in a fairy tale it ensures that he would enter the thirtieth kingdom.

The term “rethinking” is convenient in the sense that it indicates the process of change that has taken place; the fact of rethinking proves that some changes have occurred in the life of the people, and these changes entail a change in motive. These changes must in any individual case be shown and explained.

We have given a very simple and clear case of rethinking. In many cases the original base is so obscured that it is not always possible to find it.

9. Conversion rite.

We should consider a special case of rethinking to be the preservation of all forms of ritual while giving it an opposite meaning or meaning, a reverse interpretation, in a fairy tale. We will call such cases conversion. Let us explain our observation with examples. There was a custom of killing old people. But the fairy tale tells how the old man was supposed to be killed, but he is not killed. The one who spared the old man, if this custom existed, would have been ridiculed, and perhaps scolded or even punished. In a fairy tale, the one who spared the old man is a hero who acted wisely. There was a custom to sacrifice a girl to the river, on which fertility depended. This was done at the beginning of sowing and was supposed to promote plant growth. But in the fairy tale, the hero appears and frees the girl from the monster to whom she was brought to be devoured. In fact, in the era of the ritual, such a “liberator” would have been torn to pieces as the greatest wicked person, endangering the well-being of the people, endangering the harvest. These facts show that the plot sometimes arises from a negative attitude towards the once former historical reality. Such a plot (or motive) could not yet arise as a fairy tale, when there was a way of life that required the sacrifice of girls. But with the fall of this way of life, the custom that was once revered as sacred, the custom in which the hero was the victim girl, who sometimes even voluntarily went to her death, became unnecessary and disgusting, and the hero of the fairy tale is already the wicked one who prevented this sacrifice. This is a fundamentally very important establishment. It shows that the plot does not arise through evolutionary direct reflection of reality, but through the denial of this reality. The plot corresponds to reality in contrast. This confirms the words of V.I. Lenin, who contrasted the concept of evolutionary development with the concept of development as a unity of opposites. “Only the second gives the key to the “self-movement” of all things; only it gives the key to “leaps”, to the “break of gradualism”, to the “transformation into the opposite”, to the “destruction of the old and the emergence of the new”” (Lenin collection, vol. XII , p. 324).

All these considerations and preliminary observations force us to put forward one more premise: the fairy tale must be compared with rituals and customs in order to determine which motives go back to certain rituals and in what relation they are to them.

One difficulty arises here. The fact is that ritual, having arisen as a means of fighting nature, later, when rational ways of fighting nature and influencing it are found, does not die out, but is also rethought. Thus, it may turn out that the folklorist, having reduced the motive to the ritual, will find that the motive goes back to a reinterpreted ritual, and will be faced with the need to explain the ritual as well. There may be cases where the original basis of the ritual is so obscure that this ritual requires special study. But this is no longer the job of the folklorist, but of the ethnographer. A folklorist has the right, having established a connection between a fairy tale and a ritual, in other cases to refuse to study the ritual as well - this would take him too far.

There is another difficulty. Both ritual life and folklore are composed of literally thousands of different details. Is it necessary to look for economic reasons for every detail? Engels says in this regard: “... the low economic development of the prehistoric period has, as an addition, and sometimes as a condition and even as a cause, false ideas about nature. And although economic need was and over time increasingly became the mainspring of progress in the knowledge of nature, it would still be pedantry if anyone tried to find economic reasons for all this primitive nonsense" (Marx, Engels XXXVII, 419). These words are clear enough. In this regard, it is also necessary to add the following: if we bring the same motive to the level of a tribal society, to the level of a slave system such as ancient Egypt, antiquity, etc. (and such comparisons have to be made very often), and we establish the evolution of the motive , then we do not consider it necessary to especially emphasize every time that the motive has changed not due to evolution from within, but due to the fact that it finds itself in a new historical situation. We will try to avoid the danger not only of pedantry, but also of schematism.

But let's return to the ritual. As a rule, if a connection is established between a ritual and a fairy tale, then the ritual serves as an explanation of the corresponding motif in the fairy tale. With a narrowly schematic approach, this should always be the case. In fact, sometimes it's just the opposite. It happens that, although a fairy tale goes back to a ritual, the ritual is completely unclear, and the fairy tale has preserved the past so completely, faithfully and well that a ritual or other phenomenon of the past only receives its real illumination through a fairy tale. In other words, there may be cases when a fairy tale from the phenomenon being explained, upon closer study, turns out to be an explanatory phenomenon; it can be a source for studying the ritual. “Folklore tales of the diverse Siberian population served us as perhaps the most important source for the reconstruction of ancient totemic beliefs,” says D.K. Zelenin (Zelenin 1936, 232). Ethnographers often refer to the fairy tale, but do not always know it. This is especially true for Fraser. The grand edifice of his Golden Bough rests on premises drawn from a fairy tale, and a misunderstood and insufficiently studied fairy tale at that. An accurate study of the tale will make it possible to make a number of amendments to this work and even shake its foundations.

10. Fairy tale and myth.

But if we consider ritual as one of the manifestations of religion, then we cannot ignore another manifestation of it, namely, myth. There is a huge literature on the relationship of fairy tales to myth, which we will completely ignore here. Our goals are not directly polemical. In most cases, the distinction is made purely formally. When we begin our research, we do not yet know what the relationship of a fairy tale to myth is - here, for now, there is a requirement to investigate this issue, to involve myth as one of the possible sources of a fairy tale.

The variety of available interpretations and understandings of the concept of myth forces us to define this concept precisely. Myth here will be understood as a story about deities or divine beings in whose reality people believe. The point here is about faith not as a psychological factor, but as a historical one. The stories about Hercules are very close to our fairy tale. But Hercules was a deity to whom cult was given. Our hero, who sets out, like Hercules, for the golden apples, is the hero of a work of art. Myth and fairy tale differ not in their form, but in their social function (Tronsky 1934).

The social function of myth is also not always the same and depends on the degree of culture of the people. The myths of peoples who have not reached statehood in their development are one phenomenon, the myths of ancient cultural states known to us through the literature of these peoples are a different phenomenon. A myth cannot be formally distinguished from a fairy tale. A fairy tale and a myth (especially the myths of pre-class peoples) can sometimes coincide so completely with each other that in ethnography and folkloristics such myths are often called fairy tales. There was even a certain fashion for “primitive tales,” and there are a lot of such collections, both scientific and popular. Meanwhile, if you examine not only the texts, but also the social function of these texts, then most of them will have to be considered not fairy tales, but myths. Modern bourgeois folkloristics completely ignores the enormous significance inherent in these myths. They are collected, but are hardly studied by folklorists. Thus, in the index of Bolte and Polivka, “primitive tales” occupy a very modest place. Such myths are not “variants”, but products of earlier stages of economic development, which have not yet lost touch with their production base. What is reinterpreted in modern European fairy tales is often contained here in its original form. Thus, these myths often provide the key to understanding a fairy tale.

True, there are researchers who feel this meaning and even talk about it, but things have not gone beyond declarations. The fundamental significance of these myths is not understood, and it is not understood precisely because researchers take a formal rather than a historical point of view. These myths as a historical phenomenon are ignored, but special cases of inverse dependence, the dependence of the folklore of “wild” peoples on “cultural” ones, have been noticed and studied. Only in very recent times has the idea of the social significance of myth begun to be expressed in bourgeois science; a close connection has begun to be established between the word, myths, and sacred stories of a tribe, on the one hand, and its ritual actions, moral actions, social organization, and even practical actions, on the other. sides. However, there is usually no talk of extending this position to European fairy tales; this idea is too bold.

Unfortunately, however, the recording of such myths is in most cases less than satisfactory. Only texts are given, and nothing else. Often the publisher does not even say whether he knew the language, whether he wrote it down directly or through a translator. Even in the records of such a major researcher as Boas, there are texts that are undoubtedly paraphrases, but nowhere is this stated. But for us, the smallest details are important, in particular, shades, often even the tone of the story is important... The situation is even worse when the natives tell their myths in English. This is how Kroeber sometimes wrote it down. His collection "Gros Ventre Myths and Tales" contains 50 texts, of which 48 texts were told in English, which we learn in the middle of the book from a footnote as a very minor and unimportant circumstance (Kroeber I; III pt).

We said above that myth has social meaning; but this meaning is not the same everywhere. The difference between ancient myths and Polynesian ones is obvious to everyone. But even within pre-class peoples, this meaning and its degree are also not the same; they cannot be thrown into the same pot. In this regard, we can talk about the differences in the myths of individual countries and peoples depending on the degree of their culture.

The most valuable and important for us turned out to be not European or Asian materials, as one might think from their territorial proximity, but American materials, partly Oceanic and African. The Asian peoples as a whole are already at a higher level of culture than the peoples of America and Oceania were at the moment when Europeans found them and began collecting ethnographic and folklore materials; secondly, Asia is the most ancient cultural continent, a cauldron in which streams of peoples moved, mixed and displaced each other. In the space of this continent we have all stages of culture from the almost primitive Ainu to the Chinese who reached the highest cultural peaks, and now the socialist culture of the USSR. Therefore, in Asian materials we have a mixture that makes research extremely difficult. The Yakuts, for example, tell the tale of Ilya Muromets along with their probably primordial Yakut myths. Vogul folklore mentions horses that the Voguls do not know (Chernetsov). These examples show how easy it is to make a mistake here, to mistake what has come and is alien for the original. And since it is important for us to study the phenomenon not in itself, not the texts, but it is important to study the connection of the myth with the soil on which it arose, here lies the greatest danger for the folklorist. He may take, for example, a phenomenon that came from India as a primitive hunting phenomenon, since it is found among these hunters.

This applies to a lesser extent to Africa. Here, however, there are also peoples at a very low level of development, like the Bushmen, and pastoral peoples, like the Zulus, and agricultural peoples, peoples who already know blacksmithing. But still, mutual cultural influences are less strong here than in Asia. Unfortunately, African material is sometimes recorded no better than American material. The Americans themselves still live in close proximity to the Indians, while Africa is studied by newcomers, colonialists and missionaries - the French, English, Dutch, Germans, who even less bother to learn the language, and if they study, it is not for the purpose of recording folklore. One of the largest researchers of Africa, Frobenius, does not know African languages, which does not prevent him from publishing African materials en masse, without specifying how he obtained them, which, of course, forces him to treat them very critically.

True, America is not at all free from outside influences, but nevertheless, it was American materials that provided what materials on other continents sometimes do not provide.

Such is the significance of the myths of primitive peoples for the study of fairy tales, and such are the difficulties encountered in their study.

A completely different phenomenon is represented by the myths of Greco-Roman antiquity, Babylon, Egypt, partly India, and China. We know the myths of these peoples not directly from their creators, who were the lower classes, but we know them through the refraction of writing. We know them through the poems of Homer, through the tragedies of Sophocles, through Virgil, Ovid, etc. Wilamowitz is trying to deny Greek literature any connection with the people (Wilamowitz-Moellendorf). Greek literature is supposedly as unsuitable for the study of folk stories as the Nibelungs of Hebbel, Geibel or Wagner are for the study of the real Nibelungs. This point of view, which denies the nationality of ancient myth, paves the way for reactionary theories and attitudes. We will recognize the genuine nationality behind these myths, but we must remember that we do not have them in their pure form, and that they cannot be equated with records of folklore materials from the lips of the people. The situation is approximately the same with the myths of Egypt. We also don't know them first hand. The ideas of the Egyptians are known to us through tombstone inscriptions, through the Book of the Dead, etc. We mostly know only the official religion, cultivated by the priests for political purposes and approved by the court or nobility. But the lower classes could have different ideas, other, so to speak, subjects than the official cult, and we know very little about these popular ideas. Nevertheless, the myths of the cultural peoples of antiquity must be included in the scope of research. But while the myths of pre-class peoples represent direct sources, here we have indirect sources. They undoubtedly reflect popular ideas, but are not always them in the literal sense of the word. It may turn out that the Russian fairy tale provides more archaic material than the Greek myth.

So, we distinguish between the myths of pre-class formations, which can be considered as a direct source, and the myths transmitted to us by the ruling classes of ancient cultural states, which can serve as indirect evidence of the presence of one or another idea among the corresponding peoples.

Hence the premise that the fairy tale must be compared both with the myths of primitive pre-class peoples and with the myths of the cultural states of antiquity.

This is the last clarification introduced into the concept of the “historical past”, which is used for comparisons and for the study of fairy tales. It is easy to notice that in this past we are not interested in individual events, that is, what is usually understood by “history” and what the so-called “historical school” understood by it.

11. Fairy tale and primitive thinking.

From all that has been said, it is clear that we are looking for the foundations of fairy-tale images and plots in the reality of the past. However, in the fairy tale there are images and situations that clearly do not go back to any immediate reality. Such images include, for example, a winged serpent or a winged horse, a hut on chicken legs, Koschey, etc.

It would be a grave mistake if we take a position of pure empiricism and consider a fairy tale as a kind of chronicle. This mistake is made when, for example, they look for real winged serpents in prehistory and claim that the fairy tale has preserved the memory of them. There were never any winged kites or huts on chicken legs. And yet they too are historical, but they are not historical in themselves, but their emergence is historical, and this is what must be explained.

The dependence of ritual and myth on economic interests is clear. If, for example, they dance to make it rain, then it is clear that this is dictated by the desire to influence nature. Dont clear. here is something else: why they dance for these purposes (and sometimes with live snakes (Warburg), and not do something else. We could understand more quickly if water was poured for these purposes (as is also often done). This would be an example of the use of simile magic, and nothing more. This example shows that the action is caused by economic interests not directly, but in the refraction of a certain thinking, ultimately conditioned by the same thing that determines the action itself. Both myth and ritual are the product of some thinking. It is sometimes very difficult to explain and define these forms of thinking. However, the folklorist needs not only to take it into account, but also to understand what ideas underlie certain motives. Primitive thinking does not know abstractions. It is manifested in actions, in forms of social organization, in folklore , in language. There are cases when a fairy tale motif is inexplicable by any of the above premises. So, for example, some motifs are based on a different understanding of space, time and set than the one to which we are accustomed.. Hence the conclusion that the forms of the primitive thinking should also be involved to explain the genesis of the fairy tale. This is only indicated here - nothing more. This is another prerequisite for the work. The complexity of this issue is very great. There is no need to enter into a discussion of existing views on primitive thinking. For us, thinking is also, first of all, a historically definable category. This frees us from having to "interpret" myths or rituals or fairy tales. It is not a matter of interpretation, but of reduction to historical reasons. Myth undoubtedly has its own semantics. But there is no absolute, once-for-all semantics. Semantics can only be historical semantics. In this situation, we face a great danger. It is easy to mistake mental reality for everyday reality and vice versa. So, for example, if Baba Yaga threatens to eat the hero, this does not mean that here we certainly have a remnant of cannibalism. The image of the cannibal yaga could have arisen in another way, as a reflection of some mental (and in this sense also historical) and not real everyday images.

12. Genetics and history.

This work is a genetic study. Genetic research is necessarily and essentially always historical, but it is still not the same as historical research. Genetics sets itself the task of studying the origin of phenomena, history - the study of their development. Genetics precedes history; it paves the way for history. But still, we are not dealing with frozen phenomena, but with processes, that is, with some movement. We take every phenomenon to which a fairy tale is raised and consider it as a process. When, for example, a connection is established between certain motifs of a fairy tale and ideas about death, we take “death” not as an abstract concept, but as a process of ideas about death, outlined in its development. Therefore, the reader can easily get the impression that history or prehistory of individual motifs is being written here. Despite sometimes more or less detailed development of the process, this is still not history. It also happens that the phenomenon to which a fairy tale is raised is very clear in itself, but it is not possible to develop it into a process. These are some very early forms of social life, surprisingly well preserved by the tale (for example, the initiation rite). Their history requires special historical and ethnographic research, and a folklorist cannot always dare to undertake such research. Here, much depends on the insufficient development of these phenomena in ethnography. Therefore, historical development is not always equally deep and wide. Often one has to confine oneself to stating the fact of connection - and nothing more. Some unevenness in historical development is also caused by the unequal share of fairy-tale motifs. The more important, “classical” motifs of the tale are developed in more detail, while others, less important, are shorter and more schematic.

13. Method and material

The principles outlined here seem to be very simple. In fact, their implementation presents significant difficulties. The difficulty lies primarily in mastering the material. The mistakes researchers often make are that they limit their material to one subject or one culture or other artificially created boundaries. For us these boundaries do not exist. Usener, for example, made this mistake when studying the plot or myth of the Flood only within the confines of ancient material. This does not mean that such issues cannot be addressed within some framework or limits. But one cannot generalize conclusions, as Usener does, one cannot study such questions genetically, only within the framework of one nationality. Folklore is an international phenomenon. But if this is so, then the folklorist finds himself in a very disadvantageous position in comparison with specialists: Indologists, classicists, Egyptologists, etc. They are the complete masters of these areas, while the folklorist only looks into them as a guest or wanderer, so that, having noticed something -What, move on. It is impossible to know essentially all this material. Nevertheless, it is absolutely necessary to expand the scope of folklore research. Here you must take on the risk of errors, annoying misunderstandings, inaccuracies, etc. All this is dangerous, but less dangerous than methodologically incorrect foundations with impeccable mastery of private material. Such expansion is necessary even for the purposes of special studies: they must be returned to in the light of comparative data. There is so much preliminary work on individual cultures, on individual nationalities, that the moment has come when this material must be actually used, even if it has turned out to be impossible to master the material in its entire breadth.

So, from the very beginning I take the point of view that it is possible to begin research even if the material has not been completely exhausted, and this is also one of the prerequisites for this work. I take this point of view not out of sad necessity, but I find that it is possible in principle, and here I disagree with most researchers. The basis for taking this point of view is the observation of the repetition and regularity of folklore material. Here we are studying repeated elements of a fairy tale, and for us it is not important whether we have taken into account all 200 or 300 or 5000 variants and versions of each element, each particle of material to be studied. The same applies to rituals, myths, etc. “If we wanted to wait until the material is ready in its pure form for the law,” says Engels, “this would mean suspending intellectual research until then, and only then This alone we would never have received the law" (Marx, Engels 20; 555). All material is divided into material that is subject to explanation - this is, for us, first of all a fairy tale - and into material that contributes to explanation. Everything else is control material. The law becomes clear gradually, and it is not necessarily explained on this rather than on other material. Therefore, a folklorist may not take into account the entire ocean of material, and if the law is true, then it will be true on any material, and not just on the one that is included.

The principle that is put forward here is the opposite of the principle that usually underlies folklore research. Here, usually, first of all, one strives for an exhaustive completeness of the material. But in fact, we see that where the material within the reach is really exhausted, the questions are still solved incorrectly, because the task was formulated incorrectly. Here a different point of view is put forward: first of all, the problem must be correctly posed, and then the right method will lead to the right solution.

14. Fairy tale and post-fairy tale formations.

From all that has been said, it is clear that I consider rituals, myths, forms of primitive thinking and some social institutions to be pre-fairy tale formations, and I think it is possible to explain a fairy tale through them.

But folklore is not limited to fairy tales. There is also a heroic epic related to it in plots and motifs, there is a wide area of all kinds of tales, legends, etc. There is the Mahabharata, there is the Odyssey and Iliad, the Edda, epics, the Nibelungs, etc. All these formations are left, as a rule, aside. They themselves can be explained by a fairy tale, and often go back to it. It happens, however, that something else happens, it happens that the epic has conveyed to our days details and features that a fairy tale does not provide, that no other material provides. So, for example, in “Nibelungen” Siegfried, having killed the serpent, bathes in its blood and acquires invulnerability. This detail is important when studying the serpent; it explains something in his image, but it is not present in the fairy tale. In such cases, in the absence of other material, heroic epic may also be used.

15. Prospects.

The premises from which we proceed are now clear. The main task is also clear. The question is: what prospects does such a comparison open to us? Suppose we found that in a fairy tale children are put in a dungeon, and in historical reality this was also done. Or we found a girl keeping the bones of a dead cow, and in reality this was also done. Can we conclude that in such cases the motif entered the tale from historical reality? It is certainly possible. But wouldn’t that result in a picture of extraordinary mosaic? We do not know this, this question must be investigated. There is still an opinion that the fairy tale absorbed some elements of primitive social and cultural life. We will see that it consists of them. As a result, we will get a picture of the sources of the tale.

The solution to this question will advance us in understanding the fairy tale, but it does not solve another, also unresolved question: why was this told? How did the fairy tale develop as a narrative genre? This question arises naturally when we pose our problem. Therefore, along with the question of where individual motifs came from as components of the plot, we will have to answer the question: where does storytelling come from, where does the fairy tale itself come from?

We will try to answer this question in the last chapter, but the answer to it encounters one difficulty. Only fairy tales are studied here. The act of telling fairy tales is inseparable from the act of telling tales of other genres, such as animal tales. Therefore, until other genres are historically studied, only a preliminary, hypothetical answer with a greater or lesser degree of probability and convincingness can be given to this question.

Essentially, such work can never be considered finished, and this work rather introduces the study of the genesis of the fairy tale, rather than claiming to be its final solution.

The work can be compared to an exploration expedition into as yet unknown lands. We mark deposits, draw schematic maps, but detailed development of each of the deposits should be a matter of the future. The next stage may be the detailed development of individual motifs and plots, but without isolation from the whole. At this stage of our science, it is more important to study the connection between phenomena than to develop in detail each such phenomenon separately.

Finally, one more reservation regarding the material: The study is based on a Russian fairy tale, with special consideration given to the northern fairy tale. It has already been indicated above that the fairy tale is international, and its motives are also largely international. Russian folklore is distinguished by its great diversity, richness, exceptional artistry and good preservation. Therefore, it is completely natural that a Soviet researcher should primarily focus on our native folklore, and not on foreign folklore. The work takes into account all the main types of fairy tales. These types are represented in the world repertoire by both Russian and foreign material. For comparative work, it makes no difference which samples of a given type are taken. Where there is a lack of Russian material, we also attract foreign material. But we would like to emphasize that this work is not a study of a Russian fairy tale (such a task can be posed as a special task after resolving general issues of genetics and requires special research); This work is a work on comparative historical folklore based on Russian material as source material.