The Dancing Goddesses: Folklore, Archaeology, and the Origins of European Dance by Barber Elizabeth Wayland

Author:Barber, Elizabeth Wayland [Barber, Elizabeth Wayland]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2013-02-11T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 16

Koshchey the Deathless

The Frog Princess (8 bis)

Baba Yaga fed him, gave him to drink, and steamed him in a bath, and the tsarevich recounted to her that he was searching for his wife, Vasilisa the Wise.

“Ah, I know her!” said Baba Yaga. “She is now with Koshchey the Deathless. It’ll be hard to get her back—it’s not easy to deal with Koshchey. His death is on the end of a needle, the needle is in an egg, the egg is in a duck, the duck is in a hare, the hare is in a coffer, the coffer stands in a tall oak tree, and Koshchey guards the tree like his own eyes.”

The hag indicated the place where this oak grew; Ivan Tsarevich went there but didn’t know what to do, how to get the coffer. Suddenly from who knows where a bear ran up and tore the tree up, roots and all; the coffer fell out and broke into smithereens; the hare jumped out of the coffer and took to its heels at full speed; in a wink, another hare was already chasing after it, caught it, clutched it, and tore it to shreds. Out of the hare flew a duck, which soared high, high; she flew but a drake swooped after her, and as he hit her the duck suddenly let fall an egg, and the egg fell into the sea.

Ivan Tsarevich, seeing this irreparable misfortune, burst into tears. Suddenly a pike swam up to the shore holding the egg in its jaws. Ivan took the egg, broke it, got out the needle, and broke off the tip: how Koshchey thrashed about, how he staggered in all directions—and then he fell down dead. Ivan Tsarevich went to the house of Koshchey, fetched Vasilisa the Wise, and returned home. After this they lived together both long and happily.

From Afanasiev’s third version of “The Frog Princess” we can see that his second version (given in chapter 15) makes hash of the end of the story but provides key pieces the third storyteller had lost. We need both tales to sort out the message.

When, in the third version, Ivan Tsarevich seeks the egg containing the life of the wizard who holds the prince’s wife hostage (a convincing motive), various animal helpers appear simply out of nowhere (unmotivated chaos). When, however, in version 2, Ivan seeks the egg holding the princess’s “love” (a rather lame device), he encounters four animals along the road (a careful setup for the final denouement). Each of them—a pike, a bear, a hawk, and a crayfish—he decides to kill for dinner, but he spares them when they beg for life and promise him a future favor in return. So when they arrive in his hour of need to help him get the egg, everything makes sense. The pike helps him reach the requisite stone island enclosing the required egg; the bear smashes the stone open for him; when the duck with the egg inside it pops out, the hawk grabs it; and the crayfish retrieves the egg from the water after it falls in.

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