The Sea Tsar and Vasilisa the Wise () is a Russian fairy tale published by author Alexander Afanasyev in his collection of Russian Fairy Tales, numbered 219. The tale features legendary characters Sea Tsar and Vasilisa the Wise.
The tale is classified in the Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as ATU 313, "The Magic Flight" ("Girl Helps the Hero Flee") or "The Devil's (Ogre's/Giant's) Daughter".
Summary
A human king helps an injured eagle, which rewards him by taking him on a journey and giving him two magical caskets. The human king opens the caskets but cannot close them, until the Sea Tsar appears to him. The Sea Tsar offers to help in exchange for " the thing which you do not know is in your own house." What the king does not know, is that he now has a newly born son.
The king arrives home only to discover the terrible mistake he has made: he has unwittingly surrendered his own son to the eagle. Years later, the prince is informed of this. The king leaves the prince on the sea shore so that the Sea Tsar may claim his part of the bargain, but the prince wanders off into a forest, where he encounters Baba Yaga. The witch tells him that the daughters of the Sea Tsar pay regular visits to a nearby lake to bathe there in the form of birds or other animals (the animals in question vary between different versions of the tale - see also Swan maiden and Selkie).
The Tsarevitch spies on the maidens and hides the garment (featherskin) of the youngest one. Her sisters fly off home, but she stays behind and asks the youth to come out of hiding, which he does. He then returns her magic garment and, having seen him, she departs.
Some time later, the Tsarevitch arrives at the underwater realm of the Sea Tsar to fulfill his father's bargain, whereupon the Sea Tsar commands the boy to perform three difficult tasks on three successive days. The prince recounts his woes to Vasilisa the Wise, the youngest daughter of the Sea Tsar, and she reassures him that she will help him carry out the tasks.
After the tasks have been completed, the Sea Tsar congratulates the Tsarevitch and bids him choose a wife out of his twelve daughters. Vasilisa the Wise conspires with the human prince to ensure that she is the one chosen from amongst her identical sisters.
After they marry, the Tsaretvitch confesses to his wife his wish to visit his parent again, but Vasilisa warns that, if they escape from the undersea kingdom, the Sea Tsar will pursue them. They make their way to "Holy Russia", the Tsarevitch's homeland, but twice the Sea Tsar sends a hunting party after them. Vasilisa the Wise uses her powers to hide her and her husband with magical disguises to fool her father's allies.
The third time, the Sea Tsar himself sets out in hot pursuit. This time Vasilisa transforms herself into a duck and her husband into a drake. The Sea Tsar arrives at the lake and, having shapeshifted into his eagle form, tries to grab the two waterfowl with his claws, but they dive deep into the lake, where he cannot follow, and so are able to escape him. Baulked of his prey, Sea Tsar gives up and returns to his underwater realm, while Vasilisa and the Tsarevitch return safely home to solemnise their wedding.
(In some variants, the enchanted maiden tells her beloved that he should not kiss anyone in the palace, lest he forget her. When (disregarding her warning) he does so, she is, indeed, forgotten by the prince: some time later, the prince announces his marriage to another princess, but his first love arrives at the ceremony to make him remember her).
Translations The translations of the tale's title are many: Vassilissa the Cunning, and The Tsar of the Sea,Curtin, Jeremiah. Myths and Folk-tales of the Russians, Western Slavs, and Magyars. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company. 1890. pp. 249—270. The King of the Sea and Melania, the Clever,Hodgetts, Edith M. S. Tales and Legends from the Land of the Tzar: Collection of Russian Stories. Griffith Farran & Co. 1891. pp. 291—308. The Water King and Vasilissa the Wise,Ralston, William Ralston Shedden. Russian folk-tales. London: Smith, Elder, & co.. 1873. pp. 130—141. and The King of the Sea and Vassilissa the Wise.The Three Kingdoms: Russian Folk Tales From Alexander Afanasiev's Collection. Illustrated by A. Kurkin. Moscow: Raduga Publishers. 1985. Tale nr. 21.
Analysis Tale type The War of Quadrupeds and Birds The beginning of this tale merges the ATU tale type 222, "The Battle of the Birds" or "War of Quadrupeds and Birds", and ATU 537, "The Helpful Eagle (Etana)".Annus, Amar; Sarv, Mari. "The Ball Game Motif in the Gilgamesh Tradition and International Folklore". In: Mesopotamia in the Ancient World: Impact, Continuities, Parallels. Proceedings of the Seventh Symposium of the Melammu Project Held in Obergurgl, Austria, November 4–8, 2013. Münster: Ugarit-Verlag - Buch- und Medienhandel GmbH. 2015. pp. 289—290. This combination usually marks the tale type ATU 313B, "Girl helps in hero's flight" with introduction "The Forbidden Box".Johns, Andreas. Baba Yaga: The Ambiguous Mother and Witch of the Russian Folktale. New York: Peter Lang. 2010 . pp. 200—201.
Professor Jack V. Haney stated that this combination of AT 222* and AT 313 was more common in the East Slavic area (Russia, Ukraine and Belarus).Haney, Jack V. The Complete Russian Folktale: An introduction to the Russian folktale. Russian Wondertales: 1. Tales of Heroes and Villains. Armonk, New York; London, England: M. E. Sharpe. 2001. p. 421. . Similarly, according to the East Slavic Folktale Classification (), East Slavic type 222B*, "Мышь и воробей" ("Rat and Sparrow"), "usually" appears as the opening of type 313.Barag, Lev. "Сравнительный указатель сюжетов. Восточнославянская сказка". Leningrad: НАУКА, 1979. pp. 89, 112.
The Magic Flight The main part of the tale is classified in the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as tale type ATU 313, "The Magic Flight". The East Slavic Folktale Classification also classifies it as type SUS 313, "Чудесное бегство" ("Miraculous Escape"), but it recognizes three distinct subtypes: SUS 313A, where the antagonist pulls the hero's father by the beard; SUS 313B, with the rat and sparrow quarrel episode, and SUS 313C, with the concluding motif of "The Forgotten Bride".Barag, Lev. "Сравнительный указатель сюжетов. Восточнославянская сказка". Leningrad: НАУКА, 1979. pp. 112-114.
The ending of some variants of the tale falls under the category ATU 313C, "The Magical Flight" with ending "The Forgotten Fiancée", with motif "Kiss of Oblivion". As noted by professor Dean Fansler, the "Kiss of Oblivion" incident occurs because the hero breaks a taboo that the maiden warns against ("usually a parental kiss"). The hero's true memory only reawakens on the day of the wedding with the new bride.Fansler, Dean Spouill. Filipino Popular Tales. The American folk-lore society. 1921. p. 165.Angelopoulos, Anna and Kaplanoglou, Marianthi. "Greek Magic Tales: aspects of research in Folklore Studies and Anthropology". In: FF Network. 2013; Vol. 43. p. 15.
However, German folklorist Hans-Jörg Uther, in his revision of the index, published in 2004, subsumed the sequence and the subtypes back into the more general type, creating new type ATU 313, "The Magic Flight".
Slavicist remarked that the motif of the "Forgotten Bride" "occurs more frequently as the final part in the AaTh 313 type" and its combination with the starting episode of Eastern European and Celtic variants (e.g., the episode of the box and the eagle) would indicate a very old connection.Horálek, Karel. "Zur typologischen Charakteristik der tschechischen Volksmärchen". In: Zeitschrift für Slawistik 14, no. 1 (1969): 100, 106-107. https://doi.org/10.1524/slaw.1969.14.1.85
The rescued eagle Russian scholarship has also noted that in Russian variants of the tale type 313, the youth is promised to the underwater king, and most begin with the episode of the eagle (called "Eagle-Tsarevich") and the dispute between the mouse and the sparrow.Русская сказка. Избранные мастера. Том 2. Moskva/Leningrad: Academia, 1932. pp. 257-258.
Lithuanian folklorist Jonas Balys (lt), in his analysis of Lithuanian folktales (published in 1936), index 22 Lithuanian tales of type *320, Nuostabus erelis ("The Marvellous Eagle") – a type not indexed at the international classification, at the time. In these tales, a hunter spares an eagle, helps it recover and flies with him; at the end of the tale, he receives a wonderful casket from the eagle and opens it: a manor springs from the casket, until a devil promises to lock the manor inside the casket in exchange for the man's son.Balys, Jonas. Lietuvių pasakojamosios tautosakos motyvų katalogas [Motif-index of Lithuanian narrative folk-lore]. Tautosakos darbai [Folklore studies] Vol. II. Kaunas: Lietuvių tautosakos archyvo leidinys, 1936. p. 27.
In his revision of the international folktale index, folklorist Stith Thompson indexed this narrative as type AaTh 537, "The Marvelous Eagle Gives the Hero a Box". In this type, a hunter tries to shoot an eagle, but it begs to be spared. The hunter helps the eagle restore its health and later flies with the bird to distant lands. The eagle visits its relatives and, at the end of the journey, gives the hunter a box, which he must not open. The hunter opens it and a castle jumps out of it; a devil appears to help him shut the box in return for the man's son.Aarne, Antti; Thompson, Stith. The types of the folktale: a classification and bibliography. Folklore Fellows Communications FFC no. 184. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1961. p. 193.
Horálek also summarized a Latvian and a Belarusian variants that show mostly convergent plot points: the dispute between a mouse and a little bird, the injury of the large bird (an eagle in the Latvian tale, a "Meeresfalke" in the Belarusian), and the hunter's journey on the bird's back.Horálek, Karel. "Zur typologischen Charakteristik der tschechischen Volksmärchen". In: Zeitschrift für Slawistik 14, no. 1 (1969): 108-109. https://doi.org/10.1524/slaw.1969.14.1.85
Motifs The bird maidens The bird maidens are related to the mythological character of the swan maiden. The king's sons spies on the bird maidens bathing and hides the garment (featherskin) of the youngest one, for her to help him reach the kingdom of the villain of the tale (usually the swan-maiden's father).Ralston, William Ralston Shedden. The songs of the Russian people, as illustrative of Slavonic mythology and Russian social life. London: Ellis & Green. 1872. pp. 179—180. The swan is the typical species, but they can transform into "geese, ducks, spoonbills, or aquatic birds of some other species".Ralston, William Ralston Shedden. Russian folk-tales. London: Smith, Elder, & co.. 1873. pp. 129—130.
According to linguist Horace Lunt, the terms in the original Russian text, kólpik and kólpica, are taken to show closely related meanings in the Slavic languages, denoting "a large white bird": 'swan', 'spoonbill' (although he disagreed with this one), 'Swan-Maiden', 'Swan-Maiden (in fairy tales)' and 'young female swan' (which he considered to be the best translation).LUNT, HORACE G. "TWO EARLY SLAVONIC GHOST-WORDS: ИКОНИОНЪ and ИКЪЛЪПИНАНЬ." Harvard Ukrainian Studies 1, no. 1 (1977): 25-26 and footnotes nr. 4 and 5. Accessed April 6, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41035737.
Professor Joanna Hubbs also associated the character of the bird maidens with the Rusalki of Slavic folklore, a group of supernatural maidens described in folktales as "daughters of a sea or bird king".Hubbs, Joanna. Mother Russia: The Feminine Myth in Russian Culture. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. 1993. p. 28.
The Sea Tsar