The Girl as Soldier (German: Das Mädchen als Soldat) is a Russian folktale collected by Russian folklorist , originally titled "Опять Сноха" ("The Daughter-in-Law, Again"). The tale features a heroine who disguises herself as a man, passing tests designed to discover her gender, and is later kidnapped by her lover (or her lover's mother, in other tales); her lover's mother then forces the heroine to perform difficult tasks for her.
Sources The tale was collected by Ivan Khudyakov from a source in the then-existing Ryazan Governorate, originally titled "Опять Сноха" ("The Daughter-in-Law, Again"). The tale was translated into German language by author August von Löwis of Menar with the title Das Mädchen als Soldat ("The Girl as Soldier").
Summary
A father has three daughters, and one day is drafted to war. His youngest daughter offers to go in his place, and wears the disguise of a male soldier. She joins the army and is lodged with another soldier and his mother. The soldier's mother suspects her son's friend is a woman underneath, and suggests they test her gender: first, she is to sleep on the grass, so that the way their body presses the leaves reveals their gender; next, she is to take a bath in the sauna with the soldier. The girl tricks the soldier in getting soap for her and takes a bath first. After the war ends, she returns home to her father.
One day, her friend, the soldier, appears at her house in the shape of a cat, places her on its back and carries her back home across the Oka river to his mother. The girl throws her ring in the water and makes a vow of silence to never address the soldier's parents, and marries him. The man's mother-in-law forces the heroine to perform dangerous tasks: to shear her gray sheep (who are gray wolves), then to go to the barn and milk her brown cows (who are bears), and lastly to get a reed ("бёрдом", in the original; "Weberkamm", in the German translation) from her "sister". The heroine's husband warns her that his mother's "sister" is not a relative, but the witch Baba Yaga, who will devour her, so he gives her a piece of butter, a comb and a brush.
The heroine visits Baba Yaga in her chicken-legged hut and asks for the reed for her mother-in-law. Baba Yaga goes to sharpen her teeth. The heroine gives the piece of butter to a cat. The animal, in return, advises the girl to spit under the porch, so her saliva can answer for her, then take the reed and escape. The girl obeys the cat and flees from Baba Yaga's hut. The witch goes after her on her iron mortar, but the girl throws behind her the comb and the brush to create obstacles for her. After bringing the reed to her mother-in-law, she resigns herself to the fact that her daughter-in-law survived her every attempt. At the end of the tale, the girl fishes her ring out of the river.Великорусскія сказки" [Tales of Great Russia]. Vol. 2. Saint Petersburg: 1861. pp. 81-85.
Analysis Tale type Russian scholarship classifies the tale as type SUS 428, "Девушка на службе у ведьмы" ("The Girl in the Witch's Service"Johns, Andreas. Baba Yaga: The Ambiguous Mother and Witch of the Russian Folktale. New York: Peter Lang Publishing Inc. 2010. p. 212. . or "A girl serving a Witch"),"Русские сказки Сибири и Дальнего Востока: Волшебные. О животных". Сост. Р.П. Матвеева, Т.Г. Леонова. Новосибирск: ВО «Наука». Сибирская издательская фирма, 1993. p. 344. . of the East Slavic Folktale Classification ().Barag, Lev. "Сравнительный указатель сюжетов. Восточнославянская сказка". Leningrad: НАУКА, 1979. p. 133 (entry "Худяков, 20"). (In Russian). According to scholar Andreas John and Russian folklorist , in the East Slavic type, the heroine's mother-in-law (sometimes identified as witch Baba Yaga) sends her on dangerous tasks in order to get rid of her, but, with her husband's advice, she prevails: with the witch's son's advice, she milks cows (bears), shears sheep (devils), and pays a visit to a second witch in the other world by treating the objects with kindness.Johns, Andreas. Baba Yaga: The Ambiguous Mother and Witch of the Russian Folktale. New York: Peter Lang Publishing Inc. 2010. pp. 130, 214. .
In his monograph about Cupid and Psyche, Swedish scholar acknowledged that Russian type 428 was subtype 425A of his analysis, that is, "Cupid and Psyche", being the "oldest" and containing the episode of the witch's tasks.Swahn, Jan Öjvind. Tale of Cupid and Psyche. Lund, C.W.K. Gleerup. 1955. p. 270. In the international index, however, Swahn's typing is indexed as type ATU 425B, "The Son of the Witch".Aarne, Antti; Thompson, Stith. The types of the folktale: a classification and bibliography. Third Printing. Folklore Fellows Communications FFC no. 184. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1973 . p. 142 (footnote nr. 1).
Combinations with other types Felix Karlinger considered the tale a combination of "heterogeneous" subjects: the girl as soldier and the demonic mother-in-law. In this regard, Jan-Öjvind Swahn, in his work about Cupid and Psyche and other "Animal as Bridegroom" tales, surmised that, in "Slavonic tradition", tales of type Aa 428 involve a sequence named "The Girl as a Soldier" or "The Girl At War", wherein the heroine wears a male disguise, joins with a compatriot who tries to unmask her gender, and eventually marries him. The tale then segues into her mother-in-law's attempts to kill her by setting ludicrous tasks for her. In addition, the East Slavic Folktale Index classified this sequence (heroine masquerading as a male soldier and the tests to her gender) as tale type SUS 884B*, "Василиса-поповна" ("Vasilisa-popovna").Barag, Lev. "Сравнительный указатель сюжетов. Восточнославянская сказка". Leningrad: НАУКА, 1979. p. 234 (In Russian).
Variants The East Slavic Folktale Catalogue, last updated by Russian folklorist in 1979, registers 12 variants.Barag, Lev. "Сравнительный указатель сюжетов. Восточнославянская сказка". Leningrad: НАУКА, 1979. p. 133. Karelian and Russian scholarship agree that the paucity of registers indicates the "rarity" of this tale type."Русские сказки Сибири и Дальнего Востока: Волшебные. О животных". Сост. Р.П. Матвеева, Т.Г. Леонова. Новосибирск: ВО «Наука». Сибирская издательская фирма, 1993. p. 291. .
Russia Vasilisa Vasilievna (Nizhny Novgorod) In a Russian tale collected by E. A. Chudinsky from Makaryevsky Uyezd, in Nizhny Novgorod Governorate, with the title "Василиса Васильевна" ("Vasilisa Vasilievna"), a master ("barin", in the original) has three daughters, and Baba Yaga has a son, Vasily Vasilyevich. The master has to serve in the war, but his youngest daughter, Vasilisa Vasilievna, goes to serve in his place. She dons a male disguise to mask her gender, and goes to serve with Vasily, with whom Vasilisa becomes friends. Vasily goes to talk to his mother, Baba Yaga, who suspects her son's friend is actually a girl, not a man. Vasily doubts his mother's words, but agrees to test his friend's gender: first, Baba Yaga gives Vasily some embroidered silks to show Vasily's friend. Vasilisa, still in the male disguise, dismisses the silk and says she wants to see some horses in the stables. Next, Baba Yaga tells her son she will heat up the banya (bath house) for a steam bath, to which Vasily is to invite Vasilisa. Vasily invites Vasilisa to a bath, and she insists to take her dog with her. She lets the dog answer for her and flees. Vasily takes a bath and cannot find Vasilisa, so he returns to his mother to plot how to capture her: they carve some pigeons, paint them, and go to the market to sell them. Back to Vasilisa, she removes the male disguise and assumes her female identity. Her father asks his three daughters which presents he can get them from the market: the elder sister asks for silk, the middle sister for gold, and Vasilisa for something that people can marvel at. The man goes to the market and buys silk, gold, and the pigeons as reward for Vasilisa to have replaced him in the war. Vasilisa is given the pigeons, which begin to coo that they will fly away with Vasilisa back to Baba Yaga. Vasilisa cannot listen to the birds' cooing for she is fast asleep. After cooing three times, the pigeons carry Vasilisa away to Baba Yaga, who marries her to her son Vasily. Baba Yaga, however, begins to hound Vasilisa and tries to destroy her, to no avail. Vasilisa throws some birch bark on the ground and declares that, when the birch turns into a forest, she will live happily with her husband. Suddenly, the birch bark turns into a forest, and thus Vasilisa lives a happy life with Vasily.
Ivan Agich and Vasilisa Vasilievna In a tale collected by folklorist Dmitry Sadovnikov from Samarskago Kraya (Samara Region) with the title "Иван Агич и Василиса Васильевна" ("Ivan Agich and Vasilisa Vasilievna"), a father has three daughters and is drafted to a war, despite his age. His three daughters offer to go in his place, and the father tests them: as each of the girls try to begin their journeys, their father turns into a wolf to scare them; the two get scared and go back home, but the youngest, named Vasilisa Vasilievna, defeats the wolf and joins the army. In the army, she assumes the male identity of Vasily Vasilyevich, and becomes friends with a man named Ivan Agich, son of Baba Yaga. After the army, Vasilisa Vasilievna returns home. He father wants to gift their daughters with a present, and the youngest asks for little birds. Vasilisa Vasilievna feeds the birds, which take them to Ivan Agich across the Volga River. Ivan Agich and Vasilisa Vasilievna marry, but his mother, Baba Yaga, despises her. One day, Baba Yaga orders the girl to milk her cows (which are in fact bears). The next day, the witch sends the daughter-in-law to feed their geese, which are snakes. Lastly, Baba Yaga sends her daughter-in-law to her sister, named Yagaya Baba, with a letter containing an order to devour her. Ivan Agich advises his wife: she will pass by a splashing well that she is to throw a hook into; then, she needs to grease the door with butter; pass by a broom and place it under the threshold; give meat to his aunt's cats; give iron needles to his aunt's servants who use straw needles to weave. Vasilisa Vasilievna follows his instructions and asks his aunt for the reed. Yagaya Baba retires to her room to sharpen her teeth, while the girl takes the reed and escapes. Yagaya Baba returns and, not seeing the girl, scolds and beats the servants, the cat, the broom, the door and the well. Vasilisa Vasilievna returns with the reed. Baba Yaga feels anger at her success, but Ivan Agich stands up to his mother and takes his wife to regions unknown.Садовников, Дмитрій Николаевич. "Сказки и предания Самарского края. Собраны и записаны Д. Н. Садовниковым". Тип. Министерства Внутренних Дѣл, 1884. pp. 84-88.Schönle, Andreas. "Gender Trial and Gothic Thrill: Nadezhda Durova's Subversive Self-Exploration ". In: Peter I. Barta (eds.). Gender and Sexuality in Russian Civilization. Routledge, 2001. p. 58. .
Vasilisa Vasilievna (Krasnoyarsk)