Green-Vanka () is a Russian fairy tale (skazka), first collected in the 1930s and published in 1998. It deals with a friendship between a merchant's son and a magic horse that are forced to flee for their lives due to the boy's stepmother, and reach another kingdom, where the boy adopts another identity by only uttering the words "Green-Vanka", and defeats three dragons to protect three princesses.
According to scholarship, tales where the hero is instructed by his horse to always utter "I don't know" (or a variation thereof) are reported particularly in Russia, in Finland, in the Baltic Countries and in Hungary.
Sources The tale was originally collected by F. G. Fabrikov from a source in Metallstroya, Tekstilshchiki District, in Moscow Oblast.
Summary A rich merchant has a beautiful wife and a mare, but fears that, being childless, no one will inherit his wealth. An old woman comes and gives him an apple: half of it must be given to the woman, and the other to the mare. The merchant follows the old woman's advice and, nine months later, a son is born to him and a foal to the mare, which the story treats as brothers. The boy, Ivan, and the foal grow up together: after he returns from school, he grooms the little animal. One day, the merchant has to go on a journey to trade more provisions, and leaves his wife unattended.
While he is away, a clerk at his office begins to have an affair with Ivan's mother. The clerk convinces the woman to get rid of her son: first, by giving him a cake laced with poison. Ivan's horse brother warns him of the poison, and advises him to throw the cake to the dogs. Next, Ivan's mother gives him a new shirt. The horse warns the boy to bring the garment to him and put it on a pillar: the shirt begins to shrink until it strangles the pillar and crumbles it. Ivan then takes the shirt and the foal blows its nostrils over it, disabling its evil magic. Failing twice, the clerk realizes that Ivan's horse is helping the boy and advises his lover to feign illness and ask for the horse's liver as cure, when her husband returns. The merchant's wife does as instructed and fools her husband. Ivan goes to check on the horse, which is crying for its fate, but hatches a counterplan: Ivan is to agree with its sacrifice, but ask for tons of rope, a platform to be built on the property, and for his father to hire six butchers. Ivan follows the horse's plan: the butchers fail in tying up the horse with the rope, so Ivan does it himself, and create a commotion in the property.
Ivan and the horse then escape to another kingdom, where the horse advises him to buy some sheep's skins to wear on his head and to always utter the words "Ванька-зеленый". Ivan goes to work at a tsar's palace as a gardener, and builds a hut to live in. In this kingdom, however, a three-headed dragon demands the eldest princess to be given as a sacrifice. Three gypsy lads offer to protect her. Meanwhile, Ivan summons his horse brother and asks for provisions to battle the first dragon, then goes to meet the three gypsies. Ivan makes a deal: he will battle the dragon in their place, in exchange for the first joints of the little fingers from their right hands. It happens thus: Ivan defeats the dragon, buries its heads under a stone, releases the eldest princess, and goes back home to his shabby disguise. The next day, a six-headed sea dragon demands the middle princess, which is also placed near the shore to wait for the fiend. Once again, Ivan summons his brother horse to ask for provisions, meets the gypsy lads en route and makes a deal: his victory over the dragon in exchange for the second joints of their little fingers. Ivan defeats the dragon, buries the heads under another stone, releases the second princess and lets the gypsies take the credit. Some time later, a twelve-headed dragon appears and demands the third princess as sacrifice. Ivan summons his brother horse again, for he has to save the third princess, with whom he has fallen in love. The horse brother furnishes him with armour and a fire sword, and meets the three gypsies again, requesting the third joints of their little fingers as payment for the deed. Ivan defeats the third dragon in an epic battle, and, on the horse's words, buries the heads under a stone and leaves the corpse there at the beach. The third princess, seeing Ivan's bravery, gifts him her ring and dresses his injured hand with a handkerchief.
Ivan returns to his hut and lies down in bed for twelve days, to restore his strength. The youngest princess returns home with the gypsies, and goes to bring food to the gardener Green-Vanka. She enters the hut and sees a note on his body, her ring and her handkerchief on his hand, then realizes he is her saviour. Noticing that Ivan will not wake for another twelve days' period, the princess feigns illness to delay her marriage to the gypsy until enough time has passed. Her plan works, and she goes to greet Ivan after his long nap. The third princess takes Ivan to their wedding banquet, where her sisters and their respective gypsy suitors are. The elder princess spot the gardener and point him as their saviour. Ivan then continues to unravel the deception, shows the gypsy lads' cut off fingers, and directs the king to the stone he hid the dragons' heads under. The king banishes the gypsies and marries Ivan to the third princess. Some time later, Ivan decides to pay a visit to his home: he slices the clerk in two halves, who remains this way, and forgives his traitorous mother.
Analysis Tale type The tale is classified in the East Slavic type SUS 532, , of the East Slavic Folktale Classification (): a hero is banished with his horse by his stepmother and, to protect himself, he is advised by the horse to always say "не знаю" (Russian for "I do not know"); the hero finds work as a gardener to another king, and, through heroic deeds, marries a princess.Barag, Lev. "Сравнительный указатель сюжетов. Восточнославянская сказка". Leningrad: НАУКА, 1979. p. 153. Similarly, according to Russian folklorist , one of the "typical contaminations" of type SUS 532 is with tale type SUS 300, "Победитель змея" ("The Winner of the Dragon"), wherein the hero fights against a dragon that menaces the princess.Barag, Lev. "Сравнительный указатель сюжетов. Восточнославянская сказка". Leningrad: НАУКА, 1979. p. 103.
The East Slavic type corresponds, in the international Aarne-Thompson Index (henceforth, AaTh), as tale type AaTh 532, "I Don't Know (The Helpful Horse)".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. 191. However, folklorist Stith Thompson, in his work The Folktale, doubted the existence of the story as an independent tale type, since, barring a different introduction, its main narrative becomes "the same as in the Goldener tale [tale type 314]". This prompted him to suppose the tale type was a "variety" of "Goldener".
A similar notion is shared by Greek folklorists Anna Angelopoulou, Marianthi Kapanoglou and Emmanuela Katrinaki, editors of the Greek Folktale Catalogue: although they classified the Greek variants under type 532 (Greek: Ο Μπιλμέμ), they still recognized that they should be indexed as type 314 (Greek: Ο Κασίδης), since their only difference seems to lie in the introductory episodes.Angelopoulou, Anna; Kapanoglou, Marianthi; Katrinaki, Emmanuela. "ΚΑΤΑΛΟΓΟΣ ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΩΝ ΠΑΡΑΜΥΘΙΩΝ-4: ΕΠΕΞΕΡΓΑΣΙΑ ΤΥΠΩΝ ΚΑΙ ΠΑΡΑΛΛΑΓΩΝ AT 500-559". Athena: ΚΕΝΤΡΟ ΝΕΟΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΩΝ ΕΡΕΥΝΩΝ, 2004. pp. 15, 389-390. (In Greek). The Hungarian Folktale Catalogue (MNK) also took notice of the great similarity between types 532 and 314, which difficulted a specific classification into one or the other.Dömötör Ákos (szerk.). Magyar népmesekatalógus 2. Budapest, MTA Néprajzi Kutató Csoport, 1988. A magyar tündérmesék katalógusa (AaTh 300-749). p. 306.
Furthermore, German folklorist Hans-Jörg Uther, in his 2004 revision of the international tale type index (henceforth, ATU), subsumed type AaTh 532 under a new tale type, ATU 314, "Goldener", due to "its similar structure and content".
Motifs According to folklorist Christine Goldberg, in Enzyklopädie des Märchens, the "only specific motif" of type 532 is the hero's feigned ignorance on the horse's orders.Goldberg, Christine. "Pferd: Das hilfreiche Pferd (AaTh 532)". In: Enzyklopädie des Märchens Online, edited by Rolf Wilhelm Brednich, Heidrun Alzheimer, Hermann Bausinger, Wolfgang Brückner, Daniel Drascek, Helge Gerndt, Ines Köhler-Zülch, Klaus Roth and Hans-Jörg Uther. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2016 . p. 934. https://www-degruyter-com.wikipedialibrary.idm.oclc.org/database/EMO/entry/emo.10.177/html. Accessed 2023-06-14.
Professor Anna Birgitta Rooth stated that the motif of the stepmother's persecution of the hero appears in tale type 314 in variants from Slavonic, Eastern European and Near Eastern regions. She also connected this motif to part of the Cinderella cycle, in a variation involving a male hero and his cow.Rooth, Anna Birgitta. The Cinderella Cycle. Lund, 1951. pp. 138-139.
Variants Distribution Stith Thompson supposed that this tale type was "essentially a Russian development", with variants also found in Hungary, Finland and the Baltic Countries. In the same vein, Hungarian-American scholar Linda Dégh stated that the type was "particularly widespread" in the Central and Eastern regions of Europe.Dégh, Linda (1996). Hungarian Folktales: The Art of Zsuzsanna Palkó. New York and London: Garland Publishing. p. 3. .
Russia The Enchanted Hinny