The Wise Little Girl

The Wise Little Girl is a Russian fairy tale collected by Alexander Afanasyev in "Narodnye russkie skazki". [Angela Carter, "The Old Wives' Fairy Tale Book", p 28, Pantheon Books, New York, 1990 ISBN 0-679-74037-6]

This type of tale is the commonest European tale dealing with witty exchanges. [Stith Thompson, "The Folktale", p 158-9, University of California Press, Berkeley Los Angeles London, 1977]

ynopsis

Two brothers rode together, a poor one on a mare, a rich one on a gelding. The mare gave birth in the night, and the foal went under the rich brother's cart, so he claimed the cart had given birth to it. The tsar heard of their dispute at law and summoned them to ask them riddles: what were the swiftest, fattest, softest, and loveliest things in the world? The rich man went to his godmother and got answers: her husband's bay mare, a pig that they had been fattening, eider down, and her grandson. The poor man lamented his fate, and his seven-year-old daughter, his only child, heard him and gave him answers: the wind, the earth, the hand (because men always put their hands under their heads when they sleep), and sleep.

The tsar asked the poor man where he got his answers and he confessed his daughter had given them. He sent the poor man home with a thread and orders for his daughter to sew it into an embroidered towel; the girl sent back a twig from a broom, saying she needed a loom made of it to weave the towel on. The tsar sent her a hundred and fifty eggs to hatch in a day; she sent back that she need grain that had been planted, grown, and been harvested in one day to feed the chicks. The tsar told her to come to him neither on foot nor on horseback, neither clothed nor naked, neither with nor without a gift. She rode a hare, wore a net, and brought a quail, which flew off when she handed it to the tsar. Then she told the tsar that her father fished on land and she cooked soup in her apron. The tsar told her that fish did not live on land. The girl said that neither did carts give birth to foals.

The tsar gave the foal to the poor man, raised the girl in the castle, and when she had grown up, married her.

Commentary

In ballad form, the clever answers to the riddles, and the winning of a husband by them, are found in Child ballad 1, "Riddles Wisely Expounded", [Francis James Child, "The English and Scottish Popular Ballads", v 1, p 1, Dover Publications, New York 1965] and the countering of impossible task with other impossible tasks is found in Child ballad 2, "The Elfin Knight". [Francis James Child, "The English and Scottish Popular Ballads", v 1, p 8, Dover Publications, New York 1965]

The heroine's technique for arriving at the king's castle fulfilling his conditions is analogous to that used by Aslaug in Norse legends, to arrive under similar conditions. [Angela Carter, "The Old Wives' Fairy Tale Book", p 233, Pantheon Books, New York, 1990 ISBN 0-679-74037-6]

ee also

*The Peasant's Wise Daughter
*What Is the Fastest Thing in the World?

References