Three fair maidens, late one night,
Sat and spun by candlelight.
“Were our tsar to marry me,”
Said the eldest of the three,
“I would cook and I would bake–
Oh, what royal feasts I’d make.”
Said the second of the three:
“Were our tsar to marry me,
I would weave a cloth of gold
Fair and wondrous to behold.”
But the youngest of the three
Murmured: “If he married me–
I would give our tsar an heir
Handsome, brave, beyond compare.”
The Tale of Tsar Saltan, of His Son, the Glorious and Mighty Knight Prince Guidon Saltonovich, and of the Fair Swan-Princess by Alexander Pushkin (translated Louis Zellikoff)
Good day, dear Take in Mind readers! I am hurrying up to share with you my discovery – I have exposed the most outstanding literary fraud of all time! It turns out that the “sun” of Russian poetry, the greatest Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin “stole” plots from… Tofalars! Tofalars (formerly known as Karagas, or by their self-name, Tofa) are small Turkic-speaking indigenous people (less than 800 people in 2010) living in South-Eastern Siberia in Russia. The Tofalar language belongs to the Sayan group of Eastern Turkic languages; currently, it is under threat of extinction. The written Tofalar language was developed only in the second half of the 20th century.
I was excited by the fairy tale “Three Boys” (especially its first half), which suspiciously resembles one of the most famous fairy tales of Alexander Sergeevich, colored by specific Sayan-Baikal flavors. But I will not press my opinion on our readers. We present the Tofalar folk tale for your independent judgment.
Three boys
(Told in 1890 by Daniil Pyttyg-pay. Recorded and translated by orientalist and ethnographer, Prof. N. Katanov. The text was first published in N. Katanov’s work “A Trip to the Karagas” in 1890. (Notes of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society for the Department of Ethnography SPb., 1891, vol. XVII, issue II.) Literary adaptation was done by the writer A. Koptelov. We present the tale with small changes according to the text published in the book “Legends and Myths of the North” (Edited by Sovremennik, 1985). English translation by Take in Mind)
In former times, an old idol lived on earth. In one place, he saw three girls. The idol wanted to get married. He asked the eldest of the three sisters:
— What can you do?
“I know how to cook bread,” the girl answered. – I can immediately bake so much that I can feed three hundred soldiers and still have an entire corner of the cakes.
The idol looked at the middle sister:
— What can you do?
– And I can grow ninety-nine aspens for you: you can heave skis for all the soldiers.
The idol turned to the younger sister:
– Well, what about you?
“And I will give birth to you three sons,” the girl promised. “Two sons will have golden chests, and the third will have a human chest.”
The idol married this girl – he wanted to have golden-chested sons. No one in the whole world had such!
They began to live together. Finally, the time came for the wife to give birth. During this time, men are not allowed to stay in the yurt. The idol called an old woman to his wife, and went hunting.
A child with a golden chest was born. The old woman was delighted, gave the baby to one rich man, and put a puppy to her mother.
Here the idol comes from the hunt:
– Well, how was our son’s birth?
– Born, born… – the old woman mutters, and she brings the puppy.
The idol was angry that his wife had deceived him, hit him with a flick, and the puppy’s head flew away.
They continue to live together. The time had come for the wife to give birth to her second son. The idol went hunting again, and the evil old woman gave the baby with a golden chest to a rich man for a lot of money. The idol returned from hunting, and the old woman again, instead of her golden-chested son, brought him a lousy puppy. The god also knocked off the puppy’s head with a flick.
The idol is angry with his wife but does not say anything to her. The idol was planning bad things. They lived a year without joy, fun, or kind words. The time has come for the wife to give birth to a son. The idol went hunting for the third time.
He returned to his yurt – and immediately ran to that old woman:
– Have she given birth to a son?
– Son.
– The same as everyone else?
– You may rejoice; it is in human form.
– And the chest?
– Human chest. Everything is as it should be…
The idol became furious, cursed his wife for deception with bad words, and began planning the death of her and the child. He did not sleep at night and came up with an idea in the morning. He took a cowhide, sewed his wife and the little son into it, and threw them into the sea. He thought they would go to the bottom, but he was mistaken – the waves picked up the cowhide and carried it farther and farther from the shore.
The child grows as if swinging in a cradle as the days go by. The idol wanted to think of another death for them, but he did not have a boat, and he could not get them out of that sea.
Mother and son swam, swam, and one kind wave threw them onto the soft sand. The son took a knife from his mother, pierced the cowhide and pulled his head out.
“We are on the shore!” he said to his mother, and they went out into a clearing on which green grass grew, and flowers bloomed. The mother wove a shirt for her son from that grass and sewed a hat from the flowers. The son ran away to play but soon returned and said to his mother:
– A man is walking around, asking me for a hat…
– Give it to him, son, – said the mother. – If he asks for your hat, then he needs it.
The boy ran into the forest and gave that stranger his hat. That man praised the boy and gave him an axe, an iron stick, and a sack.
“The axe will build a yurt for you,” said the man. An iron stick will be protection. It will save you from three hundred soldiers the idol will send after you. And in the bag, you will find food for yourself.
He taught the boy what to say to the axe, the iron stick, and the sack.
Here the boy returned to his mother and said to the axe:
“My quick axe, now build a yurt for us!”
The obedient axe built a suitable yurt for them immediately. The boy pushed the sack into the yurt and shook it by the edges. Immediately appeared everything that man needed for food. They sat with their mother near the fire for dinner and began eating the meat. Suddenly they hear – three hundred soldiers are coming. The idol ordered the soldiers to break the yurt and kill the boy and his mother.
The boy asked from his iron stick:
“My quick stick, show your strength!”
The stick flew out of the yurt and killed all the idol’s soldiers.
When the idol sewed up the woman with the boy in a cowhide, the mother took one book with her. Now the boy began to read this book and found out that his older brothers live with a rich peasant in the same valley.
“I will go and save them,”- the boy said to his mother, sat down on his iron stick, and disappeared.
He arrived in that valley, went into one rich yurt, and saw two golden-chested boys. “These are my older brothers,” he thought but did not have time to talk to them. The giant entered the yurt. He carried the carcasses of all the animals that live on earth.
The giant cut the carcasses into large pieces, planted them on sticks, roasted them on fire, and began to eat. He ate all the meat, gnawed all the bones, and stroked his belly – he was still hungry.
“Now I’ll eat this guy,” said the rich man. “Fat child, I’ll be full.”
The boy whispered:
“My quick stick, show your strength!”
All three sat on an iron stick, and the stick delivered them to their mother’s yurt in a moment. The iron stick hit the rich peasant and cut him into two halves. The golden-chested children rejoiced at their release and thanked their younger brother.
The mother fed her older sons with her milk, and they became ordinary boys with human chests. They all grew up and became intelligent and strong. And the idol was left without soldiers and could not do anything bad to people.
Since then, healthy, intelligent, and strong people have grown up from babies on mothers’ milk.
Now let’s talk seriously! Of course, my statements about plagiarism are just a joke. I am sure that Aleksander Sergeyevich Pushkin had never heard of any Tofalars. Moreover, we all know the stories about the poet’s serf nurse Arina Rodionovna Yakovleva-Matveyeva, whose numerous stories the poet later ennobled with brilliant processing. I hardly believe that Arina Rodionovna went on ethnographic tours in Siberia in her youth.
The reverse situation is also unlikely: it is unbelievable that Daniil Pyttyg-pai read “The Tale of Tsar Saltan,” then translated the tale into Tofalar’s language, and filled it with specific local colors to later tell it to the ethnographers as an original story. So, the fact that the plots are similar is almost beyond doubt. It raises an idea – does any collection of proto-tales (like a pre-world language) exists? Moreover, let’s extend the concepts of glottochronology (we described this approach in our article “Word-pedigree: The method of radioactive dating in linguistics“) to fairy tales and follow the development of similar plots from the ancient Sumerians and Egyptians to the modern novels? What do you think, our dear readers?
P.S. By the way, the fairy tale “Three Boys” proclaims the benefits of natural feeding. But that is an absolutely another topic for discussion…
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