Myths, Legends & Tales of Old Russia

[Lisa]

These pictures are come from the tale Vassilissa-the-very-beautiful (I'm not sure of the tittle in English)...
The painter Ivan Bilibin made them.
For more informations, please see these sites:
the tale: http://www.oldrussia.net/vas.html
and Bilibin: http://www.bpib.com/illustrat/bilibin.htm
                  http://www.scumdog.demon.co.uk/bilibin/  

[La_Mashka]

Although it is not a Russian folktale, but a novel, I love Alie Parusa (Crimson Sails)  and the idea that you can achieve any goals and that dreams WILL come true, if you believe!

I also like the story of the orange fish (zalataya ribka) ... it doesnt have the pretty pretty ending of a fairytale, but it does have a good message in my opinion... that you dont value the things you have not worked for.

[Belochka]

I also like the story of the orange fish (zalataya ribka) ...

Zolotaya ribka = Golden fish.

[AGRBear]

I am surprised that this thread hasn't become popular when there is so much to talk about when it  comes to all the myths, legends and tales of Old Russia and how the lives of everyone, Tsar on down to the peasant were affected every minute of their life because of them.

AGRBear

[lexi4]

I am surprised that this thread hasn't become popular when there is so much to talk about when it  comes to all the myths, legends and tales of Old Russia and how the lives of everyone, Tsar on down to the peasant were affected every minute of their life because of them.

AGRBear

Bear,
This thread escaped my attention. I am glad you bumped it up. I will try to post some of my farvorites over the weekend.
lexi

[dracona]

I remeber my sister telling me that Sleeping Beauty was based on a Russian or slavic fairy tale called the dead princess. I know a russian composer, I know who he is but i don't dare attempt spelling his name wrote a ballet for  the story but could some shed some light on this. Sleeping Beauty has to be one of my favorite Disney movies.

[helenazar]

I like the Baby Yaga story about the girl who is helped by the animals! You know the one whose evil stepmother is Baba Yaga's sister, but her good aunt tells her to give things to the animals so they help her and she gets away!

Doesn't Baba Yaga have a house that stands on these huge chicken feet?    

[helenazar]

What about the one where a girl goes to rescue her little brother who was kidnapped by geese or swans, anyone hear of it? http://beautiful-all.nm.ru/Skazki/sk3/3.html

Or the one where a guy gets turned into a bear!  

Oh and don't forget 'Kolobok' who is a sort of a large donut hole and is none too bright as he gets himself eaten by a fox  . Some pictures of Kolobok: http://beautiful-all.nm.ru/Skazki/sk11/11.html

[AGRBear]

Haven't you ever wondered if Nicholas II  actually ate a piece of the cross upon which Jesus Christ died?  

If I remember correctly, he was very young and very hungry and had around his neck a chain with a locket which held in wax a splinter of the cross so as children do when hungry,  he ate,  and this time, as the story tells us,  it was  the wax and  splinter. 

Was the splinter really from the cross or was it a symbolic splinter?

Do we know what the Romanov's believed?

AGRBear

[LisaDavidson]

Haven't you ever wondered if Nicholas II  actually ate a piece of the cross upon which Jesus Christ died?  

If I remember correctly, he was very young and very hungry and had around his neck a chain with a locket which held in wax a splinter of the cross so as children do when hungry,  he ate,  and this time, as the story tells us,  it was  the wax and  splinter. 

Was the splinter really from the cross or was it a symbolic splinter?

Do we know what the Romanov's believed?

AGRBear

Well, I would imagine that because it was something that the children did as children, that only they knew about the incident. I recall Olga A mentioning this in her Vorres biography and that she and Nicholas were involved, along with another sibling.

Since Nicholas was dead when the biography came out, I would imagine the surviving family had no cause to disbelieve what Olga said. And, since all her other siblings predeceased her, there was no one alive who could have said otherwise.

[Alixz]

I have a very old book called The Forty Ivans.  It is about 40 men named Ivan who tried to cast and hang a bell in their new church belfry.

When they finally managed to get the bell cast and into the church, they realized that the bell was too big for the belfry.  Their solution?  To build a bigger belfry and put it on their small church.  So the little church had a brand new shiny bell and a belfry that was too big for the size of the church!

It is a very cute Russian fable that I loved to have my mother read to me when I was younger before I even knew that the Romanovs existed.

[jehan]

Haven't you ever wondered if Nicholas II  actually ate a piece of the cross upon which Jesus Christ died?  

If I remember correctly, he was very young and very hungry and had around his neck a chain with a locket which held in wax a splinter of the cross so as children do when hungry,  he ate,  and this time, as the story tells us,  it was  the wax and  splinter. 

Was the splinter really from the cross or was it a symbolic splinter?

Do we know what the Romanov's believed?

AGRBear

This is very late, but the thread was just bumped.

I'm quite sure that the Romanovs believed that it was a fragment of the true cross.

 However...... if all the fragments and pieces that were claimed to be genuine were put together, I think it was once calculated that the cross must have been large enough to fill a ship!  Most  relics from the time of Christ have  proved not to be genuine (and if you think about it- at the time of Christ nobody would have thought such things worth saving, and they only "reappeared" hundreds or more than a thousand  years later) ,  so I have my doubts that it was genuine.

[RomanovsFan4Ever]

Peter's theme is my favorite out of all of them.

Poor Sonya gets eaten by the wolf in end...I remember that part pretty well.  
I've actually heard music from "Peter & the Wolf" played on several classical stations here in WA.

Since I grew up watching Walt Disney productions, I remember very well this cartoon, and I love it!  ...and I love the music of Sergei Prokofiev too.

[RomanovsFan4Ever]

I have heard the fable of "Snegurocka - the snow girl"...it's very beautiful but sad too, my favorite is the fable of the "Prince Ivan, the firebird and the gray wolf".

[Ally Kumari]

I´m very pleased there is a thread like this and I must have been blind not to see it before!

I love dearly all the stories already mentioned, I would just like to add, they are not "Russian" - rather "Slavic", because the essence and the main plots lives also in fairytales of other countries. These fairytales are not at all like Western ones- they are in fact very cruel. While in Germany Cinderella was dancing on the ball, in the East the great Tsarina Marya Morevna was slaying thousands of men.

I have a beautiful book of old Slavic and Russian fairytales at home, I´ll post about some of them when I get home.