Abkhaz fairy tale.
It was a long time ago, a long time ago! And only small fragments of those events, passed from mouth to mouth, have finally reached our days, thanks to which I wrote this amazing tale.

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There is a cave near Mount New Athos in Abkhazia, where not far from it, in a crevice under a rock, a poisonous snake made its nest. She knew a lot about people, and she herself wanted to become one of them, and love and suffer like them. She crawled out from under the stone and asked God to turn her into a girl. The creator thought. “Well, it’s a good experiment,” he decided and agreed. “Listen, snake,” God said, “I will fulfill your request and turn you into a girl, but you will become a real person only when a young man loves you and takes you as his wife.” And that's not all: only then will you marry him when he brings you the heart of his mother, and you eat this heart, frying it at the fire in front of the young man. girl. "Witch" - we would say now. But the girl was so good that not a single person could recognize a snake in her at that moment, and therefore she walked among people like an ordinary mountain woman. Many years have flown by since then. Every day at sunrise, the witch left her cave, her snake haven, and walked through the villages, looking for a groom. none of her suitors dared to do so. No young man could take a heart from his mother and take it to a cruel bride. After the refusal, they immediately forgot everything, and only in a dream she came to them, and fooled their souls until she drove her former chosen ones crazy.
The witch brought a lot of grief to people, but she could not achieve her cherished goal - to become a man. However, after each failure, her attempts became more and more sophisticated, she went more and more persistently towards her cherished dream, and never lost hope of achieving her goal.
In the village, on the slope of the mountain in a small house, a young man was growing up. He was raised by one mother. There was no father. He died defending his Abkhaz land from envious neighbors. It was difficult for a widow without a breadwinner. She gave all her strength to raise a real man; Did you give all the maternal affection and warmth to your son? just to raise him kind and gentle. She served the best food to the future horseman, despite the fact that she herself was starving.
Joy filled the snake's heart. From a distance, she watched her future chosen one: she was in no hurry, she waited for her betrothed to mature, and she really hoped for good luck. Soon she began to come to him in his dreams: she teased with beauty, beckoned to her and immediately ran away. Struck by the beauty of the girl, the young man could no longer think of anyone else, except for that stranger in his sweet dreams. He began to look more and more closely into the faces of the mountain women living in the nearby villages, and became more and more disappointed, not finding in them the exciting features of the beauty from his dreams. More and more often he ran away to the mountains, and in solitude carved the image of his beloved girl on the rock. The witch admired her image with pleasure and, one day, in all her glory, she appeared to the young man. "Who are you?" he exclaimed happily. “I am your dream,” the girl answered with a gentle smile. “You called me. I heard and came! The young man held out his hands to her. “I love you,” he said, “don't go. I can't live without you." The witch pulled away, decided that it was not time to reveal her intentions yet, and said: “I will not leave, my love, wait for me tomorrow.” She passionately kissed him with cold lips, and immediately disappeared, sliding over the rock like a sunbeam.
The night of waiting dragged on for a year. The sun, as if anticipating trouble, did not want to rise. But then, finally, its first rays scattered over the tops of the mountains. The rock suddenly parted, forming a passage into the cave. "Let's go" - a girl who appeared from somewhere took the young man by the hand, and led him along underground halls. All around, stalagmites and stalactites burned with all the colors of the rainbow. Placers of precious stones lay everywhere. Fancy pictures of shadows came to life on the walls. Played nice quiet music. “And this is my house,” the girl waved her hand. A bright light flashed and illuminated the petrified waterfall that cascaded into the lake. Goldfish shone in the crystal water of the lake. But the miracle did not keep the young man in power for long. He turned to the girl, took her hands and said - “you are not a dream, you are reality” - “No, I am not a dream, I am awake” - the beauty replied. “You are mine forever” - “I am yours forever” - she played along, smiling at her fiancé. They kissed. The cold of indifferent lips did not stop the young man. He asked the girl to marry him. The beauty suddenly became sad, her shoulders slumped. “We can never be together,” she said doomedly, and sighed so that the stone vault of the cave sighed with her. "Why?" the young man wondered. “God punished me for the sins of my ancestors,” she lied, “and set the condition that only then will I get married when the groom brings me the heart of his mother.” - "No!" - shouted the young man. - “I knew your answer and do not judge for it. - said the girl. -Go with God, my love. We do have three days. Decide, my fiancé, I am waiting for you here until the last hour. She kissed him again and immediately disappeared.
The young man came to his senses at home. Ill. He felt that he would never fulfill the cruel demand of his beloved, he would never rip out his mother's heart and take it as a gift to his bride. "What happened, son? - worried mother. - Do not eat, do not drink, emaciated to the bones. Whether someone offended, or is sick with something, tell me, my affectionate one. The young man was strong for a long time, but at the end of the third day he could not stand it, and told about unhappy love and about the condition of his bride. “Be happy, my dear,” said the mother, opened her chest, pulled out her heart and collapsed dead to the ground. The young man was delighted, grabbed the beating lump and, not seeing the road, rushed to run to the rock: stones, bushes, trees flashed before his eyes. His feet suddenly hit an obstacle, and the young man rolled somersault along the path. He barely held the precious burden in his hands. “You didn’t hurt yourself, son,” the heart asked in the voice of a mother. "It seemed!" - the young man decided, jumped to his feet and ran even faster to the treasured rock. The entrance was open. As before, stalagmites and stalactites burned with a bright cold fire in the cave, precious stones shone everywhere. A huge fire burned in the center. The young man quickly handed the beating heart to the bride. With trembling hands, she took it and threw it on the coals. After a while, she pulled out a charred lump from the fire and hastily ate it like an ordinary piece of meat. Immediately, the roof of the cave began to collapse. Numerous lights quickly went out. Water flowed from the cracks, and darkness fell. A whole year has flown by since then. In the memory of the young man there was not a trace of the events of the past time, only an inexplicable feeling of guilt stirred his soul for his mother. A year ago, just before the wedding, she left for brushwood and did not return. The young man grieved, grieved and celebrated the wedding without her.
The wife - a beauty with pleasure bustles at the hearth. There is order in the house, and the feeling of anxiety does not leave the young owner: he does not walk on his own, everything falls out of his hands; and he constantly hears a voice inside himself, and whose voice it is, no matter how hard he tries, he cannot remember. Stronger and stronger began to pull his mountains. It seems there is no need to go there: the brushwood is stocked up, and there is no need to hunt, but the heart calls there and that's it. And once he threw a gun on his shoulder and went aimlessly. His feet themselves led him to the very rock, on which the image of a girl was clearly visible. The breeze carried some snippets of words. Suddenly, he clearly heard his mother's native voice: "Aren't you hurt, son?" Like a flash of lightning, his mind lit up. "Mother!" he shouted, and then he remembered everything. Great grief crushed the unfortunate young man. Unable to withstand this torture, he threw himself off the cliff. His wife, sensing something was wrong, started up, and as soon as her husband took his last breath, she herself fell to the ground, wriggling in convulsions, began to decrease, again turning into a rattlesnake, and, hissing, crawled away under a stone. Often since then, she crawls out of her hiding place, and takes revenge on people, trying to mortally bite one of them. And sometimes she succeeds. On the site where the young man died, a church was built. And weddings come here so that young people can pray and ask God for a happy family life.

For ten years behind bars, life-sentenced Sergei Dyukarev wrote five books, the largest of them is the fairy tale trilogy "The Thieves of the Sun", which contains more than a thousand pages. This is a kind of prison escape into a bright and clean fictional world, where goodness defeats dark forces. The former killer wrote it for his daughter.

Dyukarev writes little about the life of jailers. Mostly - these are short stories about what he himself experienced, what he heard from cellmates. He has been in prison for 17 years. Of these, the last ten write almost every day. Most of the time I spent on a fairy tale for my daughter. I was so carried away that a fairy tale trilogy came out. The first is called "The Thieves of the Sun", the second - "Silver Swords" and the third "Saga of the Parallel World". The book contains over a thousand pages. No one has yet written a larger fairy tale in the world. In addition, from time to time prison stories appear from under the pen. What prompted a man convicted of murder to take up a pen?

Killed not only by shots in the back of the head

I started with prison stories, - says the convict. - It's not surprising. I have lived this life for almost 20 years. Why not write about her? Most of the legends in prisons can be heard about how suicide bombers were sent to the next world. The death penalty was abolished a long time ago, and here they still tell each other stories about how such sentences were carried out. I was convicted at a time when there was already a moratorium on the death penalty. But I found those waiting to be shot. They didn't even know who would be taken out of the cell for the last time. In the order in which they went to jail, in that order they were led to the execution. What they did with them, no one knows for sure - this is a big secret. Nevertheless, there is a lot of talk about the last minutes of suicide bombers.

The life prisoner spoke about the terrible ways in which the convicts were executed.

I personally heard that some were killed with a blow to the head with a hammer, others were put in an electric chair, and the third was shot in the back of the head, - says Sergei, sentenced for life. - When a person is taken to be shot, they don’t tell him about it, but he feels it with every cell. At such moments, the convict has no other choice - it is impossible to turn either to the left or to the right, the road is only forward. And ahead - a hole ...

Dreamed of becoming an archaeologist

Very soon he realized that writing on this topic was just pouring salt on the wound. Therefore, he began to think more about a bright, clean world, one in which he would like his daughter to live, where good reigns, where brave people defeat evil.

In my fairy tale, in addition to a fictional plot, there are a lot of instructive things, - says Dyukarev. - Many facts about the Universe, planets, space phenomena. Another part of the documentary facts concerns archeology. I am talking about the finds discovered during the Mongol-Tatar invasion. As a child, I dreamed of becoming an archaeologist, I read hundreds of books from my grandfather's and parent's libraries. I was also interested in books about the universe. All this is now useful. When I re-read what I have written, I myself am carried away by the plot.

My heroes save the world from evilwhich he caused to people

Writing has become an internal need, says the convict. - I can't live without it. Sometimes I wake up at four in the morning and start working. These are the best moments when the three of us are left - me, my thoughts and paper. Finally doing what I really like. Thus, at least in my thoughts, I hide from the strict prison everyday life.

Perhaps one day my daughter will read the book. I would really like her to appreciate what I have done. When he reads, first of all he will understand what kind of world I have been dreaming about all this time.

The convict sends the handwritten text to the parents. They print on the computer and return to their son. He proofreads, corrects some places, polishes them in a new way and sends them back to his relatives. Once on the way, the manuscript was lost. Forty pages are missing. It has not been possible to restore them verbatim. After that incident, the text began to duplicate. Write everything in duplicate. He dreams of showing his trilogy to one of the professional writers. Printing a book is not easy, because it is large in volume, you need a lot of money. He says that another thing is important - the book has already been written. He compares work on it with the same duty that is given to a person in freedom: to plant a garden, build a house, raise a son. He could have it too, but...

Trained as a submariner

Dyukarev's childhood and youth are associated with the hero city of Sevastopol, where he was born and raised, where his parents, where his grandfather and grandmother lived. In this city, the profession of a naval officer was prestigious. Grandfather served in the Navy, and then worked as the head of a department at a military school. He was authoritative in everything. He fought at the front, defended the road of life leading to Lake Ladoga in besieged Leningrad. Returned with awards. Almost all male relatives also served in the Navy. His father was also a former military man, after the service he began to work as a teacher at the institute, his mother was an engineer at a factory.

Since childhood, I wanted to be an archaeologist, my grandfather had a large library, I read a lot of historical books, - says Sergey Dyukarev. - But I was stubbornly urged to become a naval officer. No one had the right to contradict the grandfather. It was necessary to maintain the maritime honor of the family. Although the grandfather admitted more than once that since childhood he dreamed of becoming a writer. Apparently, I got the desire to write from him. After school, he went to a submarine school. But two years later the school was transferred to St. Petersburg. I refused to move. They took him to the army. He served two more years in the Navy. He returned home after the service and entered the institute at the correspondence department.

Roaring nineties and a lot of vodka

He says that the 90s broke him personally. And not only him. According to him, it was not easy to find oneself in that chaos. People who used to live roughly the same way suddenly stratified. Some became fabulously wealthy, while others were on the sidelines of life.

I wanted to have a VCR, a car, I wanted to be like those who already had all this, - says Dyukarev. - Gathered with friends, opened a cafe on the waterfront. Money appeared. Vodka flowed like a river every evening. We went out of town, arranged races, even flew in the opposite lane. We lived like the last day, as they say, without brakes. Although the brakes should be primarily in the head. But who thought about it then! Many of us have become infected with the virus of self-destruction, self-destruction. In our company, even the motto was: “I would live to be 25”, “I would live to be 30”. Personally, rudeness killed me the most. Still, he was brought up in an intelligent family, he knew what tact, attentive attitude to people are. And here rudeness flourished at every turn. They responded with rudeness to rudeness. So they started fights. Constantly someone was settling scores with someone. There were shots. It's scary to remember! Of course, it couldn't end well. And so it happened. At 26, I ended up behind bars. If this had not happened, it is not known whether he would have survived. There was uncertainty then, and so it is now.

No hope for salvation

Here, behind bars, I think about simple things in life, - says the prisoner. - For example, I want to walk barefoot on the grass, plant a tree or swim in the sea, I grew up on the sea. At will, he did not understand this. Now I understand, but it's impossible to do it. And no one knows if it will ever be possible. People like me don't know what's next. If other prisoners who have been given a term have the hope of being released even earlier, this is possible if the regime is observed, then we do not know anything about our tomorrow. This uncertainty is stretched to infinity. You look beyond the horizon - and do not know what is there. You can't change anything. Even during the commission of a crime, the victim has at least some hope of salvation: the gun may misfire and not fire, the knife will break, or some other chance of salvation may appear. In our situation, there is no hope.

The convict says that he believed in God and corrected himself.

Probably, this is not entirely fair, but maybe the convict has corrected himself? He believed in the Almighty, wants to continue to live according to his laws, and a person is deprived of such an opportunity. If there is no such rating scale - corrected or not, then let's photograph the aura, and everything will become clear. Uncertainty and uncertainty kills. It is not for nothing that they sometimes say: it would be better to be shot!

Afraid of meeting her daughter

The convict confessed that he had terrible dreams. Not often, but they do. Most of all, his desire is to see his daughter. At the same time, he says that he is not ready to meet her yet.

I want to see how she is, to know who she grew up with, what interests, how she lives, - says Sergey, a life-sentenced person. - I know I'm in college. But my meeting may turn out to be such that I will ask a child for something. I don't have the right to. You must first give something in order to ask. And I gave very little, in fact - nothing. She was four years old when they took me. Yes, and in such an atmosphere do not want to meet. Prison is no place for a child.

For the same reason, he does not write letters. In order not to ask for anything and not to make excuses, not to explain, because nothing will change anyway: what happened, happened. But from the heart he dedicated the book to the child. As big as his love for her. He wrote each page with the thought of his native blood. He put a piece of his soul and heart into every word.

Jailed for killing a business partner

Convicted Sergei Dyukarev, together with an accomplice, killed a business partner in his own apartment. They did it in the presence of his wife. He was as young as they are. I wanted to live like them.

In 1996, in addition to cafes on the sea coast, we also established a construction business, undertook to build a residential building, - says the convict Dyukarev. - Every business has its pitfalls. During the construction of the house, there were especially many of them. So we came to find out some circumstances. The Almighty stopped us that evening. On the way, the car broke down. It was a sign to think. Instead, out of anger, the sooner they began to look for other transport. The worst thing is that we were not just partners, but knew each other well. For someone to say that the conversation will end in death, I would never believe such a thing.

Passion warmed up alcohol. Next to the owner of the apartment was a woman whom Dyukarev once met. Beautiful, spectacular, but not his. On March 16, 1996, the court sentenced Dyukarev to life imprisonment. His partner was given 15 years.

Look at him, a bespectacled man, you can’t say that he can kill a fly, not like a person. I did not succeed in physiognomy. Judges are people too. In a word, they soldered me, as an organizer, to the fullest, and he is already free, ”says Dyukarev.

Shortly before the business partner was killed, Dyukarev passed the state exams at the institute. The defense of the thesis was scheduled for May.

It's five minutes before New Year's, which means everyone is pouring drinks, watching TV and, of course, waiting for gift time. In these moments, you remember everything that happened in the year: all the failures, moments when you were extremely lucky, what you did good and bad.

It was exactly the same in the family, whose members wore strange last name Musician. They rejoiced and ate delicious food. Their little toy terrier Shusha woke up as if specifically to celebrate the New Year with everyone, and now he was in the way.

The TV channel they were watching showed 23:55 (everyone knows that such clocks are set by atomic clocks and show the most accurate time in the country). Below, under a sign with the time, the screen showed the stars of the theater, pop and cinema, who danced and sang, lit sparklers and clapped firecrackers.

While I'm telling you all this, two minutes have already passed, it's 23:57, but, for some strange reason, the inscription 23:55 was still on the TV box screen. Everyone was so happy that the Musicians did not pay attention to it. But at the last moment, the boy Vanya asked his dad what time it was. Dad, in turn, confidently answered that it was 23:57, that there were 3 minutes left before the New Year. Then Vanya's grandmother automatically looked at the clock on the TV and realized that dad was wrong. Grandmother told him this, and dad replied that 23:55 was 2 minutes ago, confirming this by looking at his watch then. Then a light argument began, and Vanya changed the channel to check what he was showing. It was also 23:55 there. Vanya said that something strange was happening, but everyone got really scared when they realized that their home wall clock was on the same division of the dial.

While everyone was aware of the situation, Vanya disappeared.

He fled to the nearest center, where there were atomic clocks that determined the time in the country. He realized that he was the only one who could save the holiday, because he knew that there were no people on duty in this center on New Year's Eve. He had an acquaintance there. He told him a lot about his work. But Vanya also learned from these conversations that his friend was leaving for Austria for the New Year to ski. Accordingly, he could not be called for help.

Meanwhile, Vanya was running and counting the time. While he was running, there was a terrible thunderstorm, it turned out that it took him 1 minute 34 seconds to get to the center, and another 30 seconds to get to the main clock. But here he had a problem - he knew very little about the translation of atomic clocks. But nevertheless, he found the instructions in the closet and, acting strictly according to it, set the clock. It took another 34 seconds. As a result, he moved the clock to 4 minutes 38 seconds. Hooray! He made it to the main winter holiday! And after 22 seconds, he heard a salute that praised the winner over time and rejoiced that the New Year had come.

He quietly came home and saw the result of his actions - the sign on the TV showed 00:01.

The next morning on TV they said that in new year's eve there was a temporary anomaly, which Vanya just corrected. Vanya went on TV to tell how it was.

Already in the second half of the first day of the New Year, an investigation into this incident began. Investigators found traces of a sticky blue liquid emitted only by the evil sorceress Thunderstorm, who was destined to fall asleep until spring on this New Year's Eve from an unremovable spell, which, as a punishment for coming at the wrong time of the year, was imposed by good Snow. The storm tried to avoid her sleep by stopping time, but Vanya did not allow this, without knowing it.

After that, Vanya was recognized on the streets of the city, and everyone loved him very much, and then, already in his old age, he once said that these were the longest three minutes in his life.

In the old days, distant old times, there lived one sovereign prince. More than anything, he loved to listen to fairy tales. His associates will come to him:

- Anything, prince, to have fun today? There are a lot of all kinds of animals in the forest: both boars, and deer, and foxes ...

No, I don't want to go hunting. It’s better to tell me fairy tales, but more authentic.

It used to be that the prince would start repairing the court. Offended by the guilty one will complain to him:

- He deceived me, completely ruined ... And the guilty one answered:

- Prince, I know a new fairy tale.

— Long?

- Long, long and terrible, terrible.

- Well, tell me!

Here is your court and justice!

The prince will hold advice, and there he will only weave fables.

The prince's servants ran around all the villages in that region, asking everyone if anyone knew a new fairy tale more interesting. Posted on the road outposts:

- Hey, traveler, stop! Stop, they tell you! The traveler is stunned with fear. What's the trouble

turned up!

Stop, tell the truth! Have you been on the seabed visiting the sea king?

— No, no, no. It didn't happen.

- Did you fly on a crane?

No, no, I didn't fly. I swear I didn't fly!

“Well, you’ll fly with us, if right now, right there, on this very spot, you don’t spin weirder stories.

But no one could please the prince.

- Fairy tales in our times have gone short, scanty ... As soon as you start listening early in the morning, the fairy tale ends by evening. No, not those fairy tales now went, not those ...

And the prince ordered to announce everywhere: “Who will come up with such a long tale that the prince will say: “Enough!” He will receive whatever he desires as a reward.

Well, here from all over Japan, from near and far islands, the most skillful storytellers reached out to the prince's castle. There were those among them who talked non-stop all day long, and all night to boot. But not once did the prince say: “Enough!” Just take a breath:

- Well, a fairy tale! Short, shorter than sparrow's nose. If I had a crane nose, I would have rewarded even that!

But then one day a gray-haired, hunched-over old woman came to the castle.

— I dare say, I am the first in Japan to tell long tales. Many have visited you, but none of them is suitable for my disciples.

The servants rejoiced and brought her to the prince.

“Begin,” the prince ordered. “But look at me, it will be bad for you if you boasted in vain. Tired of me short stories.

“It was a long time ago,” the old woman began. “A hundred large ships are sailing on the sea, holding their way to our island. Ships are loaded to the very edges with precious goods: not silk, not coral, but frogs.

How do you say frogs? - the prince was surprised. - It's interesting, I have never heard such a thing. It can be seen that you really are a master of fairy tales.

“Whether else you will hear, prince. Frogs float on the ship. Unfortunately, as soon as our shore appeared in the distance, like all a hundred ships - bang! - hit the rocks all at once. And the waves all around are boiling and raging.

The frogs began to hold advice here.

“Come on, sisters,” says one frog, “let's swim to the shore before our ships are smashed into small chips. I am the oldest, and I will show an example.

She jumped to the side of the ship.

And jump into the water - slap!

Here the second frog galloped to the side of the ship.

“Kwa-kva-kva, kva-kva-kva, kva-kva-kva. Where one frog, there another. And jump into the water - slap!

Following the third frog galloped to the side of the ship.

“Kwa-kva-kva, kva-kva-kva, kva-kva-kva. Where there are two frogs, there is a third. And jump into the water - slap!

Following the fourth frog galloped to the side of the ship ...

The old woman talked all day, and did not count all the frogs even on one ship. And when all the frogs jumped from the first ship, the old woman began to count the frogs on the other:

- Here the first frog jumped to the side of the ship:

“Kwa-kva-kva, kva-kva-kva, kva-kva-kva. Where the head goes, there the feet go.

And jump into the water - slap!

... The old woman did not stop talking for seven days. On the eighth day, the prince could not bear it:

- Enough, enough! My strength is no more.

“As you command, prince. But it's a pity. I just started on the seventh ship. There are still many frogs left. But there is nothing to do. Perhaps the promised reward to me, I'll go home.

- That brazen old woman! She set up the same thing, like an autumn rain, she also asks for a reward.

“But you said, “Enough!” And the word of the prince, as I have always heard, is stronger than a thousand-year-old pine.

The prince sees, you can’t dissuade the old woman. He ordered to give her a rich reward and drive her out the door.

For a long time, the prince heard in his ears: “Kwa-kva-kva, kva-kva-kva ... And jump into the water - a slap!”

Since then, the prince fell out of love with long tales.

Welcome to the site of fairy tales of the peoples of the world a thousand and one nights - a site, what is a fairy tale?

The even golden light of the moon flooded the tall house, standing on stilts, like on stilts, illuminated the children and adults sitting on a high platform - an open porch - around old Thuong, the storyteller grandfather. In the distance, through the tropical night, the silhouettes of low, hunched like turtles, Vietnamese mountains were more likely to be guessed than seen. Speech flowed measuredly and singsongly - grandfather told fairy tales.

In them, as in the fairy tales of all the peoples of the world, lived a daring dream of a person about happiness, about wonderful objects and miracles: a flying carpet and thousand-mile shoes, about palaces that arise by magic, and about unusual, huge rice grains.

A fairy tale is an amazing creation of the human genius, it elevates a person, makes him happy, gives him faith in his strength, in the future, captivates with the attainability of what seems to be completely impossible...
The next morning I said goodbye to grandfather Thuong, and for a long time I heard the melodious and majestic sounds of the gong coming from his house, where people had gathered on the occasion of the departure of the Soviet-Vietnamese expedition of folklorists.

Of course, fairy tales were listened to and listened to both in Russian huts and in African huts covered with palm leaves. In a word, everywhere. But now, in order to get acquainted with the fairy tales of almost any people of the world, it is not necessary to listen to the storyteller, it is enough to reach out to the shelf with books: now these fairy tales have been translated into many languages, they have become a consciously important phenomenon of world culture, without which it would be far from complete, and the childhood of each of us is deprived of something important.

But this was far from always the case, and Pushkin in 1824, in his letter from exile - the village of Mikhailovsky - complained and admired: “In the evening I listen to fairy tales - and thereby reward the shortcomings of my accursed upbringing. What a delight these stories are! Each is a poem!

It goes without saying that fairy tales, having been recorded in a book that has been published in thousands of copies, will be preserved for future generations. They will also be read by those who will never see a storyteller or storyteller in their lives. But, without being witnesses of the masterful performance of storytellers like Grandfather Thuong, we will lose a lot. After all, the grandfather both chanted and imitated the hubbub of birds, the roar of mountain streams, the growl of tigers and the trumpet sounds of elephants. He imitated the noise of the jungle, the cry of the monkeys, the ringing of the stream. In a word, it was a kind of theater of one actor, especially since the storyteller supplemented the expressiveness of his performance with a gesture. About the important role played in people's lives oral creativity, says the fact that the pantheons of local cults of different peoples included gods or spirits - the patrons of singers, storytellers and storytellers.

Folklore, therefore, unlike literature, art is not only verbal. It includes gesture, elements of theatrical play, melody, singing. This art is multi-component, synthetic. In addition, this is a collective art, because a folklore work is created among the people, transmitted and polished over a long period of time. And the storyteller is not the author, but the performer of the tale, although he, of course, to the best of his talent, introduces something new into the tale, enriches it. Therefore, the fairy tale has many options, but no, like literary work, the only canonical text established by the will of the author, which alone must be presented to the reader.

It is very important to note that the storyteller is based on the tradition of storytelling and follows it: if he tries to break the tradition, move away from it, the listener will immediately catch the artificiality, falsehood.
What is a fairy tale? How does it differ from myth, legend, tradition?

Legends are usually considered myths, in which the ideas of people of primitive society and antiquity are conveyed about the origin of the world and the entire universe, all life on earth, about various natural phenomena, about deities, spirits and deified heroes. Myths give an explanation - but a fantastic explanation - to the origin of the elements of the universe, the Sun, Moon and stars, they tell how peoples appeared on earth.
Such is the myth of the African Bushmen “How the Girl Made the Stars” about the amazing times of the “first creation” and the amazing girl - apparently the spirit that participated in the creation of the Universe. “One day she took a handful of ashes from a fire and threw it into the sky. Ash scattered there, and a star road ran across the sky. And further from the questions of the universe, the fairy tale turns to the everyday situation: “Since then, this bright star road illuminates the earth with a soft light at night so that people do not return home in complete darkness and find their home.”
I must say that in this collection, simplifying somewhat and deviating from scientific rigor, we do not particularly single out myths.
Very close to the myths, many of folklore works the peoples of Africa, Australia and Oceania, the indigenous population of America, presented in this book. Not just mythology, its images, motives, but its very spirit permeates the folklore of these peoples, testifies to its archaism, that it is at a relatively early stage of development, although its cognitive and artistic value is undeniable. In addition, the myths of all these peoples are a living phenomenon: as they are told, you can still hear them today.

The time of action of myths is usually attributed to the distant, distant times, when, as people thought, the world, the universe had not yet formed. Therefore, we meet such beginnings: “When the world was young, there was no night, and the Maue Indians never slept ...” Or from the tale of the aborigines (indigenous people) of Australia: “When the world was very young, people did not have fire. ..”

Since myths are, first of all, fantastic stories about where the heavenly bodies, natural phenomena, the earth itself, man, fire, various cultural goods came from: tools, cultivated plants, skills, as well as animals, insects, fish, etc. - then the origin of all this in myth is explained by some case, some event from the distant times of the mythical "first creation".
So, in the Bushmen's tale it is said that before the sun was a man, an old man who liked to lie down, and then it became light only around his house, and the whole world was plunged into darkness. Therefore, one woman decided to send her children to the man-sun, so that they would lift him up and throw him into the sky. Or, for example, this is how the myth of the African Soto people explains the fact that people of different races and peoples have different skin colors.

It turns out that once people lived as one family in the cave of the first person named Love. But one day they quarreled, started a fight and killed Love's beloved son, then Love drove them out of his cave. People went out and wandered under the hot sun. It seared them so that some became dark, others completely black. By the way, the motif of the origin of a person from the earth, a hole or a cave is one of the most ancient, as well as the origin from a termite mound - a nest of termite ants. “The very first people came out of the termite mound,” say the Africans of the Akamba people, “they were a man and his wife, and also a husband and wife.”

However, in African folklore, myths about the creation of the Universe, heavenly bodies, and the Earth occupy a relatively modest place. There are many more myths directed at man himself, such as the one just told, about the origin of cultural goods, skills, etc.

The most archaic are the myths and folklore of the natives of Australia, who until recently lived in a primitive communal system and still cling tenaciously to their institutions, customs and habits, that is, to their culture, which organically includes, first of all, myths.

These are myths that tell about the flood and the earthquake (“The Great Shaking and Big Water”), about the Sun, about how the Moon appeared in the sky, where animals, birds and fish came from, about where the Australians got the boomerang - a brilliant invention of primitive people, a skillfully curved stick that returns to the person who threw it. Remarkable is the Australian Aboriginal idea of ​​the so-called "dream time" - this mythical time when the world was created. It is interesting that, according to the aborigines, it is able to return to people in a dream: that is why it is the “time of dreams”. Such, for Australians, is the influence and power of the myth.
Among the African peoples, attention is drawn to mythical characters who represent the personification - deification - of celestial or atmospheric phenomena. Africans talk about the powerful god Mawu. Once Mawu lived among people and the sky was so close that he could touch it with his hand. But once a woman splashed hot porridge directly into the sky and hit Mav in the face. Since then Mawu has gone high and dragged the sky with him. A similar myth exists among a number of Asian peoples.

But we note that, judging by other myths and fairy tales, Mavu is also the first ancestor of the gods. And the primordial ancestor of people among a number of African peoples is the deity of rain and thunderstorms Leza, who was represented as a heavenly creature: his voice was thunder, and his eyes were stars. He also plays the role of a cultural hero who sends seeds of cultivated plants to people.

But in the folklore of different peoples, in tandem with a serious and positive cultural hero, a character is not very serious, sometimes roguish, curious or absent-minded, sometimes even thieving, who, as it were, undermines the efforts of a positive cultural hero. We see something similar in the African kaonde tale "Three calabashes".

Leza sent three tightly closed calabashes (hollow dried gourds that served as vessels) with the Miyimbu bird to the first people on earth with an order not to open them in any case. But on the way, the Miyimbu bird is overcome by curiosity, it violates the ban, opens calabash, finds seeds in two, and illness and death, predatory animals and dangerous poisonous snakes rained down from the third.

Characters who, like the bird Miyimbu, out of mischief or curiosity, spoil the case of a serious cultural hero, can be animals or appear in human form.

Etiological (talking about the origin of something) endings of fairy tales about animals are directly connected with mythology. For example, the tale of the Polynesians of the Hawaiian Islands “Theft of fire”, which tells that the chicken did not immediately reveal to the demigod named Maui the secret of making fire by friction, ends like this: “Maui was still angry with the bird: why did she chase him ... and he burned the scallop of a chicken with fire. Since then, the scallops of the chickens have turned red.

However, this whole tale is entirely connected with the mythological beginning - it speaks of the origin of the skill of making fire by friction with a wooden stick.

Maui is by no means episodic, but rather one of the central characters in Polynesian folklore: he is a cultural hero (that is, one who produces fire, cultural goods and various skills for people, like Prometheus) and a participant in the mythical "original creation". The myths and tales of Polynesia cycle around the cultural hero, a feature characteristic of archaic folklore.

It is Maui who fishes islands out of the ocean with a fishing rod, raises the vault of heaven, extracts cereals, etc. At the same time, as we already know, he decorates the chicken with a blood-red comb. Apparently, this seemingly unexpected connection between a hen and fire goes back to the concept of a rooster as a symbol of the sun. After all, who, if not him, heralds with his “crowing” the imminent dawn and the appearance of the daylight, which in Polynesia rises from the depths of the ocean?
And in the African fairy tale “Why the monkey lives in the trees”, the well-known motif of the enmity of different animals is used (here we are talking about a forest cat and a monkey), in order to conclude with an “explanation”: “Since then, the monkey has been living in trees and does not like to walk on the ground. This is because she is very afraid of the forest cat.” Of course, the myth here is already giving way to poetic fiction.

Unlike myths, legends and traditions are turned to history - the foundation of states, cities, fate historical persons, battles, etc. A fairy tale is usually called an oral story of a magical, adventure or everyday nature with a setting for fiction.

A fairy tale is a story about the obviously impossible. The last feature is especially important - in a fairy tale there is always a fantastic, improbable: animals talk there and often help the hero; objects that seem ordinary at first glance, like Aladdin's old lamp, turn out to be magical, etc. No wonder the well-known Russian proverb says that "The fairy tale is a lie, but there is a hint in it, a lesson for good fellows." There is no fairy tale without fantasy, and often it is also instructive, and “good fellows” can really learn a life lesson from it for themselves - a lesson in morality, kindness, honesty, intelligence and sometimes cunning, without which, it happens, there is no way to get out of troubles. Features of great similarity have long been noticed in the tales of peoples living in different parts of Asia, Europe, and Africa. Sometimes these are simply recent borrowings. Thus, some of La Fontaine's fables in Madagascar and Vietnam were turned into fairy tales and began to be transmitted orally, after they were translated into Malagasy and Vietnamese. The French folklorist G. Ferrand reported with surprise that in Madagascar at the end of the last century he wrote down the fairy tale “The Frogs Who Wanted to Have a Ruler” from an illiterate old man who could not read Lafontaine even in translation, although his fairy tale, its characters, plot moves and the motifs were strikingly reminiscent of Lafontaine's fable "The Frogs Begging for a King". Of course, some details have been changed to accommodate the understanding of the people of Madagascar. The poetic fable of La Fontaine was re-arranged by the Malagasy storyteller in prose. But this case is relatively clear and simple.

But very popular fairy tales, reminiscent of "Cinderella" from the famous collection of French fairy tales by Charles Perrault (1628-1703), there are at least three hundred and fifty around the world, and many of them feature a lost shoe. It also exists in fairy tales of this type, which the reader will find in this collection - "The Golden Shoe" (Vietnam) and "Khonchhi and Phatchkhi" (Korea). True, the heroine of a Korean fairy tale, of course, is not the owner of a golden shoe, but a kotsin, a cloth shoe embroidered with colored patterns that is common in Korea. Some peoples of Southeast Asia who do not use shoes may not have shoes in the fairy tale, just as they do not exist in the English version - the fairy tale "Reed Hat", where the ring appears. But in general, the shoe in the fairy tale did not appear by chance: the fairy tale ends with marriage, and at the wedding ceremony, a number of nations always had a shoe (hence, probably, the expression “henpecked husband”). By the way, the ring among European peoples is an indispensable attribute at a wedding.

It is important for us to note that with all the undeniable similarities in fairy tales like "Cinderella" - both French and Korean - the plots do not completely coincide, there are differences in content, depiction of images, which is associated with the peculiarities of social and family relations, life, folklore traditions of each people .

In the collection we present the Indian fairy tale "Golden Fish", recorded in a remote corner of Central India. Anyone who has read or heard Pushkin's wonderful "Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish" will immediately catch something well known. And a weak-willed, albeit kind, old man (“henpecked husband”), and a grumpy, greedy for honors and wealth old woman, and a golden fish (and not Pushkin’s gold fish), which brings blessings and high titles - all this is surprisingly familiar to us from the fairy tale of the great Russian poet. Moreover, scientists argue that the tale of the goldfish exists almost everywhere in Europe, in Latin America and Canada, where it was probably brought by immigrants from Europe, it is also known in Indonesia and Africa.

Those who read German fairy tales Brothers Grimm, are well remembered by the three miracle craftsmen who achieved incredible success in their craft. One of them, a hairdresser, shaved a hare that was running at full speed, the other ... However, we will not repeat this famous story, but let's just say that it is very popular in the folklore of the peoples of Europe and Asia. Its earliest record is found in the collection of ancient Indian narratives "Twenty-five stories of Vetala". Russian folklorist of the last century V. F. Miller (1848-1913), who wrote down a fairy tale with a similar plot among the Chechens, noted that it seemed to him “as if a tattered sheet from an old book, brought into the deaf gorges of the Caucasus Range.”

V. F. Miller did not attach importance to the differences in the content of these tales.
Meanwhile, if we take the Vietnamese fairy tale “Three Craftsmen”, we will see that it differs from the ancient Indian one not only in national features: in it, for example, we find the motif of choosing a son-in-law, common in Vietnamese folklore (the father of the bride selects the groom for the daughter). In an ancient Indian tale, it is said about the desire of the bride to choose, in accordance with class ideas, a "valiant husband." But the Vietnamese tale asserts a different ideal, namely the popular ideal of the skilled worker. The father of the beauty argues as follows: “It does not suit my daughter to be the wife of a bureaucratic ruler or a rich man. She will marry someone who will be an unsurpassed master in his craft.

Three heroes appear in an ancient Indian tale: an archer (warrior), a sorcerer (soothsayer) and a man who made a chariot that “rides in the intended direction through the air”; in Vietnamese, it is a marksman (hunter), a diver (fisherman; fishing is the original occupation of the Vietnamese) and a doctor.

How to explain the observed similarities and differences? Scientists have been thinking about this question for a long time and even in the last century put forward several theories.

First, the so-called mythological school appeared, at the origins of which were the famous collectors of German folklore, the Grimm brothers (Jakob, 1785-1863, and Wilhelm, 1786-1859); in Russia, this theory was developed by A. N. Afanasiev (1826-1871), a well-known collector of Russian fairy tales, and F. I. Buslaev (1818-1897). In those days, scientists made a startling discovery: they established the relationship of most European languages ​​and the languages ​​of India and Iran. They called this community the Indo-European language family. Therefore, linguists then set themselves the task of restoring the prehistoric "proto-language", and folklorists sought to reconstruct the "proto-myth", the common source of the mythology of all Indo-European peoples. This "pramith", as scientists believed, would also help explain the similarities of fairy tales.

The mythological school did a lot in science to collect comparative material, but many of its starting points turned out to be controversial, and the ideas were false. The reduction of all the wealth of folklore to myth, the most ancient religious beliefs, inattention to the life of the modern peasantry, among whom folklore developed and existed - all this undermined the foundations of the mythological school.

Another theory, the theory of borrowing, was largely based on the study of the distribution of ancient Indian fairy tale collections, especially the Panchatantra (III-IV centuries), which came in the Middle Ages through Western Asia to Europe and Rus'. The most prominent proponents of the borrowing theory were the German Indologist T. Benfey (1809-1881) in the West, and in Russia A. N. Pypin (1833-1904) and V. F. Miller. Acquaintance with the wealth of Indian fairy tales led scholars to think of India as the birthplace of fairy tales, from where fairy tales traveled all over the world. This theory saw the only reason for the similarity of plots and motifs of fairy tales of different peoples in borrowing. This was her one-sidedness, since the facts showed that coincidences and similarities are observed in the tales of such peoples who, in all likelihood, had no contacts with each other.
And finally, in the second half of the last century, some scientists began to explain similar phenomena in the folklore of different peoples by the similarity of living conditions and the psychology of people. This theory grew out of the study of the spiritual and material culture, social relations of backward peoples who were at the early stages of development. This theory is called ethnographic.

The Soviet science of folklore is a new stage in the development of folklore. Soviet scientists are not only now carrying out a truly gigantic work of collecting and publishing works of folklore of the peoples of Russia and foreign countries. They strive to comprehend all this rich material, armed with a Marxist understanding of the laws of the history of human society and the history of its culture.

The peoples of the world live on one planet, develop according to the general laws of history, no matter how peculiar the paths and destinies of each of them, living conditions, languages. In the similarity of the historical folk life Obviously, one should look for an answer to the question of what are the reasons for the similarity, proximity of the tales of peoples living on different continents, and what are the reasons for the assimilation of borrowed tales.

An important condition for borrowing can be considered a “counter current”, when the folklore that borrows already contains something similar, although more elementary and not so outstanding in terms of artistic merit.
Speaking about the tales of different peoples with similar plots, it is necessary to note three main cases. Firstly, fairy tales are formed in the environment of a certain people, and then they move to other countries, absorb the influence of local folklore traditions (for example, traditional beginnings, motifs, the manner of depicting a fairy tale image, etc.), adapt to local customs, absorb local color. Secondly, there are similar tales that arise independently of each other in different countries due to the common life, psychology, conditions and laws of the socio-historical development of peoples. These tales have similarities, but they are not borrowed, only episodes and details are borrowed. At the same time, it should be borne in mind that, undoubtedly, the outstanding Russian scientist academician A. N. Veselovsky (1838-1906) was right, who believed that the similarity of conditions can only explain the similarity of elementary semantic units of content, but not complex peculiar constructions. that form the plots of fairy tales. And finally, thirdly, fairy tales can also be transmitted through a book, as evidenced by the facts mentioned above, namely what happened to La Fontaine's fables in Madagascar and Vietnam.

The fairy tale is brighter and more revealing than other genres of oral folk poetry, at the same time it demonstrates the national identity of folklore and its unity on a global scale, reveals common features, human and humanity, whose historical development is based on general laws.
A fairy tale is a poetic fiction, and its characters often live and act in some special "fabulous" time, and even in a special "fabulous" space ("far away state"). Although the "fabulous" time is very similar to the one in which the storyteller lives, it is nevertheless special, fabulous. Therefore, a fairy tale often begins with traditional beginnings such as: “In the old, ancient times ...”, “It was a long time ago ...”, etc., which are very important for creating a “fabulous” atmosphere. In order to point out the remoteness of the “fabulous” time, the storyteller resorts to complicated beginnings: “It was in those distant times when the tiger knew how to smoke, and the animals spoke in a human voice.” The beginnings prepare us for the perception of a fairy tale and transfer us to a fairy-tale world.

Fairy tales, like other works of folklore, are passed from mouth to mouth: the current listener, who now listens intently to the narrator, tomorrow will tell, perhaps the same, but in his own interpretation, in his own version. In Mongolia, I happened to hear the legend “The Flame in the Breast”, which was told by the old storyteller Choinkhor in the presence of another, younger storyteller. Soon, the young storyteller, who first became acquainted with the work then, was already telling a legend, and then it was written down from his words by Mongolian scientists.

The plot of the fairy tale, the delineation of the main characters, remains the most stable in these transmissions.
The national features of a fairy tale are determined to a large extent folk traditions people, with a special poetic look inherent in it. In Russian fairy tales, as well as in the fairy tales of a number of European peoples, the dragon (Serpent Gorynych), for example, appears as an evil ugly monster that brings grief, kidnaps people, etc., while among the peoples of the Far East and Vietnam it is a positive character and has majestic appearance, inspiring all respect. The fact is that among the peoples of East Asia, this image, which later became the symbol of the sovereign, the supreme ruler, is based on a deity who knew the rain. Rain has always been the first concern of farmers, agricultural peoples, a boon for their fields, suffering from drought.

The fairy tales reflected the animal and plant world of the country where these fairy tales appeared. We are not surprised to meet such characters as a tiger, a monkey, a crocodile, an elephant and other exotic animals in the fairy tales of the peoples of tropical countries, but in fairy tales northern peoples- animals that live in a temperate or cold climate zone. However, it may happen that in a fairy tale from Mongolia, a country in which lions have never been found, the reader will meet this particular character. In such cases, we are dealing with the result of the contact of cultures: the lion came to the Mongolian fairy tale from India and, probably, through books.

In fairy tales we will find items of national life, clothes, we will find the customs of the people and, most importantly, the features of national psychology, national class-psychological types in a fairy tale version. Tales of Madagascar, for example, do not know heroic images due to the fact that the Malagasy, an island people, almost did not fight in their history and are devoid of militancy. In the fairy tales of different peoples, there are kings and tsars, tribal leaders and viziers (ministers), yangbans (landlords) and khakims (rulers and judges), representatives of the educated class of the Middle Ages and ministers of different religions: priests, Catholic priests, mullahs, sheikhs, Indian brahmins and Buddhist monks. However, we must always remember that these images are fabulous, and the kind, just king from a fairy tale is a fairy-tale idealization, and not a direct reflection of what really existed.

However, even animals - the heroes of fairy tales - remind both their speech and the behavior of the people of the country where these fairy tales exist. It cannot be otherwise, since a fairy tale has always been a reflection of people's life in its dynamics, a kind of mirror of people's consciousness.

It is customary to single out fairy tales about animals, fairy tales and household tales.
Tales about animals arose in ancient times, and at first they were associated with the economic concerns of primitive man - a fisherman and hunter, whose whole life and fate depended on his hunting luck. The characters in these tales are animals, and in the tales themselves traces of primitive ideas have been preserved, in particular totemism, which was based on the belief in family ties man and animals. Primitive man spiritualized everything around, endowed with his abilities and properties, "humanized" animals. And they talk to each other in fairy tales, understand human speech.

They were presented to the primitive consciousness as reincarnated spirits, deities.
For example, in the tale of the Ma people living in Southeast Asia, "The Amorous Peacock" main character- a bird in bright plumage - in fact, there is such a reincarnated deity. True, a man - a hunter turns out to be much smarter than a deity - a peacock, who eventually falls into a trap set for him. Similar tales are found among peoples who live in remote forest corners and whose life is connected with hunting and wildlife.

Many legendary tales have survived, explaining, of course, in a fairy tale way - by quarrels and friendship of animals, various accidents and adventures - why animals do not have certain parts of the body, why, for example, their tail, nose have such a shape, why they are so painted, etc. As an example, one can name the Indonesian fairy tale “Why the bear has a short tail”, the Philippine fairy tale “The heron and the buffalo”, the African “Why the pig has an elongated snout”, etc.

Fairy tales explain the origin of certain habits of animals. Among fishermen and hunters, fairy tales arise about where the methods of catching game animals came from. Of course, the octopus and the rat never actually met. But the Polynesians in the tale "The Octopus and the Rat" talk about the fantastic journey of the rat across the ocean on the head of an octopus, for which the rat repaid him with ingratitude. Since then, says the tale, the fishermen make the octopus bait look like a rat: the octopus immediately rushes at it.

Many fairy tales tell of quarrels and competitions between large and strong animals and small, weak ones. These tales, as a rule, are imbued with a desire for social justice: although the tales speak of animals, however, almost always people are meant, therefore we see that the weak, that is, the socially disadvantaged, with the help of intelligence and dexterity, defeats a stronger and more important beast. . This is what we will find in the Chinese fairy tale “How Animals Started to Count the Years,” in which, of the twelve animals, the little mouse turned out to be the most cunning, contriving to prove that it is the largest even in comparison with an ox or a sheep. Therefore, it is from the year of the mouse that the twelve-year cycle begins in the countries of the Far East: each year of the cycle bears the name of an animal. Soothsayers really liked such a calendar, and they began to predict fate, calculating from tables, for example, what awaits a young man in life if he was born in the year of the dragon, and is going to marry in the year of the monkey.

At a higher stage of development, fairy tales about animals turn into transparent allegory, and when, for example, a tiger appears in a fairy tale among Koreans or Chinese, no one will doubt that he is an important master. In the minds of many peoples of the Far East and Southeast Asia, the tiger not only symbolized strength and power. The tiger was worshiped as a deity. Images of tigers guarded the doors at the entrance to the temples. Military leaders decorated their clothes with images of a tiger, embroidered tigers flaunted on battle banners.
But the ferocious tiger in the tales of these peoples is assigned an extremely stable role of a fool who is deceived by a weak animal, usually a hare, a rabbit - a character distinguished by special ingenuity, dexterity, and quick wit. The same qualities are characteristic of the rabbit in the tales of the North American Indians and the brother Rabbit of the African Americans of the USA.

Among the Indonesians, a pygmy fallow deer, the kanchil, was considered a cunning animal, among the peoples of Tropical Africa, a small rodent, such as a jerboa or mongoose. In the tales of the peoples of Europe, the bloodthirsty wolf usually remains the fool. And in Indonesia, a crocodile is defined by folk fantasy for this role.
The satirical beginning is very typical for such fairy tales: after all, the listeners, having fun laughing at the unlucky tiger, who, by the grace of a hare, fell into a deep hole, over a fooled wolf or crocodile, understood that in the fairy tale real oppressors and oppressors are ridiculed - "the powers that be". The images of certain animals thus acquire the character of estate types of a class society. Some animals constantly appear as positive, others as negative.

Here one more feature should be noted: although in many fairy tales about animals, as we said, people are meant, they nevertheless tell about animals, with their habits, properties, and characteristics. Hence the parody - the funny sound of these extraordinary stories, their humor.

There are joke tales in which a person, as, for example, in the Hungarian fairy tale "The Strongest Beast", is considered through the eyes of animals. Animals take an ax for a shiny tail, a pistol shot for an unusual spit, etc.

It has been noted that among the ancient agricultural peoples there are relatively few animal tales, and among many peoples of Tropical Africa, Australia and Oceania, the American Indians and the Eskimos, they are extremely common and occupy an important place in the folklore of these peoples.
Tales about animals are especially attractive to children, in Korea they are called donghwa, that is, children's stories.

Fairy tales in everyday life are usually understood as oral stories in which a positive character is helped by supernatural forces, magical objects, wonderful helpers. Cats, dogs, and other animals often act as wonderful helpers.

The well-known folklorist V. Ya. Propp (1895-1970) proposed a scheme for analyzing a fairy tale in terms of functions, that is, in terms of the main points in the unfolding of a fairy tale action. V. Ya. Propp counted twenty-four such key functions in fairy tales. He derived the formula of a fairy tale and determined its central type.
The characters of a fairy tale were divided by V. Ya. Propp into seven groups depending on their functions in the development of the action. V. Ya. Propp gave them names that are now widely used by folklorists as scientific terms: a pest (that is, a character who harms a positive hero, for example, a monstrous bird that kidnapped his bride), a donor (a character who gives the hero a magical remedy or miraculous assistant), a stolen object (it can be a person, for example, a princess or the hero’s bride, or some object - a magic ring, etc.), a sender (a character who sends the hero on a long journey on a feat in order to return the stolen or kidnapped person - a princess, a bride), a false hero (one who wants to undeservedly take advantage of the fruits of the feat of a real hero) and real hero. Such a division and definition of characters as a working tool can also be useful to our reader when he thinks about a fairy tale.

Let us reproduce, slightly simplifying and relying on the words of the scientist, the scheme of that fairy tale, which V. Ya. Propp considered the main one. The tale begins with the fact that some damage is caused to the hero: something is stolen from him (or from his father, mother), the bride is kidnapped, or the hero (heroine) is expelled from his native places, from home country. In a word, the hero or heroine has to go on a long journey.

The motivation to start on such a path can also be a strong desire to achieve something, to receive. This is not always the desire of the hero himself: for example, it occurs to the king to send him for the Firebird. But it is the hero who must fulfill the desire. On the way, he meets someone who gives him a magical remedy or a wonderful helper. Or, for example, the hero saves the dog, and the dog becomes his wonderful helper. Thanks to an assistant and magical means (a magic wand, a miraculous potion), the hero achieves his goal.

He wins the duel with the enemy, using magical means and using the help of wonderful helpers. After that, the hero returns home. But new complications await him (for example, he is thrown into the abyss). Nevertheless, the hero safely gets out of there. He can be put to the test, given difficult tasks and riddles with which he copes. The fairy tale is crowned with a happy ending: the hero reigns on the throne.

In different fairy tales, functions are presented with different completeness, repetitions are possible, and more often there are triplets of some functions, variations.
Let us take the Russian fairy tale “The Firebird and Vasilisa the Tsarevna” (it is well known from P. P. Ershov’s famous verse fairy tale “The Little Humpbacked Horse”), the Slovak fairy tale “Golden Horseshoe, Golden Feather, Golden Hair” or the Vietnamese fairy tale “Thach Sanh ” from this collection, and we will make sure that they all fit perfectly into this scheme.

When analyzing some other tales in the collection, for example, The Golden Shoe, we will find not seven types of characters distinguished by function, but five. There is a malefactor, a giver, a helper, a false heroine and a real heroine.

The central figure in a fairy tale is the image goodie or heroine, the whole interest of the story is focused on his fate. He embodies the folk ideal of beauty, moral strength, kindness, folk ideas about justice. Such, for example, is the brave young man Malek from a Danish fairy tale, who bravely enters into a fight with a troll - a mountain spirit.

However, we often notice traits of passivity in the heroes of a fairy tale. These characters are made so by the activity of supernatural forces, wonderful helpers, magical objects: after all, heroes and heroines do not need much work to achieve the fulfillment of their desires. It was enough for the poor young man, the hero of the Italian fairy tale "The Magic Ring", to show participation and kindness to the old woman, as he became the owner of a magic ring, with the help of which he marries a rich beauty. However, the wife shows deceit, steals the ring and gives her husband a lot of grief.

Having finally regained the lost ring, the young man comes to the significant conclusion that it is not often necessary to resort to the help of magical powers, because "it is not suitable for a person to easily receive everything that he desires."

Scientists believe that the fairy tale was born during the decomposition of the primitive communal system and the transition to a class society. It is believed that it was then that fairy tales about an innocently persecuted younger brother, a poor stepdaughter, an unfortunate orphan appeared. The conflict in such tales is portrayed as a family conflict: brothers or stepmother and stepdaughter quarrel among themselves. However, in essence, they reflect broad social and class relations - the older brother in fairy tales is usually rich, and the younger one is poor, the hardworking and kind stepdaughter patiently endures the bullying of her stepmother and her daughter.

Thus, the fairy-tale family is a schematic, generalized image of a society in which social inequality is already firmly rooted, and the fairy-tale conflict was originally a reflection of those clashes and collisions that arose during the decomposition of the tribal system. In its former form, the clan ceased to exist, small families appeared, the oppressed and the oppressors appeared. And all the feuds that played out among the members of the clan at the dramatic moment of its decline were reflected in the form of collisions in a small fairy-tale family.
And the hero of a fairy tale becomes the one who suffered the most from the fact that tribal relations of mutual assistance were replaced by alienation, because the clan broke up into separate families. These were the younger members of the family. They have lost the public support and help they sorely needed.

This is where the democratic idealization of the destitute person in fairy tales originates. The storyteller gives all his sympathy to him, it is he who becomes the embodiment in fairy folklore of the oppressed, oppressed person in a class society, and, of course, he becomes the owner of the best moral qualities, moral and physical beauty.

The democratic, folk idealization of the oppressed and the destitute largely explains why the beloved hero of a fairy tale becomes, in the words of the folklorist E. M. Meletinsky, a hero who does not show promise. At first, in the narrative, such a hero or heroine appears in a form that is outwardly very unattractive - Cinderella, a mess. But it is she who will become a beauty and a queen.

By the way, the popular idea that we find in fairy tales about royal, shah, imperial, royal life as the height of happiness possible on earth is also an idealization. It is based both on the common people's insufficient knowledge of the dark corridors of power, palace intrigues and the poisoned atmosphere of court life, and on the patriarchal idealization of the ruler, who was credited with positive "sovereign" properties - justice, however understood in a peculiar way, unshakable faith that his will and desire is good for the people and the country.

Defining a fairy tale as a genre, the well-known folklorist V.P. Anikin emphasized that it has evolved over the centuries in connection with the whole way of folk life, which we have already seen; at the same time, a fairy tale, especially in the early stages of development, is connected with mythology.

People believe in myths, but in a fairy tale, at least at a later stage of its evolution, they see fiction. The fantasy of a fairy tale originates from the myths and some ideas of primitive society. Here is the spiritualization of nature: animals, trees, herbs can speak, think and even show ingenuity and wisdom. Here and totemism, ancient prohibitions are taboo: hence the advice to the characters not to do this and that, otherwise the irreparable will happen. Here and various customs and beliefs. And of course, in a revised form - faith in magic, magic, including the magic of the word, in a spell; it is enough to pronounce the right word - and a miracle will happen.

There is no doubt that the most ancient images and motifs of a fairy tale, in a rethought form, are inherited from the folklore of pre-class society. But the fairy tale is multilayered, it existed for hundreds and thousands of years, it intertwined both very ancient and relatively late. Thanks to the art of the storyteller-master, all this formed a single, integral work. And the individual layers that form it are found only in the analysis of a folklorist. Perhaps this approach to the fairy tale will be of interest to you, the reader.

A. M. Gorky rightly said that many images of fairy-tale fantasy, for example, a flying carpet, grew out of the dream of a working person. Such images anticipated technological progress, amazing inventions, creations of the human mind and hands. These miracles - an airplane, a TV (magic crystal) - have become common for us today. But for our ancestors, they were an unattainable dream and embodied in fairy tales that awakened the mind and the audacious desire of a person to know the world, nature and put its laws at the service of humanity.

The fairy tale attracts the reader with a wonderful flight, forbidding to collect fruits in the monastery garden, preferring that they simply rot. Two dexterous peasants deceived the abbot, promising to treat him to kang - a meat dish with fruits. And now the Thai storyteller from this case creates a bright everyday fairy tale, colored with humor. The conflict in it is of a social nature, the poor peasants show extraordinary ingenuity, and the greedy and stupid abbot is also depicted as a saint: after all, Buddhist monks took a vow not to touch meat!

In everyday fairy tales, “the powers that be” are often depicted from the comic side. IN real life the peasant storyteller saw them only from afar, but he felt oppression and arbitrariness on himself. And in a fairy tale, a witty storyteller boldly ridicules these lords who have power over his life and death. In the Vietnamese fairy tale “Two Robes of a Clerical Ruler”, an important official abruptly cuts off a tailor who, from his point of view, is insignificant, who dared to ask which guests the ruler is going to go out in a new outfit: to higher or lower ones. To which he receives a polite answer from an experienced tailor. After all, he needs to know this only in order not to make a mistake when he sews. “If you intend to receive even more important officials than you in this dress,” a smart tailor says to the ruler, “then you need to shorten it in front. If you go out to the common people in it, then you should shorten it from behind. The bureaucratic gentleman thought and nodded his head, ordering to sew two different dresses ... Here, in a small scene, the essence of important bureaucratic rulers is surprisingly clearly exposed - their arrogance, stupidity and hypocrisy, their habit of bowing low before even higher ranks and puffing themselves up in front of ordinary people.

In everyday fairy tales, there is a figure that Gorky called "an ironic lucky man" and a classic example of which can be considered Ivanushka the Fool. He is not far off, stupid, but everywhere, to the great amazement of his listeners, luck accompanies him. Such a character amuses and amuses, but not only .

Often it is evidence of the sober, ironic attitude of the people to medieval scholastic learning and the magical ability of soothsayers and astrologers to know fate in advance, find out about the whereabouts of the loss, etc. In Vietnamese folklore, such a “ironic luck” is a highly learned butcher, and in Indian - a stupid Brahmin , who pretends to be a scientist, understands fortune-telling books, but in fact trembles with fear every time he again receives the task of finding the stolen. But each time a chance helpfully comes to his rescue, and the glory of the wise astrologer and soothsayer is more and more firmly attached to the stupid Brahmin. And the Indian peasant or craftsman, who knew or himself told this tale, looked ironically at the sedate learned Brahmins, who sometimes appeared on the street from the palaces of the rulers.

A household tale often tells about clever riddles or clever answers, and a smart boy beats a gray-bearded old man with his wit.

In everyday fairy tales, a new attitude towards fairy-tale fiction is noticeable. Some of these tales essentially parody fairy tales. For example, objects that are advertised by the hero of an everyday fairy tale as magical with invariable ingenuity turn out to be in fact the most ordinary. But with their help, the hero deceives his enemies, and these items, as if by magic, bring him wealth. At the same time, the hero shames his enemies - the rich, the landlords, the feudal rulers.

This collection includes jokes about the Schildburgers (residents of the city of Schild) - wonderful creations of German folk humor and German folk literature closely related to the oral tradition. In 1598, a book was published in Germany under a very long and ornate, in the spirit of that time, title “Schildburgers, amazing, bizarre, unheard of and hitherto undescribed adventures and deeds of the inhabitants of Schilda from Misnopotamia, which is behind Utopia” (in our edition this title is somewhat modified and abbreviated).

Let's say right away that the town of Schilda, its inhabitants, as well as the country of Misnopotamia, existed only in the fantasies of funny and very ironic storytellers. But on the other hand, numerous princes, each in his own - often dwarf - principality, lived in the real Germany of that era. They only strove to take advantage of the contents of wallets, the mind and work of peasants and artisans, and mercilessly drove those who they no longer needed over the threshold. The wise inhabitants of Schilda decided to avoid such a fate: because of their wisdom and clear mind, the princes tore off the Schildburgers from their homes and kept them as advisers. And they began to save themselves by stupidity and buffoonery, so that they would be left alone, given the opportunity to live freely, as they wanted.
The wise old townsman, with hints and innuendos, explains to his fellow citizens that the buffoonery they have started is a serious and dangerous business. In essence, this is a hidden opposition and defiance: “Playing a jester or a fool is no small art. It happens that a stupid person will undertake such a thing, and instead of laughter, only tears are obtained. And even worse than that: someone decides to play a fool, but he really turns into such a one.

So, the sages, in order to maintain their independence, dress up in a jester's cap. Here, of course, one can feel the influence of dress-up carnivals, which are characteristic of Europe: after all, all the participants in the carnival procession are mummers. They fool around, have fun, joke without hesitation. Everyone enjoys freedom of communication, and everyone is equal, regardless of class affiliation.

Fooling around, the Schildburgers cast doubt on the rationality of the way of life that existed then. Ridiculing and subverting it, they act as freethinkers - and this is a kind of refraction of humanism (the recognition of man and his happiness, his good as the highest value of being) of the Renaissance, that is, the time of transition from medieval culture to the culture of the new age.

After all, it was not for nothing that the outstanding Renaissance writer Erasmus of Rotterdam (1469-1536) became famous for his philosophical satire “Praise of Stupidity”, in which he revealed the contradictions and paradoxes of life.
The folk book about the Schildburgers clearly echoes the satire of Erasmus of Rotterdam. What is worth only the clownish meeting, which the inhabitants of Schilda arranged for the emperor himself: it turned into a complete parody of solemnity, and even contained some political hints. And the presentation of a gift from the townspeople (a pot of mustard, which also falls apart into shards at the most crucial moment) did run the risk of turning into a mockery of His Imperial Majesty. However, the emperor reveals an enviable tolerance and sense of humor.

And already in this - a positive assessment of His Imperial Majesty by the creators of the book about the Schildburgers. Someone who, and they knew how to appreciate people with a sense of humor. Such an attitude towards the sovereign, apparently, is connected with naive hopes for the justice of the emperor and with the fact that at that time, when Germany actually broke up into separate principalities, he was a symbol of the unity of the country, but, in essence, did not have real power, therefore, when the city head of the Schildburgers, pretending that he had confused everything in the world from excitement and, climbing onto a heap of dung, at the meeting of the emperor, as if having made a reservation, calls him Emperor Schilda, then he hits the nail on the head.

In their foolish caps, with which the emperor honored them in a safe-conduct, the inhabitants of Schilda defended the right to independence of thought, the right to liberty. And yet - the right to completeness human life with her joys.
However, as we know, the town of Schilda in the fictional country of Misnopotamia, which is also located behind Utopia (that is, "nowhere"), never existed. Prudent storytellers, so that no one would think of looking for the town of Schilda on a geographical map or information about it in historical writings, report its death from a fire, as a result of which neither the town itself, nor any annals and family books remained. The inhabitants of Schilda have scattered all over the world, and perhaps, as the crafty storyteller believes, they now live among us...

No matter how original the clownish undertakings of the Schildburgers, for example, the construction of a triangular city hall without windows, they are akin to other cunning folklore heroes.

In the folklore of many peoples of the world there is an image of a smart, inventive hero, a native of the lower classes, who makes fools of his enemies, inflated nobles and the rich. Probably the most famous of these heroes is Khoja Nasreddin, who is the hero of cycles of anecdotes among the Turks and Iranians, the peoples of Central Asia. This democratic hero feels equally at ease in the place of a preacher in a mosque, where he goes by no means to pray to Allah, and in a noisy bazaar, and in the palace of an emir or shah, and in an ordinary teahouse.
The image of Khoja Nasreddin originated in the folklore of the peoples of the East, but Russians and Poles, Ukrainians and Hungarians fell in love with him. Based on a cycle of jokes about Nasreddin Hodja, or rather, based on this folk image Russian Soviet writer L. V. Solovyov created the famous "The Tale of Hodja Nasreddin" (part one - "Troublemaker", part two - "The Enchanted Prince"), on which popular films were shot.
According to Gorky's precise formula, the beginning of the art of the word is rooted in folklore. The literature of every nation, no matter how developed it may be, has its origins in folklore. In folklore, or folk poetry, we find the source of the nationality of national literatures. The earliest monuments of world literature known to science came out of folk poetry: the Sumerian-Akkadian epic about Gilgamesh, dating from the 3rd - beginning of the 2nd millennium BC, the ancient Greek Homeric epic - the famous Iliad and Odyssey. In these works we will find images, plots, motifs coming from folk tale. And in the ancient Egyptian papyri, scientists discovered a genre of literature, which was designated by the term "fairy tale".

Literature at all stages of its development retains links with folklore, but the nature of such links is changeable. This may be the borrowing of a plot, motive, the influence of folklore on the composition of a literary work, the structure of an artistic image. The fairy-tale element determines, for example, the internal logic of images and the whole structure of such masterpieces as Pushkin's poetic tales, Gogol's "Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka", "The Humpbacked Horse" by P. P. Ershov, "The Golden Key, or the Adventures of Buratino" by A. N. Tolstoy. This series can easily be continued by recalling the fairy tales of Hoffmann, fairy tales for the theater by Carlo Gozzi and others.

In the Middle Ages, the importance of folklore for literature was even more significant, because they artistic principles were close. For example, the characters of folklore and medieval literature are equally devoid of pronounced individualization. Therefore, collections of medieval short stories from China, Korea, Japan, Mongolia and Vietnam, Persian, Indonesian, Laotian and Thai poems, the French Romance of the Fox, chivalric novels and many other works are full of fabulous images and plots. Special mention deserves "Khathasaritsa-gara" - "Ocean of legends" - by the Indian poet of the XI century Somo-deva; in the Ocean of Legends, scientists counted over three hundred false stories in which a fairy tale is intertwined with a myth, an anecdote, or a short story.

Fairy tales still have great charm for all of us, children and adults, and to this day we read them, listen to them on the radio. We willingly watch films, including funny animations based on the motives and plots of fairy tales, listen to the operas Ruslan and Lyudmila, The Snow Maiden, Koschey the Immortal, enjoy Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker and other fabulous ballet performances. The repertoires of children's drama theaters are full of performances-fairy tales, and the reader can easily name them himself.

Plays based on fairy tales are now playing with great success all over the world. Fairy tale characters appear in Indonesian shadow theater and the dalang (i.e. the lead actor) recounts their exploits and adventures. And in Vietnam, the heroes of the fairy tale swim and dive in the water during the performances of the traditional puppet theater on the water.
Great painters also did not bypass fairytale heroes. Let us recall Vasnetsov or Čiurlionis, whose work permeates the figurativeness of a fairy tale. I'm not talking about book illustrators who, by drawing fairy tale characters, magic items and fairy kingdoms, gave us a whole wonderful world visible images that help our imagination, educate our artistic taste.

Fairy-tale characters are imprinted in stone, marble, wooden bas-reliefs. In some countries of the East there are even temples in memory of the characters of the fairy tale, festivities are held in their honor.

Developing today literary tale closely related to folklore, borrowing a lot from it. There were fairy tale writers on all continents. This is not only the Dane Hans Christian Andersen or the Swede Astrid Lindgren, but also the Vietnamese To Hoai, the Japanese Miyazawa Kenji and many others. As long as humanity exists, it needs a dream, and therefore, it cannot do without a fairy tale that inspires, gives hope, amuses and consoles.

That's the end, and who listened - well done!