The Magic Swan Geese
The Magic Swan Geese is a Russian fairy tale collected by Alexander Afanasyev in Narodnye russkie skazki, numbered 113.
It is classified in the Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as tale type ATU 480A*.
Synopsis
Once there was a couple who had both a daughter and a son. They left their daughter in charge of her younger brother, but one day she lost track of him and the magic swan geese snatched him away. The daughter chased after him and came upon an oven that offered to tell her if she ate its rye buns; she scorned them, saying she didn't even eat wheat buns. She also scorned similar offers from an apple tree, and a river of milk. She came across a little hut built on a hen's foot, in which she found Baba Yaga with her brother; Baba Yaga sent her to spin flax and left. A mouse scurried out and said it would tell her what she needed to know if she gave it porridge; she did, and it told her that Baba Yaga was heating the bath house to steam her, then she would cook her. The mouse took over her spinning, and the girl took her brother and fled.Baba Yaga sent the swan geese after her. She begged the river for aid, and it insisted she drink some of it first; she did, and it sheltered her. When she ran on, the swan geese followed again, and the same happened with the apple tree and the oven. Then she reached home safely.
Translations
A more literal translation of the tale's title is The Swan-Geese. Bernard Isaacs translated the tale as Little Girl and Swan-Geese, while Bonnie Marshall Carey translated it as Baba Yaga's Geese.Analysis
Tale type
The tale is classified in the Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as type ATU 480A*, "Three Sisters Set Out to Save Their Little Brother".German scholar Hans-Jörg Uther, in his 2004 revision of the ATU index, reported variants from Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and among the Mari/Cheremis and Wotian/Syrjanien peoples. Jack Haney stated that type 480A* seemed to appear "very rarely" outside the area of the East Slavic languages.
Variants
East Slavic
The story is classified in the East Slavic Folktale Classification, last updated by scholar in 1979, as type SUS 480A*, "". According to the catalogue, the type is reported in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.Russia
The oldest attestation of the tale type in Russia appears in a late-18th century publication, with the tale "Сказка о Сизом Орле и мальчике".Lithuania
Lithuanian folklorist Jonas Balys, in his analysis of Lithuanian folktales, previously classified the Lithuanian variants as *314C, Trys seserys gelbsti raganos pavogtą broliuką.According to Stith Thompson's reworked folktale classification, tale type AaTh 480A* registered 30 variants in Lithuania.