Note 7 — The Story of the Tsarevich Ivan, and of the Harp that Harped Without a Harper.

Ivan the Tsarevich went on his way; he went on and on, he strode and strode, and he came to the open plains. Three roads lay before him, and in the cross-way stood a wretched little hut turning round and round on hen’s legs. And Ivan the Tsarevich said to it, “Izbushka! izbushka!7 turn your back to the wood and your front to me!” Then Ivan the Tsarevich stepped into the hut, and there in the hut was sitting Baba-Yaga8 bony-leg. “Fie! fie! fie!” said Baba-Yaga, “up to this day a Russian soul has been a sight unknown to my eyes and a sound unknown to my ears, and now a Russian soul appears before my very eyes! For what hast thou come, good youth?”—“Oh, thou senseless Granny!” said the Tsarevich Ivan to her, “thou shouldst feed me well first, and only after that shouldst thou begin to ask questions.” Baba-Yaga leaped up in the twinkling of an eye, heated her little stove, fed Ivan the Tsarevich, and then began to ask him, “Whither dost thou go, good youth, and whither does thy way lie?”—“I go,” said Ivan the Tsarevich, “to seek my sisters, the Tsarevna Neotsyenaya and the Tsarevna Beztsyenaya. But now, dear little Granny, tell me, if thou knowest, what way must I go, and where shall I find them?”—“I know where the Tsarevna Neotsyenaya lives!” said Baba-Yaga; “thou must take the middle road to get to her, but she lives in the white stone palace of her old husband the Forest Monster. The road thither is hard, far must thou go; and if thou gettest there ’twill boot thee little, for the Forest Monster will devour thee.”—“Well, little Granny, perhaps it will choke him. A Russian man is a bony morsel, and God will not give him over to be eaten by a swine like that! Farewell! and thank you for your bread and salt!” And so the Tsarevich Ivan strode away from her, and look!—there, right across the plain, shone white and dazzling the stony palace of the Forest Monster. Ivan went up to it and saw the gate, and on the gate sat a sort of little devil who said, “No admittance!”—“Open, my friend!” replied Ivan the Tsarevich, “and I’ll give thee some vodka!”9 The little devil took the vodka, but he didn’t open the gate for all that. Then Ivan the Tsarevich went round about the palace and resolved to climb over the wall. He climbed up and along and never observed the trap into which he was falling, for on the top of the walls wires were spread all about, and the moment the Tsarevich Ivan touched one of these wires with his foot all the bells fell a-ringing. Ivan the Tsarevich looked, and out upon the balcony rushed his sister the Tsarevna Neotsyenaya and said, “Is it thou then that hast come, my beloved brother, Ivan the Tsarevich?” And the brother and the sister embraced and kissed each other. “Where shall I hide thee from the Monster of the Forest?” said the Tsarevna Neotsyenaya, “for I believe he will be here at once.”—“Where indeed, for I am no needle.” The brother and sister were still talking when suddenly there was the dull roar of a tempest and whirlwind, all the palace trembled, and the Monster of the Forest appeared; but Ivan the Tsarevich put on his little invisible cap and became invisible. And the Forest Monster said, “Where then is thy guest who climbed over the wall?”—“I have no guest here at all,” replied the Tsarevna Neotsyenaya, “but perhaps the sparrows have been flying over it and stuck to it with their wings!”—“Sparrows indeed! Methinks I smell the smell of a Russian soul here!”—“What are you dreaming about? You run about the wide world and do nothing but harass souls, and now you would vex other souls also!”—“Don’t be angry, Tsarevna Neotsyenaya, I do no harm to thy happiness, only I have now a desire to eat, and I should like to eat up this unknown,” said the Forest Monster. Ivan the Tsarevich, however, took off his invisible cap, bowed to the Forest Monster, and said, “Why do you want to eat me? Don’t you see what a lean and bony morsel I am! Rather let me regale you with a breakfast such as you have never eaten since the day of your birth, only take care that you don’t swallow your tongue and all!” Then Ivan the Tsarevich spread out his little bread-and-salt table-cloth, the twelve youths and the twelve damsels appeared, and began to regale the Forest Monster with as much as ever he could eat. The Forest Monster ate and ate and ate, then he drank, and then he ate again, till he was unable to stir from the spot; he fell asleep in the very place where he sat. “And now farewell, my beloved sister!” said the Tsarevich Ivan; “yet tell me, dost thou not know the place where our sister the Tsarevna Beztsyenaya dwells?”—“I know it,” replied the Tsarevna Neotsyenaya; “thou must go to her along the great sea Ocean, there she dwells in the very whirlpool of the ocean with her old husband the Sea Monster; but the way thither is hard. Far, very far must thou swim, and if thou gettest there it will boot thee little, for he will devour thee!”—“Well,” said the Tsarevich Ivan, “he may chew me perhaps, but he will find me a hard morsel to swallow. Farewell, sister!” And Ivan the Tsarevich began to stride onwards, and he came to the great sea Ocean. By the shore stood a boat such as the Russian people use when they go a-fishing; the shrouds and gear were of linden bast, the sails of fine hair mats, and the boat itself was not welded with nails, but sown fast with birch-bark. On this ship the mariners were getting ready to go to sea, to sail to the Rock-Salt Island. “Won’t you take me with you?” said the Tsarevich Ivan; “I will pay you nothing for my passage, but I will tell you tales so that you will never notice how long the journey is.” The ship-folk agreed, and they sailed away upon the great sea Ocean, they sailed past the Rock-Salt Island; the Tsarevich Ivan told them tales, and they sailed and sailed. Suddenly, whence they knew not, a tempest came flying up, the thunder began to growl, and the ship began to quake. “Alas!” shrieked the ship’s folk, “to our own destruction have we listened to this fair speaker, never shall we see our dear little homes again, we shall descend into the whirlpools of Ocean! There is no help for it, we must pay tribute to the Monster of the Sea; let us cast lots, it will fall upon the guilty!” They cast lots, and it fell upon the Tsarevich Ivan. “It can’t be helped, my brothers!” said the Tsarevich Ivan. “I thank you for your bread and salt; farewell, nor think amiss of me in time to come!” Then he took with him his self-walking boots, his little bread-and-salt table-cloth, his little invisible cap, and his harp that harped of its own accord, and they raised the good youth and swung him right out into the whirlpools of Ocean. The sea became calm, the boat sped on, and the Tsarevich Ivan went like a key to the bottom, and stood upright on his legs in the halls of the Monster of the Sea, the wondrous flower-grown halls of ocean! The Sea Monster was sitting on his throne with the Tsarevna Beztsyenaya by his side, and the Sea Monster said, “’Tis a long time since I have eaten fresh flesh, and lo! it comes right into my very hands! Welcome, friend! Come here, and let me see at which end of you I may begin!” Then the Tsarevich Ivan began to say that he was the brother of the Tsarevna Beztsyenaya, and that amongst good people one behaved not so badly as to eat another up. “That is too much!” shrieked the Sea Monster; “he comes to force his own rules and regulations upon the homes of other people!” Ivan the Tsarevich saw that things were going badly, so he took out his harp that played of its own accord, and when he began playing a plaintive air, the Sea Monster began to pull wry faces, then fell to sighing like a blacksmith’s bellows, and wept and moaned just as if he had swallowed a needle; and then, when the Tsarevich Ivan struck up the air, “Let the merry churochki10 go round the little table!” why then indeed the very halls put their arms akimbo and fell a-dancing, while the Sea Monster could not skip up and down enough, but stamped with his feet, snapped with his fingers, rolled his eyes about, and pulled such faces that all the fishes flocked round to see, and nearly died for laughter. The Monster of the Sea thoroughly enjoyed himself. “Well!” said he, “’twould be a sin to eat such a youth. Stop here, stay with us, sit down and be our guest, won’t you? Here are lots of herrings, pike, bream, and perch! Come, sit down at table, eat, drink, and be merry, my dear guest!” So Ivan the Tsarevich and the Tsarevna Beztsyenaya and the Sea Monster sat down, and ate and drank and made merry. A whale danced a German dance in front of them, the herrings sang glees, the carps performed on various instruments. After dinner the Sea Monster went to sleep, and the Tsarevna Beztsyenaya said, “My beloved brother, I am glad to see thee, dear guest; so far well, but ’twill not last for ever. When he awakes the Sea Monster will eat thee if the evil humour takes him.”—“Tell me, darling sister,” said the Tsarevich Ivan, “how I may save our sister Neotsyenaya from the Forest Monster, and thee from the Monster of the Sea?”—“If you like you may try your luck, but you’ll find it, I think, a ticklish business. Behind the great sea Ocean here lies a large tsardom, and there reigns there not a Tsar but a Tsaritsa called the Tsar-Maiden. If thou makest thy way thither, and gettest into her fenced garden, then the Tsar-Maiden will become thy consort, and she only can free us and restore us to our father and mother. But the mischief of it is this—she has a strict guard which will allow no one to cross the shore, a guard all bristling with guns and lances, and fastened to each lance is a head, and all these poor little heads are the heads of the youths who came to woo the Tsar-Maiden. There were tsars, tsareviches, kings, kings’ sons, mightily strong warriors, and they came with hosts, and they sailed with ships, and were able to do nothing; all of them were stuck upon lances.”—“Look now!” said the Tsarevich Ivan, “what is there to fear? Terrible are the threats of Heaven and manifold is the mercy of God. Tell me but how I may get to the tsardom of the Tsar-Maiden.”—“But is it a wise thing to make thy way thither? Nevertheless I’ll give thee my beloved sturgeon; sit upon him and go thy way, and my swift runner the long-nosed sterlet shall swim before thee to show the way.” The brother and sister then said farewell, the Tsarevich Ivan sat him on the sturgeon and sped away, and the sterlet went on before to show the way. They fell in with some crabs, and they saluted the Tsarevich Ivan with their moustaches, and beat the drums with their clippers, and drove the little fishes out of the way. But the sea is not the same thing as the dry land. There was neither hemp nor bramble to hold on by, the way was slippery, as slippery as grease. The Tsarevich Ivan slipped and slipped. Then he put on his little invisible cap and saw that the guards of the Tsar-Maiden were opening wide their eyes and gazing afar off, and saw nothing that was going on beneath their noses, and they were still whetting their swords and sharpening their spears. And the Tsarevich Ivan came to the shore, the sturgeon set him safely on the quay, made an obeisance, and jumped into the water again; but the Tsarevich Ivan went past the guard without bending his knee, and entered the fenced garden as if he were the master there; he walked about, he walked all over it, he diverted himself, and ate of the luscious and transparent apples there.