Old Peter’s Russian Tales

I came across this book at home last weekend. I remember reading it a lot when I was a little person.

It’s basically a book of adapted Russian folk tales written by Arthur Ransome, first published in 1916 and in print ever since:

THE stories in this book are those that Russian peasants tell their children and each other. In Russia hardly anybody is too old for fairy stories, and I have even heard soldiers on their way to the war talking of very wise and very beautiful princesses as they drank their tea by the side of the road. I think there must be more fairy stories told in Russia than anywhere else in the world. In this book are a few of those I like best. I have taken my own way with them more or less, writing them mostly from memory. They, or versions like them, are to be found in the coloured chap-books, in Afanasiev’s great collection, or in solemn, serious volumes of folklorists writing for the learned. My book is not for the learned, or indeed for grown-up people at all. No people who really like fairy stories ever grow up altogether. This is a book written far away in Russia, for English children who play in deep lanes with wild roses above them in the high hedges, or by the small singing becks that dance down the gray fells at home. Russian fairyland is quite different. Under my windows the wavelets of the Volkhov (which has its part in one of the stories) are beating quietly in the dusk. A gold light burns on a timber raft floating down the river. Beyond the river in the blue midsummer twilight are the broad Russian plain and the distant forest. Somewhere in that forest of great trees-a forest so big that the forests of England are little woods beside it-is the hut where old Peter sits at night and tells these stories to his grandchildren.

Arthur Ransome

It didn’t surprise me that this was/is a very popular book with children. It’s rather funny, and the stories are often surreal. There’s an almost sinister undercurrent running through some of them. The tale of Baba Yaga, the hideous old witch who lives in a hut with hen’s legs is very unwholesome.  As is Prince Ivan, the Witch Baby, and the Little Sister of the Sun:

“Little Prince,” says he, “to-day you have a sister, and a bad one at that. She has come because of your father’s prayers and your mother’s wishes. A witch she is, and she will grow like a seed of corn. In six weeks she’ll be a grown witch, and with her iron teeth she will eat up your father, and eat up your mother, and eat up you too, if she gets the chance. There’s no saving the old people; but if you are quick, and do what I tell you, you may escape, and keep your soul in your body. And I love you, my little dumb Prince, and do not wish to think of your little body between her iron teeth. You must go to your father and ask him for the best horse he has, and then gallop like the wind, and away to the end of the world.”

The thought of a creepy little  sister with iron teeth is enough to give me the heeby jeebies. The giant who tears up trees is cool:

The little Prince cried bitterly, for he was very little and all alone. He rode on further over the wide world, the black horse galloping and galloping, and throwing the dust from his thundering hoofs.

He came into a forest of great oaks, the biggest oak trees in the whole world. And in that forest was a dreadful noise—the crashing of trees falling, the breaking of branches, and the whistling of things hurled through the air. The Prince rode on, and there before him was the huge giant, Tree-rooter, hauling the great oaks out of the ground and flinging them aside like weeds.

“I should be safe with him,” thought little Prince Ivan, “and this, surely, must be the end of the world.”

He rode close up under the giant, and stopped the black horse, and shouted up into the air.

“Please, great giant,” says he, “is this the end of the world? And may I live with you and be safe from my sister, who is a witch, and grows like a seed of corn, and has iron teeth?”

“Prince Ivan, my dear,” says Tree-rooter, “this is not the end of the world, and little good would it be to you to stay with me. For as soon as I have rooted up all these trees I shall die, and then where would you be? Your sister would have you in a minute. And already there are not many big trees left.”

And the giant set to work again, pulling up the great trees and throwing them aside. The sky was full of flying trees.

That giant is not too different from you or I. He spends his life fully engaged in an utterly pointless task, serving no other purpose, getting depressingly closer and closer to death until finally he runs out of steam and dies.

I learned by looking around the internet that some teachers have been reading Old Peter’s Russian Tales to their classes for years. I don’t know what children read nowadays, probably books about throwing stones at old people, or whatever.

Maybe it’s evidence that my mind has been corrupted but this paragraph from The Stolen Turnips, the Magic Tablecloth, the Sneezing Goat, and the Wooden Whistle made me smile.

After that the old man lived alone in the hut. When he wanted tobacco or clothes or a new axe, he made the goat sneeze some gold pieces, and off he went to the town with plenty of money in his pocket. When he wanted his dinner he had only to lay the tablecloth. He never had any washing up to do, because the tablecloth did it for him. When he wanted to get rid of troublesome guests, he gave them the whistle to blow. And when he was lonely and wanted company, he went to the little hut under the pine trees and played with the little queer children.

Nowadays if you play with children, queer or otherwise, people tend to suspect the worst. Just look at Michael Jackson. You even talk to a child today and you’re in danger of being lynched by a mob of screaming simpletons.

The full text is available here.

Tagged as: Children, Old Peter's Russian Tales, Weird