The
Lute Player, The Tsaritsa
Harpist or The Tsaritsa who Played the Gusli (russian: Царица-гусляр), is a Russian
fairy tale. It was published by
Alexander Afanasyev
Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev (Afanasief, Afanasiev or Afanas'ev, russian: link=no, Александр Николаевич Афанасьев) ( — ) was a Russian Slavist and ethnographer who published nearly 600 Russian fairy and folk ta ...
in his collection ''
Russian Fairy Tales
''Russian Fairy Tales'' (russian: Народные русские сказки, variously translated; English titles include also ''Russian Folk Tales'') is a collection of nearly 600 fairy and folktales, collected and published by Alexander Af ...
'', as number 338.
Andrew Lang
Andrew Lang (31 March 1844 – 20 July 1912) was a Scottish poet, novelist, literary critic, and contributor to the field of anthropology. He is best known as a collector of folk and fairy tales. The Andrew Lang lectures at the University o ...
included it in ''
The Violet Fairy Book
''The Langs' Fairy Books'' are a series of 25 collections of true and fictional stories for children published between 1889 and 1913 by Andrew Lang and his wife, Leonora Blanche Alleyne. The best known books of the series are the 12 collections ...
'' (1901).
The instrument actually described in the fairy tale is a
gusli
''Gusli'' ( rus, гусли, p=ˈɡuslʲɪ) is the oldest East Slavic multi-string plucked instrument, belonging to the zither family, due to its strings being parallel to its resonance board. Its roots lie in Veliky Novgorod in Novgorodian Ru ...
.
Synopsis
A king lived happily with his queen, but after a time, wanted to fight and so win glory. He set out against a wicked king, but lost and was captured. He sent a message to his queen to ransom him.
His queen thought that if she went herself, the wicked king would take her as one of his wives, and she did not know whether she could trust her ministers. She cut her hair,
disguised herself as a boy, and set out with a gusli. She reached the court of the wicked king and charmed him with her music. He promised her whatever she wished, and she said she wanted a companion on the way, so she asked for one of his prisoners. He let her choose, and she picked the king.
They went back to their country without his discovering who she was. She left him before he reached his court. He was angry that his wife had not ransomed him, and even more angry that she had vanished and just returned, assuming she had been unfaithful. She disguised herself as the musician again, and her husband promised her whatever reward she wished. She told him she wanted him, and revealed she was the queen.
Analysis
Tale type
The tale is classified in the international
Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as tale type ATU 888, "The Faithful Wife".
The tale was also classified as type AaTh 875C, "The Queen as Gusli-Player", in the 1961 revision of the index by
Stith Thompson. However, after German folklorist
Hans-Jörg Uther
Hans-Jörg Uther (born 20 July 1944 in Herzberg am Harz) is a German literary scholar and folklorist.
Biography
Uther studied Folklore, Germanistik and History between 1969 and 1970 at the University of Munich and between 1970 and 1973 at the Uni ...
revised the index in 2004, type 875D was subsumed into type ATU 888, "The Faithful Wife".
See also
*
Sir Orfeo
''Sir Orfeo'' is an anonymous Middle English Breton lai dating from the late 13th or early 14th century. It retells the story of Orpheus as a king who rescues his wife from the fairy king. The folk song ''Orfeo'' ( Roud 136, Child 19) is based ...
References
External links
The original text of the tale, in Russian in Wikisource.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lute Player
Russian fairy tales
Fictional queens
Fictional musicians
ATU 850-999