The

Lute A lute ( or ) is any plucked string instrument with a neck (music), neck and a deep round back enclosing a hollow cavity, usually with a sound hole or opening in the body. It may be either fretted or unfretted. More specifically, the term "lu ...

Player, The Tsaritsa

Harp The harp is a stringed musical instrument that has individual strings running at an angle to its soundboard; the strings are plucked with the fingers. Harps can be made and played in various ways, standing or sitting, and in orchestras or ...

ist or The Tsaritsa who Played the Gusli (), is a Russian

fairy tale A fairy tale (alternative names include fairytale, fairy story, household tale, magic tale, or wonder tale) is a short story that belongs to the folklore genre. Such stories typically feature magic, enchantments, and mythical or fanciful bei ...

. It was published by

Alexander Afanasyev Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev (; – ) was a Russian Slavist and ethnographer best known for publishing nearly 600 East Slavic and Russian fairy and folk tales, one of the largest collections of folklore in the world. This collection was ...

in his collection ''

Russian Fairy Tales ''Russian Fairy Tales'' (, variously translated; English titles include also ''Russian Folk Tales'') is a collection of nearly 600 fairy and folktales, collected and published by Alexander Afanasyev between 1855 and 1863. The collection cont ...

'', 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 folkloristics, collector of folklore, folk and fairy tales. The Andrew Lang lectur ...

included it in ''

The Violet Fairy Book ''The Langs' Fairy Books'' are a series of 25 collections of true and fictional children's literature, stories for children published between 1889 in literature, 1889 and 1913 in literature, 1913 by Andrew Lang and Leonora Blanche Alleyne, a marr ...

'' (1901). The instrument actually described in the fairy tale is a

gusli The ''gusli'' (, , , ''husla'') 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 the Novgorodian Republic. ...

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 Stith Thompson (March 7, 1885 – January 10, 1976) was an American folklore studies, folklorist: he has been described as "America's most important folklorist". He is the "Thompson" of the Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index, which indexes Folklore, ...

. However, after German folklorist

Hans-Jörg Uther Hans-Jörg Uther (born 20 July 1944) is a German literary scholar and folklorist. Biography Born 20 July 1944, in Herzberg am Harz, Uther studied Folklore, Germanistik and History between 1969 and 1970 at the University of Munich and between 1970 ...

revised the index in 2004, type 875D was subsumed into type ATU 888, "The Faithful Wife".

References

External links

The original text of the tale, in Russian
in Wikisource. {{DEFAULTSORT:Lute Player Russian fairy tales Fictional queens Fictional musicians Fictional cross-dressers Cross-dressing in literature ATU 850-999

Synopsis

Analysis

Tale type

See also

References

External links