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The Feather of Finist the Falcon

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Illustration by Ivan Bilibin

The Feather of Finist the Falcon or Finist the Falcon (Russian: Пёрышко Финиста ясна сокола) is a Russian fairy tale[1] collected by Alexander Afanasyev in Narodnye russkie skazki. It is Aarne–Thompson type 432, the prince as bird. Other tales of this type include The Green Knight, The Blue Bird, and The Greenish Bird.

Synopsis

A merchant asked his three daughters what they want him to bring them from the fair. The older two ask for dresses or shawls, but the youngest wants either the feather of Finist the Falcon or a red flower. In some variants, he went to the fair twice, able to bring back what her older sisters had asked for, but not hers, but she did not vary her request. In the third or first visit, he found the feather, or else found the flower and must promise that his daughter will marry Finist the Falcon for it. Whether the flower or the feather, the thing brought Finist the Falcon to her at night, and he wooed her. If she was given the flower, he gave her a feather that would magically aid her.

Her sisters discovered the visit; they might have spied, or she may have appeared in finer clothing, from use of the feathers, than they knew she had, or she may have appeared in church as a strange woman (like Cinderella at the ball) because of her rich clothing, and not hidden it quickly enough when she returned home. Once they became suspicious, they often listened and, hearing a man's voice, tried to persuade their father that their sister had a lover, but failed. However they discovered it, the sisters put knives in the window, so that he was injured. He said that she must search for him to find him, which would wear out three pairs of iron shoes, and three iron staves. He did not return. She sets out to find him.

She finds a hut with a witch (sometimes referred to as a Baba Yaga), who gives her a gift (such as a silver spinning wheel and a golden spindle), and sends her on to another witch. This witch gives her another gift (such as a silver dish and a golden egg), and sends her on to yet a third witch. This one gives her a third gift (such as a golden embroidery frame and a needle that sewed of itself), and sent her to the castle where Finist was to marry.

In some variants, she found someone trying to wash the blood from Finist's shirt and washed it herself. In all, she managed to trade the witches' gifts to the bride to let her stay a night with Finist. The princess either put a magical pin in his hair to keep him asleep or gave him a sleeping draught; the third night, either Finist is warned not to drink the draught, or the pin falls out. He woke and knew her.

In some variants, he asked the nobles whom he should marry: the woman who had sold him, or the woman who had bought him. They agreed the woman who bought him should have him.

In other variants, she went home to her father. When he and her sisters went to church, she dressed finely and went with Finist, and her sisters came back with stories of the prince and princess who came to church. The third time, her father saw the carriage stopped at his own door, and the daughter had to confess. She married Finist.

Translations

The tale was translated as The Little Feather of Finist the Bright Falcon by Robert Nisbet Bain;[2] as The Bright-Hawk's Feather by Nathan Haskell Dole.[3]

Analysis

Classification

The tale is classified in the Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as type ATU 432, "The Prince as Bird". In Russia, particularly, the tale type is known as Finist iasnyi sokol ("Finist the Bright Falcon).[4] Russian researcher Varvara Dobrovolskaya stated that type SUS 432 figures among some of the popular tales of enchanted spouses in the Russian tale corpus.[5]

The falcon prince's name

James Riordan suggested that the name Fenist was a corruption of the name Phoenix.[6] In the same vein, scholar Andreas Johns states that the name Finist (and variations) is a corruption of the mythological phoenix (in Russian, feniks), brought into the folklore of Rus' by an external source, possibly written.[7]

Variants

Professor Jack V. Haney stated that the tale first appeared in printed form in 1795,[8] with the title "Сказка о финифтяном пёрушке ясного сокола".[9]

Russia

A second Russian variant was collected from Vologda. In this version, the third daughter asks for a red flower, which acts as the object that summons "Bright Finist the Falcon of Flowery Feathers".[10]

Dobrovolskaya also remarks that in regional variants from Karelia, Murmansk and Arkhangelsk, type 432 sometimes merges with type 425A, "The Search for the Lost Husband", where the heroine receives gifts from the witches (Yagas) and uses them to buy three nights in her husband's bed.[11]

Bulgaria

Variants of type 432 also exist in the Bulgarian Folktale Catalogue with the name Сокол съпруг ("Falcon husband"), which reference Finist as the bird prince.[12]

Komi people

In a variant from the Syryenen/Komi people titled Der falke Pipilysty ("The Falcon Pipilysty"), collected in Kortkeros, a rich merchant asks his three daughters what they want as gifts. The elder two ask for shoes and a headscarf, while the youngest asks for the Falcon Pipilysty. The merchant does not find the bird in the first two journeys, but on the third be brings home the Falcon Pipilysty. While her sisters go to church, the bird becomes a human youth and he gives her beautiful clothes to go to church. One day, the girl burns Falcon Pipilysty's birdskin, and disappears beyond the mountains. She has to go after him, and brings with her a spool of golden thread, yarns of silk and a golden frame. She reaches a meadow where a hut is located, and finds her husband there, living in the hut with a joma. The girl uses the three objects to bribe the joma for three nights with her husband. On the first two nights, she tries to wake him up by recounting her arduous journey so far, but he does not flinch. On the third night, the husband awakes and escapes with the girl.[13]

Adaptations

Film

  • Finist, the brave Falcon (Финист - Ясный сокол) (1976), Soviet Slavic fantasy adventure film directed by Gennadi Vasilyev.
  • The Falcon (1990), children's film written and co-directed by Greg Palmer. The first co-production between the US and Soviet Georgia, with a film crew from Seattle shooting alongside locals in the Caucasus Mountains. It was aired on television as part of the 1990 Goodwill Games.[14]
  • The Phoenix Feather Alexandre Alexeieff and Claire Parker, (1974) animation on pinboard with chiaroscuro effect, 12 minutes, Black and White, part of European Folk Tales series produced by Max Massimino Garnier and John Halas for the Internation Animated Film Association 1971-1980, shown on Granada TV in UK and worldwide in 1980s.

Literature

See also

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to The Feather of Finist the Falcon.
Wikisource has original text related to this article:
  1. ^ Post Wheeler, Russian Wonder Tales "The Feather of Finist the Falcon"
  2. ^ Polevoĭ, Petr; Bain, Robert Nisbet. Russian Fairy Tales: From the Skazki of Polevoi. Chicago: Way & Williams, 1895. pp. 188-199.
  3. ^ Dole, Nathan Haskell. The Russian Fairy Book. Cambridge, the University Press, 1907. pp. 21-44.
  4. ^ Johns, Andreas. 2003. “Jack V. Haney. The Complete Russian Folktale. Vols. 1-4. 1-4”. In: FOLKLORICA - Journal of the Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Folklore Association 8 (2). p. 38. https://doi.org/10.17161/folklorica.v8i2.3741.
  5. ^ Dobrovolskaya, Varvara. "PLOT No. 425A OF COMPARATIVE INDEX OF PLOTS (“CUPID AND PSYCHE”) IN RUSSIAN FOLK-TALE TRADITION". In: Traditional culture. 2017. Vol. 18. № 3 (67). p. 139.
  6. ^ Riordan, James. Russian Folk-Tales. Oxford University Press. 2000. pp. 43-52. ISBN 0 19 274536 0.
  7. ^ Johns, Andreas (2010). Baba Yaga: The Ambiguous Mother and Witch of the Russian Folktale. New York: Peter Lang. p. 212. ISBN 978-0-8204-6769-6.
  8. ^ Haney, Jack V. The Complete Folktales of A. N. Afanas'ev. Volume II: Black Art and the Neo-Ancestral Impulse. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. 2015. pp. 536-556.
  9. ^ Сказка о финифтяном пёрушке ясного сокола at Wikisource.
  10. ^ Curtin, Jeremiah. Myths and Folk-tales of the Russians, Western Slavs, and Magyars. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. 1890. pp. 47-58.
  11. ^ Dobrovolskaya, Varvara. "PLOT No. 425A OF COMPARATIVE INDEX OF PLOTS (“CUPID AND PSYCHE”) IN RUSSIAN FOLK-TALE TRADITION". In: Traditional culture. 2017. Vol. 18. № 3 (67). pp. 147, 149.
  12. ^ Даскалова-Перковска, Лиляна et al. "Български фолклорни приказки: каталог". Университетско издателство "Св. Климент Охридски", 1994. p. 152. ISBN 9789540701561.
  13. ^ Wichmann, Yrjö. Syrjänische Volksdichtung. Helsinki 1916. pp. 104-110.
  14. ^ Palmer, Greg. "The Falcon". gregpalmer.com. Retrieved 27 January 2021.
  15. ^ Platonov, Andreĭ Platonovich; Chagnon, Mary. Finist the falcon prince: a Russian folk tale. Minneapolis, Minn. : Carolrhoda Books, 1973.
  16. ^ Riordan, James. Russian Folk-Tales. Oxford University Press. 2000. pp. 43-52. ISBN 0 19 274536 0.

Further reading

External links

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