The East Slavic fairy tale “Godfather’s Bed” (“The Robber Madej”, SUS 756B). Structure and genesis

Abstract

The fairy-tale type SUS 756B “Robber Madej” consists of two moves: in the first, the hero is a young man who becomes a priest who sets a penitential task to the robber Madej, the hero of the second move. The plot-forming element of 756B is the hero’s penance – growing a flowering apple tree from a dry cane. The East Slavic area of the spread of fairy tales about the godfather’s bed is divided into two zones – RussianBelarusian and Ukrainian-Belarusian. The East Slavic records lack the additional test of the second move, which is typical for Western European ones, where the hermit appears as a false hero who envies the forgiveness of the robber Madej. The East Slavic plots of 756B were borrowed from Western Europe through Polish influence, but they contain a significant number of features that are explained in the apocrypha about the Tree of the Cross and the iconography of the prudent robber, which became widespread during the period of the second South Slavic influence. “The Word about the Tree of the Cross” defines the actant structure of the fairy tale: Abraham turns into a priest giving an impossible penance, and Lot turns into a great sinner (Madej). Madej is emblematically correlated with Adam’s head: aged, he fuses with an apple tree, grows overgrown with moss, lying at the bottom of a tree symbolically identical to the Cross of the Lord. The form of the deed of the repentant robber goes back to several sources: the motif of the flowering of a dry cane – to the image of the club of Hercules and the rod of Aaron, and the motif of growing a tree from a dry cane – to the Life of John the Dwarf (Kolobos). The iconography of the evangelical-apocryphal prudent robber defines the cruciform pose of the robber Madej and the Garden of Eden surrounding him. Through ancient Russian iconography, one of the two proper names of the fairy – tale hero, Rakh, is spreading.