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Sacred Texts: Legends and Sagas

Old Peter's Russian Tales: Prince Ivan, the Witch Baby, a...

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This is a children's fairy tale from Arthur Ransome's 1916 collection of retold Russian folk tales, squarely in the tradition of Russian skazki with their episodic quest structures, magical giants, and enchanted objects. The story follows little Prince Ivan, a mute boy rejected by his royal parents, who flees on a magical black horse after a wise groom warns him that his newborn sister — a witch with iron teeth — will devour the whole family. On his journey to the ends of the earth, Ivan encounters two dying needle-women and two dying giants (one who uproots forests, one who hurls mountains), each of whom cannot shelter him because they are nearing the end of their appointed tasks. He finds refuge with the Sun's little sister in a castle of rosy cloud, but grief at watching his father's palace crumble draws him back, armed with a magic comb, brush, and apples of youth. The tale is distinguished by its accumulating pathos — a rejected child who only finds his voice at the moment of escape — and by its tender rendering of Russian fairy-tale logic, where cosmic figures live only long enough to finish one great task and enchanted gifts transform the landscape itself. It suits readers who enjoy pre-Tolkien fairy-tale prose: gentle, rhythmically repetitive, and suffused with melancholy alongside the adventure.

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