Encyclopedia of fairy-tale characters: "Geese-swans". Analysis of the fairy tale “Geese-swans” Who are the leaders in the fairy tale “geese and swans”
Olga Bazarya
Literary and artistic analysis of the Russian folk tale “Geese and Swans”
Literary and artistic analysis of Russian folk tales
« Swan geese»
1. « Swan geese» Russian folk tale – magical.
2. Theme: IN the fairy tale tells about, How Geese- the swans who served Baba Yaga stole his brother when his sister was playing with her friends, then she rushed to save him and saved him.
3. Idea: Nothing can replace your native home, native land, love for your family. Kindness, resourcefulness, and ingenuity are praised.
4. Characteristics of the main heroes:
In this fairy tale There is a positive hero, Sister, and a negative hero, Baba Yaga.
Sister: Loves his brother:
She gasped, rushed back and forth - no! She called him - Brother does not respond.
I started crying, but tears won’t help my grief.
Brave: Ran out into an open field; darted in the distance geese-swans and disappeared behind the dark forest. Geese-swans have long gained a bad reputation for themselves, they did a lot of mischief and kidnapped small children; the girl guessed that they had taken her brother away and rushed to catch up with them.
She knows how to correct her mistakes - It’s her own fault, she must find her brother herself.
Baba Yaga: Angry
A Baba Yaga sits in a hut, with a sinewy face and a clay leg;
She called Geese - swans: - hurry up Swan geese, fly in pursuit!
5. Artistic originality works:
Features of the composition:
o Traditional start fairy tales: Beginning (Lived once….)
o Exposition (parents' order)
o Tie (the abduction of her brother by Geese and Swans, the girl went in search of her brother)
o Climax (found my brother at Baba Yaga)
o Fairy tale ends traditionally: Denouement (escape from the hut and return home). -And she ran home, and it’s good that she managed to run, and then both father and mother came.
The tale is very dynamic, it contains many verbs of motion conveying sudden and quick actions. For example, about Geese - Swans they say: “They swooped in, picked them up, carried them away, disappeared” they convey the severity of the situation.
IN fairy tale the technique of personification of an inanimate is used peace:
Stove said; The apple tree helped cover it with branches; River said.
IN fairy tale the law of three is used repetitions: three tests three times chasing geese-swans. Characteristic language: Colorful, emotional, expressive. For example: Geese-swans have long gained a bad reputation for themselves, they did a lot of mischief and kidnapped small children; "Apple tree, apple tree, tell me where the geese flew?» My brother is sitting on a bench, playing with golden apples.
6. Conclusions:
Fairy tale teaches children to love their native land, their relatives and loved ones. Teaches you to keep promises, believe in goodness and good people, and helps in the formation of moral values.
Publications on the topic:
"Swan geese". Choreographic composition based on the Russian folk tale of the same name Video Raising patriotic feelings in preschool children through folk and classical music is my life’s work.
Goal: To develop interest in physical exercises, to form motor imagination. Cultivate a friendly attitude, arouse desire.
Game-dramatization based on the Russian folk tale “Geese and Swans”“Kindergarten of a general developmental type with priority implementation of activities for the physical development of children No. 47 “Forest Fairy Tale” - branch.
Summary of open direct educational activities based on the Russian folk tale “Geese and Swans”. OGO "Orphanage for children with disabilities in Cheremkhovo" Abstract of open direct educational.
Abstract - script of the Russian folk tale "Geese - Swans" middle group Abstract - script of the Russian folk tale "Geese - Swans" middle group Program content: Developmental tasks: - Develop skills.
Program content: 1. Tasks for the development of cognitive abilities: a) Improve counting skills within 10, consolidate composition.
Summary of a lesson in the junior group on reading the Russian folk tale “Geese and Swans” Target. Introduce children to the fairy tale “geese and swans”, make children want to listen to the fairy tale again. Preliminary work. The day before the teacher.
GCD for speech development based on the Russian folk tale “Geese and Swans” in the senior speech therapy group GCD for speech development based on the Russian folk tale “The Geese and Swans” in the senior speech therapy group. Correctional and educational.
Target. Reinforce mathematical knowledge in a playful way. Tasks. Strengthen the ability to count within five, establish the equality of objects.
Outline
Analysis of the fairy tale “Geese and Swans” - theme, idea, what the fairy tale “Geese and Swans” teaches
“Geese and swans” fairy tale analysis
Subject: The fairy tale tells how the Swan Geese who served Baba Yaga stole his brother when his sister was playing with her friends, then she rushed to save him and saved him.
Idea : Nothing can replace your native home, native land, love for your family. Kindness, resourcefulness, and ingenuity are praised.
What does the fairy tale “Geese and Swans” teach?
The fairy tale “Geese and Swans” teaches children love for family and friends, responsibility, determination, courage, and the ability to achieve goals. The fairy tale also teaches respect for the requests of loved ones.
The main meaning of the fairy tale “Geese and Swans” is that the most precious thing to a person is his family. Love for family and friends, responsibility for their fate - such themes run like a red thread through the entire fairy tale. The fairy tale also teaches the reader to be resourceful and decisive, and not to get lost in difficult situations. Although the sister made a mistake by leaving her brother unattended, she made every effort to correct the situation and was successful in returning the little brother home. The sister set a goal for herself - and she achieved this goal, despite the obstacles put in her way.
Heroes of "Geese-Swans":
- Brother
- Sister
- The stove, the river and the apple tree- wonderful helpers
- Baba Yaga.
- Swan geese
Features of the composition of the fairy tale “Geese and Swans”:
- Start fairy talestraditional: Beginning (Lived once….)
- Exposition (parents' order)
- The beginning (I kidnap my brother by geese and swans, my sister went in search of her brother)
- Climax (sister found brother at Baba Yaga)
- Denouement (escape from Baba Yaga's hut and return to her parents' house)
The tale is very dynamic, it contains many verbs of motion conveying sudden and quick actions. For example, about Geese - Swans they say: “They swooped in, picked them up, carried them away, disappeared” they convey the severity of the situation.
IN fairy tale the technique of personification of an inanimate is used peace: Stove said; The apple tree helped cover it with branches; River said.
The use of the number three is also traditional for Russian fairy tales - three magical characters (a stove, an apple tree and a river) who test the main character and help her get home.
Practical task - analysis of poetic works of the 19th century
Analysis of “The Tale of the Dead Princess and the Seven Knights” by A.S. Pushkin.
Pushkin's fairy tale, despite the apparent external simplicity characteristic of all the poet's work, is deep in meaning and complex in psychological intensity. The author contrasts the young princess with an evil stepmother.
The poet portrays the young girl as kind, meek, hardworking and defenseless. Her outer beauty matches her inner beauty. It is difficult for her to live in a world where there is envy, evil and deception.
The queen-stepmother appears to us completely differently. She is also a beauty, but “angry”, and jealous, and envious.
The idea that external beauty is nothing without internal beauty permeates the entire fairy tale. The young princess was loved by many. The question arises why they didn't save her. Yes, because only Prince Elisha loved her truly, sincerely and devotedly.
Indeed, let's turn to a fairy tale. The truthful mirror involuntarily betrayed the princess. Chernavka, who once took pity on the girl, also turned out to be capable of betrayal. And the kindness and warmth of the forest brothers were devoid of real depth.
The faithful love of the prince Elisha saves the princess, awakening her from eternal sleep.
Evil, the poet claims, is not omnipotent, it is defeated.
The evil queen-stepmother, although she “took everything with her mind,” is not confident in herself. That's why she constantly needs a mirror. The queen's stepmother dies of envy and melancholy. So Pushkin showed the internal failure and doom of evil.
Analysis of a work of oral folk art
Literary and artistic analysis of Russian folk tales
"Swan geese"
1. “Geese and Swans” is a Russian folk tale – magical.
2. Theme: The fairy tale tells how the Geese-swans who served Baba Yaga stole his brother when his sister was playing with her friends, then she rushed to save him and saved him.
3. Idea: Nothing can replace a native home, native land, love for family. Kindness, resourcefulness, and ingenuity are praised.
4. Characteristics of the main characters:
In this fairy tale there is a positive hero, Sister, and a negative hero, Baba Yaga.
Sister: Loves her brother:
She gasped, rushed back and forth - no! She called him - Brother does not respond.
I started crying, but tears won’t help my grief.
Brave: Ran out into an open field; Geese-swans darted in the distance and disappeared behind the dark forest. Geese-swans have long gained a bad reputation for themselves, they did a lot of mischief and kidnapped small children; the girl guessed that they had taken her brother away and rushed to catch up with them.
She knows how to correct her mistakes - It’s her own fault, she must find her brother herself.
Baba Yaga: Evil
A Baba Yaga sits in a hut, with a sinewy face and a clay leg;
She called to the geese-swans: - quickly, geese-swans, fly in pursuit!
5. Artistic originality of the work:
Features of the composition:
o Traditional beginning of a fairy tale: Beginning (Once upon a time, there were….)
o Exposure (parental orders)
o The plot (the abduction of her brother by Geese and Swans, the girl went in search of her brother)
o Climax (found my brother at Baba Yaga)
o The fairy tale ends traditionally: Denouement (escape from the hut and return home). -And she ran home, and it’s good that she managed to run, and then both father and mother came.
The tale is very dynamic, it has many verbs of motion conveying sudden and quick actions. For example, about Geese-swans they say: “They swooped in, picked them up, carried them away, disappeared,” they convey the severity of the situation.
The fairy tale uses the technique of personifying the inanimate world:
The stove said; The apple tree helped cover it with branches; The river said.
The fairy tale uses the law of threefold repetition: three trials, three times a chase of geese and swans. Characteristics of the language: Colorful, emotional, expressive. For example: Geese-swans have long gained a bad reputation for themselves, they have done a lot of mischief and stolen small children; “Apple trees, apple trees, tell me, where did the geese fly? “My brother is sitting on the bench, playing with golden apples.
6. Conclusions:
The fairy tale teaches children to love their native land, their loved ones. Teaches you to keep promises, believe in goodness and good people, and helps in the formation of moral values.
3. Analysis of the poem by A.S. Pushkin "Winter Morning"
1) Date of writing and publication.
The poem “Winter Morning” was written by A.S. Pushkin on November 3, 1829, during his exile in the village of Mikhailovskoye. Then the poet’s life was filled with loneliness, boredom and sadness. However, it was during these years that Alexander Sergeevich was struck by inspiration.
2) Artistic method.
This work belongs to the literary movement of romanticism.
3) Choosing a genre of tradition.
This poem can be classified as landscape lyric poetry.
4) Main theme.
The leading theme is the theme of a winter morning, the theme of the beauty of Russian nature in winter.
5) The meaning of the name.
The title of the poem sounds very poetic. Just listen, “Winter Morning”! Nature in white winter decoration immediately appears before your eyes. Thus, the title expresses the content of the work as a whole.
6) Lyrical plot and its movement. : The plot of the lyrical work is weakened. The poem is based on contemplation of nature, which became the impulse for lyrical experience.
7) Composition. Presence of frame. Main structural parts.
Throughout the entire storyline, linear composition prevails. The poem consists of five six-line lines (sextines). In the first stanza, the author clearly admires the frosty Russian winter and invites his companion to take a walk on such a beautiful, sunny day:
“Frost and sun; wonderful day!
You are still dozing, dear friend -
It's time, beauty, wake up:
Open your closed eyes
Towards northern Aurora,
Appear as the star of the north!”
The mood of the second stanza is opposite to the previous mood. This part of the poem is constructed using the technique of antithesis, that is, opposition. A.S. Pushkin turns to the past, recalls that just yesterday nature was rampant and indignant:
“Evening, do you remember, the blizzard was angry,
There was darkness in the cloudy sky;
The moon is like a pale spot
Through the dark clouds it turned yellow,
And you sat sad..."
And now? Everything is completely different. This is absolutely confirmed by the following lines of the poem:
"Under blue skies
Magnificent carpets,
Glistening in the sun, the snow lies...";
"The whole room has an amber shine
Illuminated..."
Undoubtedly, there are notes of contrast here that give the work a certain sophistication:
“It’s nice to think by the bed.
But you know: shouldn’t I tell you to get into the sleigh?
Should I ban the brown filly?
8) Basic moods. The tone of the poem.
Reading this work, the heart and soul are filled with positive emotions. Joy, fun and cheerfulness fill the poem. Each of you probably feels the freshness that permeates these lines.
9) Rhythm, size.
The poem is written in iambic tetrameter.
10) Rhyme, the nature of the rhyme.
The rhyme is mixed; character of rhyme: exact; the first two lines are female, the third is male, the fourth and fifth are female, the sixth is male.
11) Vocabulary. Language means of expression.
Positively colored epithets: “lovely friend”, “wonderful day”, “magnificent carpets”, “transparent forest”, “cheerful crackling”, “amber shine”, “dear friend”, “dear shore”.
Negatively colored epithets: “cloudy sky”, “gloomy clouds”, “you sat sadly”, “empty fields”.
Thus, positively colored epithets are designed to create a joyful mood in the reader’s soul.
Metaphor: “the moon turned yellow.”
Personification: “the blizzard was angry,” “the darkness was rushing.”
Simile: “The moon is like a pale spot.”
12) Poetic syntax.
“And the spruce turns green through the frost,
And the river glitters under the ice.”
Rhetorical exclamation: “Frost and sun; wonderful day!”
Rhetorical appeal: “dear friend”, “adorable friend”, “beauty”.
13) Sound recording. Phonetic coloring of the verse.
Alliteration: in the first stanza the consonant sound “s” is repeated repeatedly (sounds of a winter morning); in the second stanza the consonant sound “l” is repeated (this gives a feeling of cold, frost).
14) The idea of the poem, identified during the analysis process.
Thus, A.S. Pushkin sought in his poem “Winter Morning” to show the beauty of the Russian winter, its greatness and strength, which generate a joyful mood in the reader’s soul.
4. Analysis of B. Zhitkov’s cycles: Stories about animals, sea stories, about brave people, stories about technology” (OPTIONAL)
Animal stories- This is a series of short stories of human relationships, where the author describes various non-fictional cases of people being saved by animals, their devotion, strong and no less strong attachment. Subtle observation, knowledge of the habits of representatives of the animal world, and the ability to talk about complex things in simple and understandable language are what distinguishes Zhitkov’s stories. “Stories about animals” vividly reflect the entire rich and sincere inner world of the author, his principles and moral ideals, be it respect for the work of others in the story “about an elephant” or the strength and accuracy of the Russian language in the story “Mongoose”.
5. Reading and reviewing the book “What I Saw” by B.S. Zhitkov.
Zhitkov's stories from the series “What I Saw” are a collection of short everyday stories for preschool children. The stories provide answers to many children's questions and are aimed at inquisitive "why" children. Children will learn everything about how the railway, metro and airport work, go to the zoo and get acquainted with many animals and their habits, and learn to communicate with peers. What I saw is a real encyclopedia of life for kids.
6.Analysis of the works of poets of the 20-30s. XX century(V.V. Mayakovsky, S.Ya. Marshak,).
I took Marshak “Silly Mouse”
“The Tale of a Stupid Mouse” and “The Tale of a Smart Mouse” Marshak.
The fairy tale is based on an everyday fact that is well known to a child - mice are afraid of cats - but inverted: the mouse chooses his natural, primordial enemy as his nanny. The fact that this fact is elementary, everyday, is very important, because, as K. Chukovsky noted, in order to perceive such “game poems”, inverted poems, “a child needs a firm knowledge of the true state of affairs.” Therefore, “the fantasy of Marshak’s fairy tales is mainly in the hyperbole of everyday situations,” and therefore it is easy for a three-year-old not even a reader, but also a listener, to guess what the true fate of the mouse, which is mentioned in the final stanza of the fairy tale. It is the everyday, self-evident basis of this collision that gives rise to its unambiguous, most common interpretation: the expressive ellipsis conceals the death of a stupid hero in the toothy mouth of a cunning cat.
The poet in this work used the traditions of folk tales about animals. Indeed, the characters of the heroes, the perfect cumulative composition, the humor - all this in Marshak’s fairy tale directly echoes the folk tale about animals, which, by the way, we may recall, has long become a specific children’s tale.
The incompleteness of the ending in “The Tale of the Stupid Mouse” is not a rebus that the little reader must solve, but a manifestation of the intuition of the poet, who felt it was impossible to speak directly about the death of the hero, because he cannot die. This means that the fairy tale is not over yet. Marshak graduated almost thirty years later. Obviously, something lived in the poet’s mind all these years that forced him to return to one of his early works and finish everything to the end, to bring to the surface what had already existed before, but lay in the depths of the text and sometimes ended up in the minds of readers (and criticism) left unattended. In 1955, “The Tale of a Smart Mouse” appeared (“Youth”, 1955, No. 2). It is a direct continuation of "The Tale of the Stupid Mouse" and begins where this last one ends:
The cat took the mouse away
And he sings: “Don’t be afraid, baby.”
Let's play for an hour or two
Cat and mouse, dear!
The mouse agrees, beats the cat and runs away from her. What follows is a whole series of encounters with animals, but not domestic ones, but dangerous ones, forest animals - a ferret, a hedgehog, an owl - and they all offer the mouse a game in which his life is the stake. And the smart mouse manages to escape from everyone.
Of course, this fairy tale, although it is a complete whole, is not independent: it continues the first one, develops what was already set in the character of the cat from “The Tale of the Stupid Mouse.” What was previously asked is now shown in detail: the hero finds himself in a world of fun danger, a dangerous game, inhabited by the cat’s “doubles” - forest animals, and emerges from the meeting as a winner.
Now the fairy tale is over:
The mother mouse is so happy!
Well, hug a mouse.
And sisters and brothers
They play mouse and mouse with him.
Analyzing these two fairy tales, we can come to the conclusion that they trace the composition of a magical folk tale, and there is an analogy with it. The “stupid” and then the “smart” mouse gradually appears to the readers in these qualities in much the same way as the typical hero of a fairy tale, Ivan the Fool. (We can talk specifically about the gradual manifestation of the image - the hero, so to speak, slowly “takes off the mask” - but not about its development). The content of these images is, of course, different, but the principle of manifestation is the same. Indeed, in the first part (“The Tale of a Stupid Mouse”) it is shown that the mouse is stupid, but in the second part of Marshak’s poem the characterization of the hero as smart is obvious and it is no coincidence that it is included in the title of the second part. In the same way, in a fairy tale, the hero, Ivan the Fool, at first seems stupid, although he can least of all be called that, and at the end of the fairy tale, his intelligence, kindness and nobility are obvious to everyone.
Marshak in his fairy tale forms a program, more precisely, even a program of a program of primary, elementary moral and pre-social reactions (choices) of a young reader, a program of what can be called an ethical (aesthetic in this case) attitude to reality. This program creates that primary grid of images, representations and mental “choices” in the reader, which in the future can become more complicated and more specific for as long as desired. Behind Marshak’s small fairy-tale world there is a big real world, for, as the poet himself said, “a fairy tale has a happy opportunity... to combine the largest things with the smallest, overcoming insurmountable obstacles.”
Fairy tale "Geese-swans" - one of the favorites of many children today. This fairy tale, like many others, teaches us to be kinder, wiser and never forget about our family and friends. So, let's figure out what exactly this wonderful fairy tale teaches us. Firstly, fairy tale "Geese and Swans" teaches children to love their brothers and sisters, appreciate them and never leave them in trouble. Secondly, the fairy tale teaches kids to do good deeds.
It is important to at least remember the situation when the apple tree asked the girl to eat an apple or bake a pie. The girl did not run away, despite the fact that she was in a hurry, but helped them and, in return for their good deed, received clues about where her brother might be. If you know any other instructive lessons from the fairy tale or just want to talk about your impressions of fairy tale "Geese and Swans", write in the comments.
Swan geese
The girl returned, looked - but her brother was gone! She gasped, rushed to look for him, back and forth - he was nowhere to be found! She called to him, burst into tears, lamented that bad things would happen from her father and mother, but her brother did not respond.
She ran out into an open field and only saw: swan geese darted in the distance and disappeared behind the dark forest. Then she realized that they had taken away her brother: there had long been a bad reputation about geese-swans that they carried away small children.
The girl rushed to catch up with them. She ran and ran and saw that there was a stove.
- Stove, stove, tell me, where did the geese-swans fly?
The stove answers her:
- I’ll eat rye pie! My father doesn’t even eat wheat...
Apple tree, apple tree, tell me, where did the geese and swans fly?
- My father doesn’t even eat garden ones... The apple tree didn’t tell her. The girl ran further. A milk river flows on the banks of jelly.
- Milk river, jelly banks, where did the swan geese fly?
- My father doesn’t even eat cream... She ran for a long time through the fields and forests. The day was approaching evening, there was nothing to do - I had to go home. Suddenly he sees a hut standing on a chicken leg, with one window, turning around.
In the hut, the old Baba Yaga is spinning a tow. And my brother is sitting on the bench, playing with silver apples. The girl entered the hut:
- Hello, grandma!
The girl gave her porridge, the mouse said to her:
- Girl, are you spinning?
The mouse answers her:
- I’m spinning, grandma... Baba Yaga heated the bathhouse and went after the girl. And there is no one in the hut.
Baba Yaga shouted:
The geese-swans did not see it, they flew past. The girl and her brother ran again. And the geese-swans returned to meet us, they are about to see. What to do? Trouble! The apple tree is standing...
The geese-swans did not see it, they flew past. The girl ran again. He runs, he runs, he’s not far away. Then the geese-swans saw her, cackled - they swooped in, beat her with their wings, and look, they would tear her brother out of her hands. The girl ran to the stove:
Swan geese
There lived a man and a woman. They had a daughter and a little son.
“Daughter,” the mother said, “we’ll go to work, take care of your brother.” Don't leave the yard, be smart - we'll buy you a handkerchief.
The father and mother left, and the daughter forgot what she was ordered to do: she sat her brother down on the grass under the window, and she ran outside for a walk. Geese-swans swooped in, picked up the boy, and carried him away on their wings. 
The girl returned, looked - but her brother was gone! She gasped, rushed to look for him, back and forth - he was nowhere to be found! She called to him, burst into tears, lamented that bad things would happen from her father and mother, but her brother did not respond. 
She ran out into an open field and only saw: swan geese darted in the distance and disappeared behind the dark forest. Then she realized that they had taken away her brother: there had long been a bad reputation about geese-swans that they carried away small children.
The girl rushed to catch up with them. She ran and ran and saw that there was a stove. 
- Stove, stove, tell me, where did the geese-swans fly?
The stove answers her:
- Eat my rye pie, I’ll tell you.
- I’ll eat rye pie! My father doesn’t even eat wheat...
The stove didn't tell her. The girl ran further - there was an apple tree. 
- Apple tree, apple tree, tell me, where did the geese-swans fly?
- Eat my forest apple - I’ll tell you.
- My father doesn’t even eat garden ones... The apple tree didn’t tell her. The girl ran further. A milk river flows on the banks of jelly. 
- Milk river, jelly banks, where did the swan geese fly?
- Eat my simple jelly with milk - I’ll tell you.
- My father doesn’t even eat cream... She ran for a long time through the fields and forests. The day was approaching evening, there was nothing to do - I had to go home. Suddenly he sees a hut standing on a chicken leg, with one window, turning around. 
In the hut, the old Baba Yaga is spinning a tow. And my brother is sitting on the bench, playing with silver apples. The girl entered the hut:
- Hello, grandma!
- Hello, girl! Why did she appear?
“I walked through mosses and swamps, got my dress wet, and came to warm up.”
- Sit down while you spin the tow. Baba Yaga gave her a spindle and left. The girl is spinning - suddenly a mouse runs out from under the stove and says to her:
- Girl, girl, give me some porridge, I’ll tell you something nice.
The girl gave her porridge, the mouse said to her:
- Baba Yaga went to heat the bathhouse. She will wash you, steam you, put you in an oven, fry you and eat you, and ride on your bones herself. The girl sits neither alive nor dead, crying, and the mouse tells her again:
- Don’t wait, take your brother, run, and I’ll spin the tow for you.
The girl took her brother and ran. And Baba Yaga comes to the window and asks:
- Girl, are you spinning?
The mouse answers her:
- I’m spinning, grandma... Baba Yaga heated the bathhouse and went after the girl. And there is no one in the hut.
Baba Yaga shouted:
- Swan geese! Fly in pursuit! My sister took my brother away!..
The sister and brother ran to the milk river. He sees geese-swans flying.
- River, mother, hide me!
- Eat my simple jelly.
The girl ate and said thank you. The river sheltered her under the jelly bank. 
The geese-swans did not see it, they flew past. The girl and her brother ran again. And the geese-swans returned to meet us, they are about to see. What to do? Trouble! The apple tree is standing...
- Apple tree, mother, hide me!
- Eat my forest apple. The girl quickly ate it and said thank you. The apple tree shaded it with branches and covered it with leaves. 
The geese-swans did not see it, they flew past. The girl ran again. He runs, he runs, he’s not far away. Then the geese-swans saw her, cackled - they swooped in, beat her with their wings, and look, they would tear her brother out of her hands. The girl ran to the stove:
- Stove, mother, hide me!
- Eat my rye pie.
The girl rather put a pie in her mouth, and she and her brother went into the oven, sat down in the stomata.
The geese-swans flew and flew, screamed and shouted, and flew away empty-handed to Baba Yaga. 
The girl said thank you to the stove and ran home with her brother.
And then the father and mother came. 
Swan geese
Fabulous snow-white birds from the bright Heavenly worlds, messengers and servants of the Slavic gods. They help those who do a good deed and those who ask them kindly for it. Sometimes they serve Baba Yaga because she knows their language and knows how to communicate with them.
In many folk tales, man's oldest helper is a bird. Our ancestors, the Slavs, worshiped the Birds of Heaven and said that after death a person’s soul turns into such a bird or flies on it to another kingdom (another world) - Iriy Nebesky.
In ancient Rome, when an emperor died, an eagle was released to carry his soul to Heaven, to the upper world.
Many Slavic Gods have their own winged helpers: Rod has a white falcon (patron of Rus'), Perun has an eagle (patron of knights), Mokosh has a duck (patron of the family hearth and well-being), Veles has the prophetic bird Gamayun.
Until now, the white bird is an image of peace on earth, an image of a pure human Soul, an image of pure Love and Fidelity. One of the most beautiful images of Russian fairy tales is the Swan Princess, one of the most beautiful addresses to a girl is the White Swan, Swan.
“The elders left, and the daughter forgot what she was ordered to do; I sat my brother down on the grass under the window, and she ran outside, started playing, and took a walk. Geese-swans swooped in, picked up the boy, and carried him away on their wings.” (“Geese-swans”, Russian folk tale)
Source "Fairytale Dictionary"
The sacred meaning of the fairy tale.
The fairy tale “Geese and Swans” has a wonderful meaning - you need to help others, and then good will return in kind. In general, in many fairy tales the hero walks along the roads, saves animals, and then everyone responds to him in kind. There is one important piece of information to grasp here: there is deferred good in the world. This means that your goodness will not necessarily return to you this minute; perhaps they will help you many years later, when you need it. And, most importantly, you should not expect that you will be repaid with kindness - you need to help people just like that.
GEESE-SWANS (game)
The game involves from 5 to 40 people.
Description.
On one side of the site (hall) a line is drawn separating the “goose barn”, on the other side - a line behind which there is a “pasture”. From the players they choose a “shepherd” and a “wolf”. The rest are “geese” and “swans”. They stand in a row in the gooseneck. The “Shepherd” is located on the side of the “geese”, the “Wolf” is in the middle of the site. “The shepherd” says: “Geese-swans, walk until you see the wolf!”
All the “geese” and “swans” “fly to the pasture”, imitating the birds. As soon as the “shepherd” says loudly:
“Geese-swans, go home, the gray wolf is behind the mountain!”, they run away from the “pasture” into the “gooseneck”, and the “wolf” catches them to the line of their “gooseneck”. Those caught are counted and released into their “herd” or they go to the “wolf’s den” and remain there until he is replaced. They play with one “wolf” 2-3 times, then choose a new “wolf” and a “shepherd” from those not caught. In conclusion, the best “geese” (who were never caught by a “wolf”) and the best “wolf” (who managed to catch more “geese”) are noted. If there are few participants, then they play until all the “geese” are caught.
Rules.
The “geese” are allowed to run out and return to the “geese” only after the words spoken by the “shepherd”. Whoever runs away first is considered caught.
“Wolf” can catch only after the words “under the mountain” and only up to the “goose line” line. Children love to have a conversation between the “shepherd” and the “geese” in this game: after the words “gray wolf behind the mountain,” the “geese” ask:
- What is he doing there?
The “shepherd” replies: “He’s nibbling the geese!”
- Which ones?
- Gray and white.
After the last words, the “geese” run home to the “goose barn.”
This game can be complicated by introducing a second “wolf” into it, placing obstacles in the form of benches (“road”) on the path of movement of the “geese” and “swans”, along which you need to run or jump.
The driver has the right to catch those running away only up to the “home” line; a player caught behind the line is not considered caught.
Subject: Russian folk tale "Geese and Swans"
Lesson objectives: be able to analyze fairy tales, choose the right passage for reading and retelling; draw a verbal portrait.
During the classes
I. Organizational moment and communication of lesson objectives
II. Introduction to the topic. Preparation for initial perception
- Guys, what fairy tales do you know?
- Open the textbook “Literary Reading”. Find the section "Oral"folk art" and read the names of the fairy tales. Whothe author of the fairy tales you read?
- Guess which fairy tale this is from:
1) “Since then, the fox and the crane have been apart from their friendship.”
2) “Once upon a time there was an old grandmother, a laughing granddaughter,chicken, little mouse..."
3) “Once upon a time there were two mice, Twirl and Twirl, and a cockerel Vociferous throat."
What is fabulous about these fairy tales?
III. Retelling a fairy tale. Primary perception
Today I will tell a new Russian folk tale “Geese” swans." The heroine of this fairy tale is in trouble. How this happened, who helped her - we will learn about all this carefully after listening to a fairy tale. I will tell a story with the help of a carteen, try to think about the following questions(questions are written on the board):
- What wonderful objects does the heroine of the fairy tale encounter?
1.During the course of the story, vocabulary work is carried out.
Let's try to explain the meaning of the words:
tow - a bunch of flax prepared for yarn; spindle - a device for hand spinning, a rod for winding thread; stomata is the outlet of the furnace.
2. Checking primary perception.
- Did you like the fairy tale?
- What did you like about the fairy tale?
- What did you like most?
- What wonderful objects does the girl encounter?
- Who helped the girl save her brother?
- Will we answer these questions after we read the fairy tale?
IV. Analysis of a fairy tale
First stage of analysis:
1. Work on understanding the plot, reading a fairy tale.
1) The beginning of the action (commencement).
2) Development of action.
3) Turning point (main action).
4) The most acute moment in the development of action (climax).
5) End of action (denouement).
2.
Independent reading - searching in parts.
Second stage of analysis:
3. Checking independent work, working on deepening We give a practical idea of the fairy tale and the genre.
Find and read the expressions that appear
in a fairy tale:
A) Once upon a time there lived a man and a woman - the beginning.
b) Fairytale words and expressions: Open field, dark forest,
the day is approaching evening, a hut on chicken legs, old Baba Yaga, silver apples, a girl, a mother apple tree, a stove -
mother.
4. Working on the word “geese-swans”:
- Why is the fairy tale called that?
- What kind of birds are “geese-swans”?
5. Word drawing:
- What do Baba Yaga’s servants, the magical “geese-swans”, look like in the fairy tale?
- What feelings do you experience looking at this magical flock?
V. Updating knowledge
Selective reading with visual commentary and answers to questions.
- Who helps the girl save her brother, read.
- How did the sister guess who took her brother away?
- Read what the stove, the apple tree, and the river asked the girl for.How did she answer them?
- Why is neither the stove, nor the river, nor the apple tree for the first time could the girl?
- Read the passages that talk about how wonderfulthe objects helped the children out.
- Why did they help the girl this time?
- Why didn't they help her right away?
- How did the girl’s behavior change at the second meeting?
VI. Selective retelling close to the text
1. Imagine yourself in the girl's place.
2. What could she feel on the threshold of the hut?
3. How did the girl behave in the hut?
VII. Summing up the work on the fairy tale
- Why did the accident happen? Who is to blame for what happened?
- When and why does a girl change for the better?
Homework
Prepare a retelling of the fairy tale, a drawing for a passage of your choice.
We all love to listen to stories, and even more so to fairy tales! Many analytical psychologists have been and are engaged in the interpretation of fairy tales: Hans Dieckmann, Marie-Louise von Franz, Sybill Birkhäuser-Oeri, Clarissa Pinkola Estes. They continue to be studied by mythologists, linguists, historians and other scientists. And they started telling fairy tales from the very beginning of human society!
The magic of a fairy tale
Have you ever wondered why fairy tales not only did not fade into oblivion over time, but continued to live and remain popular?
For centuries, humanity has been tormented by the same existential questions. Who am I? Why am I here? What is the most important thing in my life? What should I not miss in order for my life to be filled with meaning? What comes first: spirit or matter? How to explain complex categories - space and time, why the sun rises and sets, what life and death are? How to explain the change of seasons? How to understand categories such as “good” and “evil”? How does life work?
Living in an unexplained, incomprehensible world is scary, so ancient people tried to look for answers. Initially, humanity did not have as many tools and as much information as it does now, but the structure of the world was the same. And our ancestors tried to explain life through observation of nature, people, through intuition, including through speculation and outright fantasy. This is how a common picture of the world is created from many disparate parts. And a myth appears. Afterwards, bit by bit, the information obtained was passed on to descendants by word of mouth as a great value, making up fairy tales.
Here we must understand that folk tales were not specially composed. They appeared over the course of life, were repeatedly refined through retellings, and therefore are replete with symbols that are understandable to our unconscious, but, unfortunately, not to our narrow consciousness. Therefore, fairy tales are not so easy to understand!
When we, with our thinking, try to stretch ancient fairy tales onto modern knowledge, like an old stocking on a leg, they immediately crumble into dust. All their charm and attractiveness are lost, and the secret slips away. Fairy tales do not have the practical meaning that we want to extract, explaining from our rational point of view: this hero is good, and that one is bad, and the moral in the fairy tale is such and such.
A fairy tale does not lend itself to ordinary everyday logic, it is not linear, and, what is very important, it is not characterized by edification. Fairy-tale stories contain sacred knowledge about life, the world, people, death, and the soul. And similar to how the world evolves, what stages it goes through, such stages of development correspond to the maturation of the human soul. That’s why fairy-tale metaphors are so close to us, and fairy tales, without exception, touch us at an incredible depth!
Through understanding the events of the fairy tale, we can understand ourselves. It is vital to know the myth or fairy tale that defines our inner life in order to influence the course of current events and, if possible, avoid committing fatal acts. That is why the fairy tale has lived, continues and will live among us.
If we treat it as a serious instrument, then its wisdom will rain down on us like a golden rain, and through understanding the sacred meaning of the fairy tale, we will be able to comprehend our soul and our current spiritual needs. At the very end, I will give you a great practice exercise related to your favorite fairy tale, and you can see for yourself the above.
And now I invite you on a journey through the Russian folk tale “Geese and Swans”, known from childhood.
"Swan geese"
Was she one of your favorites growing up? Have you watched the cartoon of the same name? Have you re-read this fairy tale? What did you think about when you read it to your children and when your parents read it to you? What did you imagine? And now a tricky question: what do you think it’s about? It seems that everything is clear: the sister disobeyed her parents, and then saves her brother from being eaten by Baba Yaga, a happy ending and everyone is happy.
But I wouldn’t rush to conclusions so quickly! Not only are there some strange geese-swans, an evil Baba Yaga in a hut on chicken legs, which gives a special flavor to this story, but also a talking stove, an apple tree and a milk river with jelly banks. All this makes me think that there is something to understand here, which is what I suggest you do right now.
Let me remind you that there are several versions of this tale: folk, in the adaptation of Alexander Afanasyev and in the adaptation of Alexei Tolstoy. They differ slightly in who turns out to be the girl's assistant, but overall the plot is the same.
Nowadays, thanks to the popularization of transactional analysis, everyone is familiar with the concepts of “Inner Child”, “Parent” and “Adult”. The concept of subpersonalities, which Assogioli relied on in his “Psychosynthesis,” is also well-known. When analyzing this fairy tale, we will rely on the concepts of analytical psychology, mythology, symbol drama and psychoanalysis. And you will see how the deep theater will open up and the fairy tale from flat will instantly become bright, convex, having a different meaning, and you will recognize completely different “Geese-Swans”.
We will analyze the fairy tale at the subjective level, that is, as if all the characters in this fairy tale exist within one person. And since the main character is a girl, we will consider the fairy tale from the point of view of feminine (female) psychology.
Geese-swans flew in
“Once upon a time there lived a man and a woman. They had a daughter and a little son.”
It all started with the fact that in an ordinary peasant family, the mother and father go to the fair, and the eldest daughter is asked to look after her brother, and as a reward she was promised to bring a gift - a handkerchief. The sister, despite her parents’ orders, ran off for a walk and missed her brother. Fearing his parents' anger, he runs to God knows where to help him out.
Geese-swans are not simple birds, but with meaning. In fairy tales, they are often the ones who serve Baba Yaga, stealing children at her behest. Sometimes she starves them until they bring her good prey, a tasty morsel. If we look at the symbolism of the goose and the swan separately, we will see many similarities, but in the Celtic tradition they are generally interchangeable.
Both the goose and the swan are solar symbols: ancient people associated the arrival of spring or winter with their arrivals and departures. It is known that Apollo, the sun god in ancient mythology, flew on swans. Geese saved Rome. Both the goose and the swan are bird guides to the world of the dead.
Waterfowl have long enjoyed special respect among the Slavs, which is why they, along with the falcon, swallow and dove, are often used in ancient wedding symbols. Ritual songs were composed about them that “geese-swans fly through the grape garden and drop wedding rings,” pre-wedding lamentations about the conspiracy of the bride and groom’s matchmakers, and, in fact, wedding songs. The gray goose was usually compared to the groom, while the bride, of course, was compared to a white swan.
“The most striking example among the Russians is the famous song with parallelism about two flying “flocks” of birds with the words “A white swan lagged behind the flock of swan... / pestered the gray geese,” performed at the end of the pre-wedding stage,”- wrote T.A. Bernshtam in his book “Bird symbolism in the traditional culture of the Eastern Slavs.” The contrast is present because the bride and groom, according to ancient customs, cannot belong to the same family.
A.V. Gura wrote this: “In the Astrakhan province they invite people to a wedding with the words: “Come to our prince to eat bread and salt and destroy the white swan!” By swan here we mean wedding bread - a loaf with an elaborate decoration in the form of a pair of swans, geese or doves. All these birds were considered symbols of a strong union.".
Motifs of geese and swans were present in ancient embroideries and carpets. “On the hems of women’s shirts, the ends of wedding towels and bed curtains, abstract symbols of waterfowl and poultry were usually depicted under the collective names “peahens” and “petuns”” (Maslova G.S. Ornament of Russian folk embroidery as a historical and ethnographic source).
But still there is a difference between them, and it is significant. Our ancestors managed to tame and domesticate the goose, which is why it often symbolizes the domestic and female spheres of life, but the swan remained wild, free, reflecting the spirit of independence, a certain nobility, and grace. The goose was eaten, and shooting a swan was considered a great sin.
In this mythological flock, the wild bird is opposed to the domestic one, just as the groom's clan is opposed to the bride's clan, and is united in one group. This union of opposites allows them to live in two worlds - the everyday manifested reality, like geese, and the distant world of non-existence - Navi, like swans.
Brother and sister in fairy tales symbolize the union of male and female opposites, the deep connection of Anima and Animus within the individual. The geese-swans take the boy, thereby separating his sister and brother, and take him to the kingdom of the dead, to Baba Yaga, we will talk about her in detail here.
The heroine of this fairy tale loses touch with her masculine, spiritual part. Her spirit seems to be carried away into the world of Baba Yaga. Soul and spirit are separated, and the girl will have to go through severe trials to unite them again.
From a psychological point of view, a spiritual attitude has sunk deep into the unconscious. In real life, we can see this when a person strives only for material wealth or daily cares only about his daily bread, forgetting about the spiritual component of life. Then all his conversations come down to empty chatter, which does not make his soul warm and makes close contact impossible.
The masculine part of our heroine has been lost, a split has occurred into male and female parts. What does it mean? We see a similar harmful division in the so-called modern “Vedic tradition”, where each spouse is assigned a certain role: the woman must be beautiful and give birth to children, and the man must realize himself in society and earn money.
It would not be bad, but if a woman denies her masculine part and does not realize her creative potential, then this will inevitably end in a deep crisis. And therefore, a well-developed animus in a woman is an opportunity to be successful in the outside world, mastery of male energy, and not its denial, the ability to assimilate it into her life and the ability to realize the true nature of existence.
Now the girl will have to work hard to bring her brother home, which in psychological language means in the long term to know and love her animus again and become truly whole from this.
The way there. Furnace - archetype of the Great Mother
“The girl rushed to catch up with them. She ran and ran and saw that there was a stove.”
In fairy tales, the stove is always located outside the house, in an open field, for example, or in a forest, as here. It stands on its own, melted and full of ritual food.
The stove has always been especially revered by the Slavs, so in the huts of our ancestors it stood exactly in the middle, playing the role of both the center and the border between that world and this. This is a purely maternal symbol; at the global level, it acts as a model of a cave, because a cave is the earliest dwelling of people, in the middle of which a hearth was built. Along with this, it is also a symbol of the world tree.
The stove provided warmth, food, and comfort in the house; in addition, in some areas it was used as a bathhouse and ailments were treated next to it, above it, and inside it. There is an ancient ritual of over-baking associated with the oven: premature, sick children were wrapped in rye dough and placed on a shovel in a heated warm oven, as if “over-baked”. This also gives rise to the transformative function of the Russian stove. And folklore confirms this with sayings: “The stove soars, the stove fries, the stove protects the soul.”
The stove also acts as a symbol of the triune world - heavenly, earthly and afterlife. Our ancestors believed that through the chimney a connection was made with “that light,” and if you put your palms on it, you could communicate with long-dead ancestors, ask your ancestors for protection and strength. The bottom of the stove was associated with the world of the dead, placenta and miscarriages were buried there, and the middle of the stove - its firebox, hailo - was connected with the world of the living.
Therefore, the stove was considered a sacred attribute in the house. It was forbidden to blaspheme, lie, or swear near it, you couldn’t have sex on it, that’s why old people and small children slept on the stove. And in microcosm, the oven is a model of a woman, a mother, a bearer of life.
This is also reflected in folklore: “The stove is our dear mother”, “The whole red summer is on the stove”, and addressing her is nothing other than “mother stove”! Note that maintaining a fire and cooking food have traditionally been considered a purely female activity: "An Indian's Road - from the stove to the threshold". Therefore, it is completely logical that she is thought of as one of the manifestations of the symbols of the Mother Goddess archetype. Naturally, this idea originated during the times of matriarchy.
In the language of Jungian psychology, this is one of the symbols of the Great Mother archetype. Erich Neumann in his book “The Archetype of the Great Mother” gives a detailed description of all modes of the archetype. Let me just remind you that this archetype consists of four parts, two of which are young and two old, wise from experience; two good and two dark, devouring.
TO kind old mother include Demeter - the goddess of fertility in ancient mythology, Isis - in Egyptian, Mary the Mother of God, every kind old woman in fairy tales.
Evil Old Mother- this is a witch, Baba Yaga, Hecate, the gorgon Medusa, an evil stepmother, an evil fairy in the fairy tale “Sleeping Beauty”, the goddess Kali, devouring babies.
Good Young Mother- Virgin Mary, Eve as the mother of all people, fairy godmother in “Cinderella”, goddess Lada in Slavic mythology, Aphrodite - goddess of beauty.
Young dark maiden- depraved, cold, incapable of real feelings, seducing and taking away the soul: Lilith, Queen of Shamakhan, Snow Queen, Mistress of the Copper Mountain.
What is the difference between these poles? The fact that on the positive pole there is goodness, fertility, wealth, creativity, health, on the opposite pole there is illness, death, evil, poverty, depression, emptiness. But the whole point is that there is no one pole without the other! And the negative pole serves to transform the hero, it directs him to struggle, forces him to move forward, to self-awareness.
In the fairy tale “Geese-Swans” the archetype of the Great Mother is presented in different guises: it is a stove, an apple tree, a milk river, and even Baba Yaga as a reflection of its different sides. In our story, the oven, the apple tree and the river turn different sides towards the girl, both the giving side and the non-giving side.
They play the role of a caring, sheltering and protecting principle: on the way back, they literally sheltered the children from pursuit - and at the same time very demanding (“Eat my rye pie, then I’ll hide it”), showing their ambivalent qualities, like grass coltsfoot or "good enough mother". But Baba Yaga is definitely a negative aspect of the Great Mother, we will also talk about her separately.
Now let's get back to the oven. And this question that torments everyone: what kind of arrogance is this, why doesn’t the girl eat the rye pies that the oven gave her? This happens for several important reasons.
The oven in which bread is baked and food is prepared is thought of as an altar, a place of the Eucharist. Any food used to be considered a communion with the totem, the spirit of food. I ate food and gained strength through communication with spirits. This is undoubtedly a transformative force. And the pies that were baked in this oven can be attributed to the transformation that occurs when you interact with such energy.
Our heroine is now at the stage of growing up, her task is to separate from the maternal unconscious, because “the stove is undead, but the path teaches.” She is still in a state where a prolonged relationship with her mother is only destructive for her. And her words “But my father doesn’t even eat white people.” can be explained this way: life in one’s own family personifies the conscious, refined part of its life, and the world of symbols is the unconscious, unidentified, and therefore huge and frightening. And the fruits of the unconscious - pies - are now too heavy and rough for her, she will not be able to digest them (understand their true value). But everything will change on the way back.
forest apple tree
Further on the way the girl came across a forest apple tree full of fruits. This is a wild tree with coarse, small, sour-bitter fruits, and yet it became the ancestor of varietal apple trees. The apple tree here acts as a symbol of Mother Nature herself.
Since pagan times, plants, like animals, have often acted as prototypes of gods for humans. They were endowed with a living soul, entire rituals and festivals were organized in their honor, they were worshiped, idolized and attributed special powers. Take apples, for example: they are rejuvenating, with the help of which you can heal all diseases and regain your youth, roll them around on a saucer to see upcoming events.
This moment is reflected in the Russian folk tale of the silver saucer and the pouring apple: “An apple rolls on a saucer, poured on a silver saucer, and on the saucer all the cities are visible one after another, ships on the seas and shelves in the fields, and the height of the mountains, and the beauty of the skies.”
In “Little Khavroshechka,” a cow asks to bury her bones in the ground after death, and a lush apple tree grows in that place. In the fairy tale “Tsarevich Ivan and the Gray Wolf,” Father Ivan has a garden with golden apples, which the Firebird is hunting for.
For alchemists, the apple was something especially magical, therefore it symbolized the process of knowledge and the fantastic fifth element.
In the Christian tradition, this is an ancient symbol of sin, temptation and the knowledge of good and evil, like fruit from the tree from the Garden of Eden. Eve tempted Adam to eat it, and they saw a different world, learned a different truth, for which they were severely punished by God by expulsion from paradise.
In the fairy tale “Geese and Swans,” an apple tree offers a fruit to a girl in exchange for telling her where the geese and swans took the boy. She doesn't ask, she gives, but the girl doesn't want to take it! And all because she doesn’t want to know the sour wild truth of the world.
It’s better for her if she eats garden apples from her father’s garden, sees half-truths when she is under the patronage and protection of her relatives. But when you go out into the outside world, your task is to find your support in it. The girl is now incomplete, she is only half, so she is unable to bear the real truth, to accept the world as it is, and this is the meaning of her refusal.
But there is something else here. In the Slavic tradition, it was customary to give apples during matchmaking: they were sent to the groom’s relatives - if the bride agreed, then the apples were ripe and beautiful, and if not, then green and unkind.
It is believed that the apple tree is a tree of feminine power. It gives us women sexuality and sensuality, awakens the maternal instinct. And it is no coincidence, because it is a symbol of Aphrodite - the goddess of sexual pleasure, pleasure and love. The fruit of the apple tree gives fertility to the bride, and therefore the branch of the apple tree is used to make a wedding tree, which is popularly called “giltse”.
The girl, although of premarital age, understands that it is too early for her to think about sexual pleasures, having children, or identifying with a mature woman before undergoing initiation, so only on the way back does she eat the offered fruit.
On the way back, the girl, according to some versions of the tale, also removes the entire harvest from the tree, helping the apple tree to free itself from its weight, and here I see a parallel with Jesus. Since the apple, along with other meanings, is a symbol of Christ, who atoned for all the sins of humanity with his life. In August, Apple Savior is celebrated; another name for this holiday is the Transfiguration of the Lord, during which it is customary to eat apples for the first time in the season. For the heroine, this can symbolize an act of salvation, personal healing, transformation.
Milk river with jelly banks
The next person the girl asked for help was a milk river with jelly banks. From the point of view of mythology, this picture is not at all strange, for the milk river with jelly banks was considered a symbol of paradise in the kingdom of the dead, where there is no need to think about food, where everything is in abundance. She existed in various fairy tales, for example, in “The Tale of King Pea”: “In that ancient time, when the world of God was filled with goblins, witches and mermaids, when the rivers flowed with milk, the banks were jelly, and fried partridges flew across the fields, at that time there lived a king named Pea.”.
Vladimir Propp in his book “Historical Roots of a Fairy Tale” writes about it like this: “The plot of milk rivers with jelly banks, as the embodiment of the motif of abundance, is ancient, has analogues in different cultures and reflects ideas about an ideal happy country. Thus, according to the observation of the English anthropologist J. Frazer, a similar motif is found in Polynesian culture, but with rivers made of coconut oil.”
This also refers to oatmeal jelly with milk, which our ancestors consumed. And also the milk river resembles the Milky Way in the sky, which the ancients considered a manifestation of the Heavenly Mother. Therefore, on the one hand, this is undoubtedly the aspect of a giving, caring, generous mother, a symbol of life, because mother's milk is the first food that a baby eats.
But there is exactly the opposite side: the same jelly often served as ritual food; it was used to finish the meal at funerals. Therefore, for a girl, an encounter with a river of milk is like an encounter with the ambivalence of a mother, both the giver and the taker of life.
To confirm this idea, the following fact: for our ancestors, a river is not just a water stream. Along the Smorodina River, the Slavs sent the dead on their last journey on a raft or boat, which is why it was thought of as the border between the world of the living and the world of the dead. In Ancient Greece these were the rivers Styx and Lethe, the Nile among the Egyptians, and at the gates of the Scandinavian kingdom of the dead, Hel, the river Gjoll flows. The source of the river was often associated with the upper world, and the mouth with the lower world.
And the search for a brother by a sister in this sense is surprisingly similar to the mythological stories of descent into the lower world. So Orpheus descends for his beloved Eurydice to the kingdom of Hades, for which Charon transports him across the River Styx.
As you can see, the milk river with jelly banks is a very ambiguous symbol: on the one hand, it personifies maternal kindness and care, and on the other, oblivion and death. In psychological language this means becoming familiar with the shadow aspects of the Mother. After all, in fact, the Mother both gives life and takes it away, and in this sense it is understandable when we talk about earth, water or nature in general.
On the way there, before initiation, the girl is not ready to look at the Mother’s shadow, because in a sense it is her shadow too. Only a mature, holistic person can look at it openly, perceive the object holistically, and not fragmentarily.
Sibylle Birkhäuser-Oeri notes: “By not recognizing the traits of the dark Mother in herself, she (the woman) runs the risk of identifying only with her light side. However, she still experiences this dark, shadow side, but does it unconsciously; in other words, both she and the people around her are in serious danger.”
In order to perceive herself this way, she needs to have great courage, strengthen her ego, know the boundaries of the Self and the non-Self, and for this she needs to connect with her structuring masculine principle.
3 + 1
Please note that on the girl’s path she encountered three maternal symbols, not five, not two, but precisely three.
This number has long been considered important, which is why in fairy tales we meet the distant kingdom, the thirtieth state, three wishes, three brothers, three trials, as in our history. Remember three more heroes, three horses, the familiar Pushkin “Three girls were spinning under the window late in the evening.”
This number is reflected in time as past, present and future, in space - as length, width, height. It is known that “God loves the Trinity.” By the way, in Christianity three is also a sacred number. Scripture speaks of three gifts of the Magi to Christ, three images of the Transfiguration, three crosses on Calvary, three days of Christ’s death, three theological virtues: faith, hope, love.
There are also three goddesses of fate in different mythologies. In ancient mythology, there are three hypostases of the Great Mother: Persephone, Demeter and Hecate, who correspond to birth, life and death and are depicted as a girl, a bride and an old woman.
Connecting all three parts of the archetype together, we see that the oven is connected to the sky through its chimney, the apple tree is connected to the earth through its roots, and the milk river with its jelly banks is a river flowing into the world of the dead. It's like all life. And our heroine had to learn to interact with each of them in her own way. And when she is a girl, and when she is a woman, and when she is an old woman. In symbolic language there was an acquaintance with the whole world, the Universe. With this interaction, the heroine receives sacred knowledge, which she will include in her life.
There was a meeting with the numinous, and this can only happen through contact with an archetype, and if the consciousness is not prepared, then this is an excessively severe test. The more disturbed and traumatized we are from the inside, if our ego is weak, infantile, and requires constant support from the outside, the more we are at risk of not being able to cope with our feelings during such a meeting. Simply put, we need to first learn how to earn money for ourselves, arrange our lives, and then think about the starving people in Africa.
Every time on the way “there,” the girl refused all offers of help, which can be translated into psychological language as follows: with this behavior she strengthened her ego, separating herself more and more from her mother’s unconscious. A certain natural act of inflation occurs, which is necessary for the development of personality. And, of course, at the same time she takes on great responsibility.
Remember that a real treasure is found only by those who look for it and work? In the Tarot, the number “three” corresponds to the lasso “Empress”, which symbolizes the living creative feminine principle, renewal, joy of life. Therefore, having passed this important examination of maturity, the girl discovers an inexhaustible source within herself, from which new things are born all the time.
But among the characters in the fairy tale there is also Baba Yaga. Who is she really?
Meeting with Baba Yaga
What does the girl see when she comes to Baba Yaga's hut? An old scary grandmother is spinning a tow, and a brother is sitting on a bench, playing with silver apples.
Baba Yaga has several names - Yagibikha, Yagishna, Baba Yoga. Her hut is always located in a dense forest, where you need to make your way through dense thickets of trees and thorny bushes. Such a forest always caused genuine horror among our ancestors, as they thought of it as a border between worlds. They imagined that Baba Yaga was a goddess who accompanies the dead from this world to the next, and therefore endowed her with limitless possibilities.
She gives the boy to play with silver apples, which reflects folk ideas about the world where golden apples grow on silver trees. There is also an old name for the apple tree - “silver bough”, which comes from the belief that apples grow on silvery branches and have the properties of immortality.
Note that the hut stands on chicken legs. The play on words led us to chicken feet, while, according to ethnographer D. Zelenin: “The ancient Slavs placed funeral structures on pillars, which were fumigated with the smoke of juniper branches, hence the “kurias”.”
It should be noted that Baba Yaga in many fairy tales spins yarn or a tow, which makes me think of the three spinners from the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm or the goddesses of fate Moira from ancient mythology, they are also Parks among the Romans or Norns among the ancient Scandinavians. They spun and cut the thread of life, determining destiny.
The Slavs believed that women in labor, or Sudzhanitsa, determined the fate of the newborn. And Baba Yaga in the fairy tale “Geese and Swans” spun a tow, which reflects her predictive function and inevitability. Have you noticed that in many Russian fairy tales it is Baba Yaga who gives the hero the treasured ball that will lead him to the right path?
Here, when the girl enters the hut (narration adapted by A.N. Tolstoy), the old woman instructs her to spin, and she goes off to heat the bathhouse. Is this a coincidence? It is too early for children to leave this world - to break the thread of fate, so it is necessary that the spinning does not stop, and the old woman also gives them a choice: to leave or to stay.
The mouse temporarily took over the spinning. It is known to be considered one of the chthonic animals, because its burrow is located in the ground. The cunning mouse knows many secrets of the lower world. The girl first feeds the mouse, and then listens to its advice. And this is not the only fairy tale where this happens. In one of the most ancient ones, “Stepmother and Stepdaughter,” when a girl comes to the bear, it is the mouse that helps her deceive the bear-death, beating him at blind man’s buff.
The girl definitely needed to see Baba Yaga, but why? Putting all the parts together, we can conclude that the meeting with this old woman symbolically reflects the meeting with one’s own death. A holistic person always includes the aspect of death in his life. This is a rethinking, the acquisition of new values, and the girl understands that after such a test she will not return the same.
And yes - about the number of characters that the girl meets on her way: three plus one will be four, and this is the number of the earth, the number of completeness and stability. Baba Yaga is the fourth part of the Great Mother archetype in this tale. As Jung says, “The fourth puts the shackles of reality on trinitarian thinking.”
The fourth element unites opposites and creates a new unity.
There were four of them so that the girl could realize her reality as it is, get rid of childhood illusions, and expand her consciousness by adding parts from the unconscious. And this is no longer the little girl who walked into the thick of the forest in search of her brother.
Return trip
The sister grabbed her brother and dragged him out of the hut. But the story did not end there, because Baba Yaga ordered the swan geese to rush after the fugitives. That is, it is not enough to return your part to yourself, it is important to appropriate it and save it, which is why no less danger awaited the heroine on the way back.
Have you noticed that on the way to follow her brother, the girl is intractable, does not show due modesty and respect in front of great symbols (the oven, the apple tree and the river)? She relies only on herself to find her missing brother.
It’s the same in real life: when we rationalize everything, without giving due importance to intuitive knowledge from the unconscious, then it punishes us, covering us with a shadow over our heads.
Jung said: “Many people mistakenly overestimate the role of the will and believe that nothing can happen in their own minds without their decision and intention.” Have you heard the saying “if you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans” or “man believes, but God disposes”? That's exactly what they're talking about! But deeply religious people, on the contrary, have such an expression as “The Lord will rule.” The truth is somewhere in the middle.
Initially, our unconscious has enormous power, and if we do not show it the necessary reverence and respect, do not make a sacrifice (and the sacrifice here can be pride, verbosity, the desire to gossip, the desire to speed up events or our own laziness), we do not pay attention to the prompts from dreams, to the synchronicity of the world, then we must keep the answer.
But let's get back to the fairy tale! Returning, the girl again encountered the same symbols, but in the reverse order, and this order is important here.
On the way there, first there was a stove as a symbol of birth, then an apple tree as a symbol of life and a river as a symbol of death. It was as if my whole life had passed before death in an accelerated version. On the way back, she first tasted jelly by the milk river, then a forest apple, and snacked on a rye pie.
These actions reflect symbolic death by the river, then life by the apple tree, and then, climbing inside the oven, as if “overbaking” - transforming, he is again born for life in the manifested world, the world of consciousness. And it was after being reborn in the oven that the geese-swans stopped chasing and left the girl alone.
By the way, don't you think the girl is behaving extremely strangely? The treats are still the same, and on the way to pick up her brother she refuses them, and on the way home she eats everything that the archetypal heroes offered her. But our ancestors would not have thought so, for they know the truth: on the way “there” the sister behaves like an uninitiated person who has not received initiation, and therefore does not receive help from supernatural forces.
Russian folk tale "Geese and Swans"
Genre: folk fairy tale
The main characters of the fairy tale "Geese-Swans" and their characteristics
- A daughter, a cheerful and capricious girl who loved to play, and therefore forgot about her brother.
- Geese-swans, treacherous birds that kidnapped small children and took them to Baba Yaga.
- The stove, Apple tree, and River did not help the capricious girl, but they helped when she reformed.
- Parents' order
- Girl forgetfulness
- Stealing geese
- Pursuit and Stove
- Pursuit and Apple Tree
- Pursuit and River
- Baba Yaga's House
- Return trip.
- Return.
- While leaving for work, the parents told their daughter to keep an eye on her little brother.
- The girl began to play and her brother was carried away by the Geese-Swans.
- The girl ran in pursuit, but did not eat the pie, apple and jelly.
- The Hedgehog shows her the way.
- The girl finds her brother and, grabbing him, runs home.
- Geese-swans chase her, but the girl is hidden by a river, an apple tree and a stove, and she returns home.
Don’t refuse another’s request and he will help you too.
What does the fairy tale "Geese and Swans" teach?
This fairy tale teaches you to listen to your parents, help them around the house, and not abandon the little children they entrusted to you. This fairy tale teaches not to be arrogant and not to disdain requests. Teaches determination and courage.
Review of the fairy tale "Geese and Swans"
This is a very good fairy tale that I really liked. In it, the girl at first turned her nose up at simple treats, but when she got hot, she stopped being capricious and that’s the only reason she was saved.
Proverbs for the fairy tale "Geese and Swans"
Need will teach you to eat rolls.
The beginning is not expensive, the end is commendable.
The eyes are afraid, but the hands are doing.
Summary, brief retelling of the fairy tale "Geese and Swans"
There lived an old man and an old woman and they had a daughter and a little son.
The old men went to work and the girl was strictly punished to watch her brother and not leave the yard.
The old people left, and the daughter started playing, sat her brother down on the grass, and forgot about him.
Then the Geese-Swans swooped in and carried away their brother.
The girl returned, but her brother was nowhere to be found. She looked, shouted, and saw geese in the distance. The girl realized who kidnapped her brother and rushed in pursuit.
He runs, and there’s a stove standing there, asking him to eat a rye pie. The daughter didn’t eat the pie, she continued running. The apple tree stands and treats you with a forest apple. The girl didn’t eat the apple, she ran on. There is a milk river with jelly banks, asking for milk to drink. The girl did not drink milk.
A Hedgehog met her and showed her the way where the geese-swans had flown.
The daughter ran to Baba Yaga’s house, and there she saw her brother. She grabbed her brother and rushed back.
And the Geese-swans are chasing her. The girl runs to the river and asks to hide it. Otherwise it reminds her of jelly. The girl ate the jelly and the river hid it. He runs further, and Geese-Swans fly towards him again. I didn’t disdain the apple here either. The apple tree hid the girl.
Then the daughter runs, carrying her brother. And again the Geese-Swans are flying. The girl had to try the rye pie too. The stove hid her.
So I ran home. And there the parents returned.
Drawings and illustrations for the fairy tale "Geese and Swans"
"There are - there are other fairy tales in which one of the characters is swan geese.There are 2 main plots:
1.
Fairy tale "Geese-swans"
The husband and wife went to the fair and left their little son at home. The older sister, who was assigned to look after her brother, “went on a spree and played too much” and left him alone. The baby was carried away by geese and swans. The girl set off in pursuit of them and eventually found her brother in Baba Yaga's hut.
Essentially the plot of the fairy tale - display of the ritualinitiation(a ritual that marks the transition to a new stage of development, for example, the transfer of adolescents to the adult class), the subject of which in the original source is the kidnapped brother, but later this role passes to the sister. Accordingly, the images of geese-swans themselves most likely go back to ancient mythological ideas about psychophoric birds (that is, carrying souls to the afterlife).
But this fairy tale also has its own “versions”...
Afanasyev's sister would not have found a brother if the wise hedgehog had not helped her.
In the treatment of A.N. Tolstoy, she finds it herself.
At Afanasyev's, she simply sneaks into the hut and carries off her brother.
In A. N. Tolstoy’s adaptation, she enters the hut, talks with Baba Yaga, etc., and only seizing the moment when she does not see - runs away with his brother.
2.
Fairy tale "Ivashko and the Witch" (either "Lutonya" or "Tereshechka")
This tale has been written down many times and in a large number of variants; its main character bears different names (Ivashko, Lutonya, Tereshechka).
Here's a generalized version:
The old man and the old woman had no children. One winter, an old man went into the forest to get firewood. Having chopped firewood, the old man also took with him a log, a linden log. At home, he put the piece of wood under the stove (sometimes on the stove) and after a while the piece of wood turned into a boy. (In some versions, the old man specially goes for this log, then draws a face on the piece of wood with charcoal, and the old woman swaddles it and puts it in the cradle.) By summer, the boy grew up and went to the lake to fish. The old man made a shuttle for him - white (silver), with red (golden) oars, and the old woman gave him a white shirt with a red belt. During the day the boy swims on the lake, and in the evening he swims up to the shore to give the old woman the fish he caught and change his shirt and belt. Baba Yaga lures him to the shore and takes him to her hut. There she instructs her daughter to fry the boy, but he manages to deceive Yagishna, put her in the oven, get out of the hut and climb a tree. Yaga begins to gnaw or chop the trunk. At the last moment, the hero of the fairy tale is saved by geese-swans. A flying flock drops a feather on the boy and he makes wings from them (that is, turns into a bird), or the last bird picks him up. Be that as it may, the hero returns safely to his home.
In the Lithuanian version of this tale, a witch flying with the swans kidnaps him, mistaking him for a swan.
The enchanted brothers from the fairy tale also leave this world in the form of birds. Hans Christian Andersen (Hans Christian) «
»
.
And the most interesting thing is that in the myths of South American Indians living in the Amazon jungle, a South American witch engages in sexual harassment, and tries to gnaw the tree where the hero is saving himself with the help of his toothy genitals. According to researchers, the South American myth encodes some characteristic features inherent in matriarchal relationships
From all this it is clear that there are geese-swans "bad"
And "good ones"
.
"Bad" geese-swans steal a child and take him to Baba Yaga (the fairy tale "Geese-Swans"), and "good" - help the boy escape from Yaga and return home (the fairy tale “Ivashko and the Witch”).
Origins of the plot
To understand the origins of the plot of these fairy tales, you need to turn to mythology =)
Apollo traveled every season in a chariot drawn by snow-white swans. In late autumn he flew to the blissful country of Hyperborea (super-north) in order to return back to Delphi in the spring. Almost all the peoples of the northern hemisphere associated “north” with death, so Hyperborea is not a geographical concept, but a mythological one.
*It turns out that the “bad” geese-swans take Brother to Baba Yaga-
that is, they are sentenced to death.
In addition, one can recall the myth of Zeus, who appeared before Leda in the form of a swan.
Now let's turn to the fairy tale about the “good” geese-swans. Yagishna tries to send the boy to the oven, he runs away and climbs a tree, and then either turning into a bird or riding it, he returns to our world.
Swans are an integral part of shamanic rituals, and it was believed that they carry the soul of the shaman in the right direction.
Altai shamans sang about the goose: “When you are tired, let him be your horse. When you are bored, let him be your companion, producing whirlwinds on Mount Sumer, washing himself in Lake Milk.”
The Turks and Ugro-Finns call the Goose or Swan Road the Milky Way.
*We see that the “good” geese-swans, on the contrary, return Ivashko in the right direction, that is, home.
Swan geese
In mythological symbolism, the image of geese-swans is perfect for the role of a mediator, connecting the seemingly mutually exclusive basic symbols of any mythology: above and below, summer and winter and, as a consequence, between male and female, life and death.
Birds (top), but associated with water (bottom); bringing spring, but having snow-white plumage.
Among the Ainu (the people currently living on the island of Hokkaido), the swan was called the “spirit of snow.”
According to the Kyrgyz, the swan brings snow and cold.
In England, when it snowed, they said that geese were plucking in the sky.
Russian folk sign:
The swan flies towards the snow, the goose towards the rain.
If in winter geese-swans turn into snow, then in spring, on the contrary, snow turns into geese and swans.
Among the Kets (a small indigenous people of Siberia), Mother Tomem comes out to the banks of the Yenisei in the spring and shakes her sleeves over the river; fluff pours out of her sleeves and turns into geese, swans, and ducks that fly to the north.
It should be noted that geese and swans do not in all cases act as synonyms - often they are opposed to each other aslower- upper, someone else's- to your own.
The Selkups (a people living in the north of Western Siberia) believed that while geese and other migratory birds are sent by the Heavenly Old Woman for food, swans should not be killed. According to the Kets and Selkups, swans understood human speech.
For many peoples of the Trans-Urals, geese and swans were totem animals.
The Ainu had legends about the origin of man from the swan.
The Mongols believed that the first people were made from swan feet.
Baba Yaga
To the already listed female characters associated with geese-swans, it remains to add the Russian Babu Yaga. These birds guarded her hut just as the geese guarded the Temple of Juno Capitoline (the same geese that saved Rome).
In modern everyday language, the word "Yaga" sounds like a curse. In ancient times it was not like that at all. Baba Yaga belonged to the category of Great Mothers, mistresses of the underworld, associated not only with death, but also with the productive forces of nature.
In some fairy tales such as "Geese and Swans", the sister sees her kidnapped brother playing with golden apples, which in European mythology are associated with eternal youth, sexual power and procreation.
Russian Yaga - The owner of the apple orchard lures the boy to her with apples or other food, and in some versions of the fairy tale he himself climbs into her garden.
Since in myth the animal attribute of a character is not clearly contrasted with the character himself, the mistress of the lower world sometimes appears in the form of a giant bird (*it seems to me that Baba Yaga herself turned into geese-swans in the fairy tale of the same name and kidnapped her brother).
How closely in Rus' geese-swans were associated with the idea of the afterlife is evidenced by folk songs, usually classified as historical genres - "Songs about the Tatar full." An old woman is forced by a Tatar who has captured her"Three things to do: first thing- spinning the tow is the second thing- swans (sometimes- geese-swans) to guard, and the third thing- rock the baby."
Deep into history
At the beginning of the first millennium BC, new symbolism appears in Central Europe. Throughout the territory from the Black to the Baltic Seas, archaeologists have discovered images of chariots drawn by geese or swans. The waterfowl served as a solar symbol, connecting the heavenly and earthly spheres, and a symbol of fertility.
Archaeological material from later times is quite rich in the “swan” theme and makes it possible to trace its significance, including in territories inhabited by the Eastern Slavs or their predecessors. Near the village of Pozharskaya Balka, near Poltava, a ritual fire pit dating back to the 6th century was excavated. BC e. , on which about 15 2-meter (!) images of swans were discovered under a layer of ash.
Conclusion
Here are the geese-swans, here is the Russian folk tale =)
Any fairy tale is not “entertainment” for children, but a kind of folklore myth of a certain people, through which the concepts of good and evil, religion and society are revealed...
Geese-swans, it seems to me, a priori cannot be “bad” or “good”, since they carry a certain divine participation within them. Geese-swans and that lightning of Zeus that strikes for offense (in the case of a brother and his sister, this is a punishment for her for not listening to her parents and not watching over her brother), and that salvation that the Gods give to mortals (Ivashko, as it were, prayed while sitting on a tree being chewed by Yagishna, and the Gods heard the prayers and sent their angels).
Links
Basically, when writing the post, I used the journalistic work of Valeria Ronkin - I highly recommend that you read it more closely, since I highlighted from this article the line of geese-swans that interests me, but much remains “behind the scenes.” So go for it ;)
