Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev (Алекса́ндр Никола́евич Афана́сьев) was a Russian collector of Fairy Tales, creating a collection of over 600 in Narodnye russkie skazki (Народные Русские Сказки), one of the largest tales collections ever made.
Afanasyev's tales are in the public domain. Different translations can be read here
, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
Tales having their own pages:
- "The Death of Koschei the Deathless"
- "The Feather of Finist the Falcon"
- "The Fire-Bird, the Horse of Power, and the Princess Vasilissa"
- "The Frost, the Sun, and the Wind"
- "Kolobok"
- "Little Master Misery"
- "Morozko"
- "Prince Ivan, the Witch Baby, and the Little Sister of the Sun"
- "The Soldier And Death"
- "Tsarevitch Ivan, the Fire Bird and the Gray Wolf"
- "Tsarevich Petr and the Wizard"
- "The Secret Ball"
- "Vasilissa the Beautiful"
- "The White Duck"
- "The Wise Little Girl"
Tropes in other tales:
- Animal Talk: "The Animals In The Pit" (link and link), a hog, a wolf, a bear (or depending on the version, a squirrel), a hare and a vixen have no problems communicating with each other.
- Barred from the Afterlife: At the end of "The Soldier And Death" (link), the soldier tries to enter both Hell and Heaven and, being turned away from both, is left to wander the Earth forever. The folktale was retold in English by Arthur Michell Ransome and later used as an episode of Jim Henson's The Storyteller.
- Cephalothorax: In "Kolobok", the titular sentient, singing runaway round bread is drawn mostly as a yellow spherical head with limbs.
- Flying Dutchman: "The Soldier And Death" (link) ends with the eponymous soldier being unable to enter either Heaven or Hell, and thus condemned to walking the earth forever. To the story's credit, mentioning this doesn't actually give away anything that makes it interesting.
- One-Steve Limit: In The Death of Koschei the Deathless, as well known as Marya Morevna, both the hero's wife and one of his sisters are named Marya.
- Rags to Riches: In "Vasilii the Unlucky"/"The Story of Marko the Rich and Vasily the Luckless"/"Wassily the Unlucky", an extremely poor boy called Vasily gets married to Anastasia, the daughter of the richest merchant in the kingdom.
- Wicked Witch: Baba Yaga appears frequently in the tales, but sometimes the main character runs into unnamed, man-eating witches.
