And they left their little son at home. The older sister, who was tasked with keeping an eye on her brother (“don’t leave the yard, be smart, we’ll buy you a handkerchief”), went on a spree and started playing 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.

Characters

• Brother- in some versions is named Ivashechka, but is usually nameless.
• Sister- a brave girl, not afraid of Baba Yaga and her geese.
• The stove, the river and the apple tree- wonderful helpers, showing the way, helping to hide from the swan geese.
• Mouse- available only in the adaptation of A. N. Tolstoy (helps the girl escape from Yaga)
• Baba Yaga
• Swan geese- Baba Yaga's assistants

Plot differences in different versions

Many illustrations show her as an adult, but this contradicts her character as the heroine of the fairy tale (it clearly describes her as a naughty child).

This is one of the most famous, popular and frequently published works of Russian folklore.

This is the name of the group’s eighth studio album, Polite Refusal, released in 2010.

In the Soviet cartoon Ivashka from the Palace of Pioneers, Baba Yaga's geese kidnap a boy named Vanya. Ivashka was supposed to become a snack on Yaga’s festive table, but with the help of ingenuity and the tools he had with him, he got out of captivity, defeated the cat Bayun, Koshchei the immortal and the Serpent Gorynych.

Literature

• G. N. Gubanova. Golden Book of Fairy Tales. - Tula: Rodnichok, 2001. - 241 p. - ISBN ISBN 5-89624-013-9
• Swan geese. - Donetsk: Prof-press, 1999. - ISBN 5-88475-298-X

Links

• Texts of fairy tales “Geese and Swans” according to the version of A. N. Tolstoy and A. N. Afanasyev

Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

See what “Geese-swans” are in other dictionaries:

Noun, number of synonyms: 1 geese (1) ASIS Dictionary of Synonyms. V.N. Trishin. 2013… Synonym dictionary

GOOSE, I, pl. and, she, m. Ozhegov's Explanatory Dictionary. S.I. Ozhegov, N.Yu. Shvedova. 1949 1992 … Ozhegov's Explanatory Dictionary

The fairy tale “Geese and Swans” is known to young readers, adults and even very little ones. Why is this Russian folk tale so famous? Re-read this fairy tale to your children, look at the wonderful illustrations by artist Anatoly Savchenko and everything will become clear to you. Evil in the form of Baba Yaga and her wards Geese-Swans will never win, and the brave, albeit naughty sister will help her brother out of trouble. Listen to the audio tale for little ones Geese and Swans

Tale of Geese and Swans

There lived a husband and wife with their daughter Manechka and son Vanechka. My daughter was already ten years old, and my son was two years old. Father and mother gathered in the city and punish Manechka:

Don't leave home. Sit with your brother. Wait for the guests!

Manya listened to them, nodded her head, and when they left, she sat her brother down on the grass near the house and ran off to play. As soon as Vanechka was left alone, the swan geese flew in, picked him up on their wings and flew away to the forest. Manechka played with her friends, remembered Vanechka, and ran home. She came running, but Vanechka wasn’t there!

The girl got scared and burst into tears. I started calling him, looking for him, but no matter where I ran, there was no Vanechka! Then I saw geese flying towards the forest and guessed that the geese had carried Vanya away.

The girl rushed to catch up with the geese. She ran and ran... But soon they disappeared from view. Where to run now? She stopped and didn’t know what to do.

Manechka sees there is a stove, she goes to it:

Stove, stove, tell me, where did the swan geese fly?

Eat my rye pie, guest, I’ll tell you.
And the girl answered her:

I'm going to eat rye pie! At home I only eat wheat with butter! - She said so and ran on.

And he doesn’t know where to run. I saw an apple tree standing. She quickly ran up to the apple tree and asked her:

Apple tree, tell me, where did the geese and swans fly?
- Eat my forest apple, don’t disdain, I’ll tell you.
- I won’t eat sour meat! I eat garden apples with honey at home! - Manechka answered her and quickly ran on.

He runs, runs, hurries, but he doesn’t know where the geese-swans flew away. She saw here: a milk river flowing, the banks of jelly. She ran up to the milk river and asked:

Milk River, tell me, where did the geese-swans fly?
- Eat our jelly with milk, then I’ll tell you.
- Don't want! Father and mother don’t even drink cream!

Manechka ran again. She runs and runs, but she still doesn’t know where to look for her brother. And there’s no one to ask!

Suddenly she saw: a hut on chicken legs turning around itself. Manechka said here:

Hut! Become as old as your mother set!

The hut turned around. Manya entered it and saw: Vanya sitting on a bench, playing with apples.
That's where the geese brought him! To Baba Yaga!

Vanechka saw her too. Manya quickly put her finger to her lips, ordering him to remain silent and not give her away. Baba Yaga sits next to him, dozing with a spinning wheel in her hands. And an owl sits on her shoulder - not sleeping, watching.

“Hello, grandma,” said Manechka.

Baba Yaga opened her eyes and looked angrily at the girl.

Hello, uninvited guest! Why did you come?
- I got lost. I walked and walked, my legs couldn’t hold me up and I wanted to eat. Let me sit with you.
“Well, so be it, finish my porridge from the pot, and in return, spin some yarn for me,” said Baba Yaga and left with the owl.

A mouse crawled out from under the stove and asked:

Girl, girl, give me at least a little porridge.

On the stove Manechka found a pot with the remains of porridge and a spoon. She gave the mouse some porridge, and the mouse said:

Run away from here and take the boy away, Baba Yaga flooded the bathhouse. He will wash you and eat you! And he will eat it! Run quickly!

Manechka ran away with her brother. And Baba Yaga came up to the window and asked:

Are you spinning, girl?
- I'm spinning! I'm spinning! - answered the mouse, finishing the porridge.
Baba Yaga heated the bathhouse and came for the girl, but the hut was empty. Baba Yaga shouted:

Fly, geese-swans, in pursuit! The girl stole the boy! Catch up! Bring the boy! Otherwise I won't tell you!

Manechka runs with his brother and hears: geese are flying after them! I was scared. With her brother in her arms she rushed to the milk river and asked her:

River, my dear, hide, cover us!
- Eat our jelly with milk - I’ll hide it!

She ate jelly and drank milk. The milk river sheltered Manechka and her brother like a bank. The geese didn't see them. We flew, searched, flew on.

Manechka and Vanechka ran. He hears the geese flying again! Manechka rushed to the apple tree and asked her:

Apple tree, cover it! Save us!
- Eat my forest apple - I’ll hide it!

Manechka ate an apple. The apple tree covered its sister and brother with its branches. The geese flew over the apple tree but did not see them. A girl and her brother ran out from under the apple tree, in a hurry.

He hears: the geese are returning. She ran to the stove.

“Stove, mother,” the girl asks, “hide us!”
- Eat my rye pie and get into the oven.

Manechka ate the pie, climbed into the oven with her brother, and closed herself behind a barrier. He hears geese flying past. The girl crawled out of the oven, picked up her brother and ran home.
And the geese returned and began to catch up. The girl ran into the house and closed the door. The geese circled over the house and flew away...

Then the father and mother returned. They brought gingerbread for the children, and also a scarf for Manechka’s head.

If you liked the fairy tale “Geese and Swans”, then you can also listen to it. [Yandex-audio]x5axgz9fwh.2236

There lived an old man and an old woman; they had a daughter and a little son.

Daughter, daughter! - said the mother. - We’ll go to work, bring you a bun, sew a dress, buy a scarf; be smart, take care of your brother, don’t leave the yard.

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.

The girl came, and lo and behold, her brother was gone! She gasped, rushed back and forth - no! She called, burst into tears, lamented that it would be bad from her father and mother, but her brother did not respond!

She 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 ran and ran, and the stove stood still.

Stove, stove, tell me, where did the geese fly?

Eat my rye pie, I’ll say.

Oh, my father doesn’t eat wheat!

Apple trees, apple trees, tell me, where did the geese fly?

Eat my forest apple, I’ll say.

Oh, my father doesn’t even eat garden vegetables!

Milk river, jelly banks, where did the geese fly?

Eat my simple jelly with milk, I’ll say.

Oh, my father can’t even eat cream!

And she would have spent a long time running through the fields and wandering through the forest, but, fortunately, she came across a hedgehog; She wanted to push him, she was afraid of getting hurt and asked:

Hedgehog, hedgehog, did you see where the geese flew?

Over there! - pointed.

She ran - there was a hut on chicken legs, it stood there and turned. A Baba Yaga sits in a hut, with a sinewy face and a clay leg; My brother is sitting on a bench, playing with golden apples. His sister saw him, crept up, grabbed him and carried him away; and the geese fly after her; the villains will catch up, where to go? A milk river runs along the banks of jelly.

Mother River, hide me!

Eat my jelly!

Nothing to do, I ate. The river planted her under the bank, the geese flew by. She came out and said: “Thank you!” - and again runs with his brother; and the geese have returned and are flying towards. What to do? Trouble! There are apple trees.

Apple tree, mother apple tree, hide me!

Eat my forest apple!

I ate it quickly. The apple tree shaded it with branches and covered it with leaves; the geese flew by. She went out and ran again with her brother, and the geese saw them and followed her; They swoop down completely, they’re already beating with their wings, and before you know it, they’ll rip you out of your hands! Fortunately, there is a stove on the road.

Madam stove, hide me!

Eat my rye pie!

The girl quickly put the pie in her mouth, and herself into the oven, sat down in the mouth. The geese flew and flew, screamed and shouted, and flew away with nothing.

And she ran home, and it’s good that she managed to run, and then her father and mother came.

Do we know our favorite fairy tales? [Hidden meaning encrypted by storytellers. Reading between the lines, fragment] Korovina Elena Anatolyevna

GEESE-SWANS, or a Word in Defense of Baba Yaga

SWAN GEESE,

A word in defense of Baba Yaga

THE SWAN GEESE FLY, PICKED UP THE BOY, CARRIED AWAY ON THE WINGS...

Everyone loves this fairy tale. There are many variations of it. There are even some differences, but all of them are not significant either for the development of the plot or for identifying morality. Even the names of the little hero and heroine (brother and his older sister) vary in different texts - the girl’s name is Alyonushka, Masha, Nastenka, the boy’s name is Ivanushka, Ivashechka, Egorushka. In the canonical tale of our wonderful folklorist A.N. Afanasyev's little heroes have no names at all. They're just brother and sister. This suggests that names are not important here, just as age is not too important. It is important that the boy is the youngest, and the sister is the eldest in the family.

Parents, leaving for work (optionally, leaving home for a fair), instruct her to look after her little brother. In Afanasyev’s version, the parents are called “an old man and an old woman.” However, we already know that this is not a designation of age, but of position in the family: in this case, the parents are the guardians of the clan.

But children are children of any kind. The girl, having played too much, forgot about her parents’ orders not to leave her little brother. Well, the angry geese-swans are on the alert - they immediately flew in and carried away their brother. And so -

the most important question:

Who are geese-swans?

Really – who? Geese are geese. Swans - of course, swans. But geese-swans are a combination of the seemingly incompatible. Let's find out!

Geese are the oldest domestic birds, personifying ordinary village life, that is, a completely earthly life. Here they are, geese, always nearby. Swans, beautiful creatures flying in and out, were considered mysterious, hidden birds in the popular perception. It is not for nothing that in fairy tales a swan, having hit the ground, could turn into a beautiful maiden. Let us at least remember the Swan Princess from Pushkin’s fairy tale about Tsar Saltan. The one with the moon shining under her scythe and a star burning in her forehead. That is, swans are magical, romantic birds, belonging to some beautiful, distant and attractive, but clearly not ordinary world. It’s not for nothing that there are so many fairy tales about these mesmerizing birds. Well, what legend can you create about geese, always spinning under your feet, hissing and cackling?

In a word, geese belong to the ordinary world, which our ancestors called the world of Revealing, that is, the manifested world. But swans are birds from the world of Navi, the one that Brings dreams, brings GLANCES, that is, the world of the mysterious, magical, otherworldly.

Well, who will the geese and swans be?

These are birds that are able to live in two worlds - ordinary reality (like geese) and Navi, incomprehensible to ordinary people (like swans).

Another question:

Why do the swan geese carry the boy to Baba Yaga's hut?

First, let's figure out who ours is The main “grandmother” of Russian fairy tales is Baba Yaga.

Once upon a time, among our ancient Slavic ancestors, she was not at all a monster with which they frightened children, but a very revered person. Baba, as we know, is the main woman in the family, its protector. But what does yaga mean?

This would be the time to announce a QUIZ, but probably no one knows the answer now. And the word “yaga” comes from the word “yashgka” (emphasis on the last syllable). This is what our ancestors called foot-and-mouth disease, which was considered the progenitor of all life on earth. Hence the word “ancestor” that we understand. That is, Baba Yaga is the very first guardian of the very first kind. The main old woman on earth. True, young people are not very attentive to old age. And old age is traditionally portrayed as an ugly old woman who doesn’t even have a leg, and she wanders around on a crutch - she has a bone leg. True, in order to move around, the old woman got herself a mortar, on which she flies very well. Only her temper became vicious over time—the years had taken their toll, after all.

AND I. Bilibin. Baba Yaga

And where does our Baba Yaga live? Can't you guess? Well then, let's speculate a little more. She no longer has a place among the people in Yavi - she is too old. But she doesn’t want to live in Navi, the afterlife, because she is, after all, the main old woman of the people. So her hut is worth it. the border of two worlds - the ordinary worldly (this-worldly) and the mysteriously incomprehensible (otherworldly). If the hut turns in one direction, from its door you can go out into Reality - the world of the living; if it turns in the other direction, the path to Nav - the world of the dead will open. It’s not for nothing that there is a tyn (fence) made of skulls around the hut. On the one hand, these are symbols of death, and on the other, a symbol of the fear of the living, placed here to scare away those who are too early to move from Yavi to Nav.

Well, swan geese are able to fly from the world of Yavi to the world of Navi. So they constantly fly over Baba Yaga's hut. By the way -

new question:

Why does the hut stand on chicken legs?

But there’s a mistake, dear readers – not chickens, but chickens! "What's the difference?" - you ask. Here's the thing. Dahl's dictionary says that “chickens are the rafters of peasant huts.” They were also called sticks. Do you remember that Baba Yaga had such a stick? So, in swampy areas or in forest thickets, huts were raised above the ground on rafters in order to live more comfortably - it was not so damp and cold from the ground.

Although, of course, in popular imagination chickens and chickens merged together. So Yagi-Yagovna’s hut can run and jump like a chicken. It just can't fly. But that’s why Baba was given a stupa.

In short, there was once a kind grandmother, but over the centuries she turned into the evil Baba Yaga. Although why in an evil way? In Afanasyev's fairy tale (that is, the popular interpretation) it is not said that she wants to harm the boy. It was the evil geese-swans who kidnapped him and brought him to her hut. And Baba Yaga herself sat the boy down on a bench and even gave him golden apples to play with. Well, she didn’t do anything bad to him!

Then why did the harmful birds bring the boy to her? And so that Baba Yaga agrees to “transport” the boy from Yavi to Nav - from the kingdom of the living to the kingdom of the dead. But the ancient guardian Baba Yaga, who lives at the junction of the worlds, did not give such consent; apparently, she doubted whether it was too early for the boy to move to Nav. So she left him in her hut for now - on the edge of worlds. It turns out she saved him?!

What about the girl?

But Baba Yaga didn’t touch her either. Moreover, it was as if she was waiting for her sister to come running for her brother. It is already in later literary retellings (for example, by A.N. Tolstoy) that Baba Yaga is going to eat a girl or dine on a boy. There is nothing like this in the folk tale recorded by Afanasyev. There the sister grabs her brother from the bench and runs home. And Baba Yaga at this time very conveniently leaves to check something in her household, that is, she practically pretends that she does not see what is happening. And then it’s not Baba Yaga who rushes after the children, but again the evil geese-swans, Navi’s messengers.

It turns out that Baba Yaga, having detained the boy (and in those days, peasant children died in batches) in a hut on the border of Yavi and Navi, seemed to be waiting to see if anyone would grab him, that is, she was checking whether someone in the world of Yavi needed him. If you need it, then they will come for it. This means that he is a boy who has his own place in this Manifest World.

Do you remember who helped the girl hide from the swan geese? A milk river with jelly banks, a mother apple tree and a madam stove. But they didn’t help for that reason. Each one demanded to be respected. River - so that the girl can drink the milk and taste the jelly. Apple tree - so that the forest apple can eat it. And the stove - so that you can eat rye pie. And if the first time, when the girl ran after the geese-swans, she brushed everyone off, now she had to fulfill all the conditions, and even praise all the helpers. This is an obvious hint: if you are friendly and kind, everyone will help you - the river, the trees, the bread - all of nature.

But here’s a question that arises even for the little ones when Afanasyev’s fairy tale is read to them:

Why is the girl-sister suddenly called a girl at the end of the fairy tale?

And the answer follows from the plot of the fairy tale. After the girl, having overcome all the trials, saved her brother, she matured, gaining experience and wisdom. Now she is no longer a capricious child, ready to run for a walk, forgetting about her brother, but a courageous girl who risked her life for the sake of a loved one. This is where literary maturation occurs - the girl is already called a girl.

Adults only

Many researchers consider this tale to be a retelling of an ancient rite that girls underwent during initiation into adulthood. In fact, where does the stove with fresh bread come from, the apple tree with fruits, the milk river with jelly banks? And these are all symbols of housework that a village woman should be able to do, bake bread, work in the garden, milk a cow, and cook delicious jelly (a traditional village delicacy). But most importantly, the expectant mother should know that she needs to keep an eye on her child. So much for the Geese-Swan ritual.

True, there is another interpretation: the fairy tale conveys an initiation rite for a boy entering adulthood. He must be able to endure various hardships: that he is excommunicated from his usual home, and that he is kidnapped by enemies and held captive by an insidious villain. In this situation, the sister, a woman, acts as a priestess, and it is clear why: she is the eldest.

However, all these initiations are not for everyone. Choose which one you like best.

Don’t forget one thing: no matter how much of a villain Baba Yaga is portrayed as, even in the fairy tale films of our great actor-storyteller Georgy Millyar, his heroine turned out to be a very, very sweet creature. Even though she was always messing with the heroes.

And there is also evidence: our children, who ended up in fascist concentration camps during the Great Patriotic War, told each other fairy tales about Baba Yaga and even Koshchei the Immortal - and there, in these fairy tales, Russian heroes became protectors of children. Really, who can you rely on in a hopeless situation? Only for magical protectors...

Or maybe there is someone - a hero-defender - among quite ordinary heroes?

But you won't believe it. Our old friends, Emelya the Fool and Ivan the Fool, may well act as hero-defenders. Don't believe me? Read on!