Reading Notes: Russian Folktales, Part B

The Witch Girl

• Every night, a witch girl passes through houses and kills the entire household but one man stays awake and catches her so she does not kill the house
• It would be interesting to make it a romance story where the witch has the chance to kill them all but she thinks the man is handsome

The Headless Princess

• The princess was a witch and a young boy saw her remove her own head and had to read psalms over her for three nights while she conjured up horrors to scare him
• Could elaborate from his point of view on the horrors experienced by the young boy and the sort of demons and terrors that tried to attack him

The Fox Physician

• A man's wife died and a fox told him he could cure her with a bath of oatmeal and butter, but instead he ate all of the bones clean
• It would be funny to make the items that the fox needs to cure her ridiculously long and absurd

The Two Friends

• Two friends had a pact that they would invite each other to their weddings, even if the other was dead, so one friend stopped his search for his bride to go to the graveyard and invite him
• Could fast forward more than three hundred years from the cup's drink so that he is now in modern times and does not understand what all the technology and advances are

(The graveyard at night where all the corpses come alive)

The Coffin-Lid

• A corpse rises from his coffin at night and goes into the village to kill young lads
• Would be interesting to tell the story from the point of view of the corpse because he is jealous and angry that he died so early while other young men live

The Two Corpses

• A man is chased at night by a corpse into a chapel where there was another corpse and they fight over who gets to eat the man before they fall down at sunrise
• Could expand upon telling the dramatic story of their fight over the man 

The Soldier and the Vampire

• A terrible warlock was haunting the town and killed the bride and groom at a wedding, so everyone wanted their revenge
• A soldier discovered they had to burn him and kill all of the reptiles and insects that would come out from inside him 
• Could change the story so that the healing the bride and groom did not work and the people all turned on the soldier, thinking he was the warlock

 Bibliography: Russian Fairy Tales , a collection of Muscovite folklore by Ralston