Draft:“Sozh & Dneiper” & “The Metamorphosis of the Dnieper, the Volga, and the Dvina.”

"Sozh & Dneiper" is a Russian wonder-tale that details the origins of the Dneiper river. Its parallel story, "The Metamorphosis of the Dnieper, the Volga, and the Dvina," suggests a second origin of how the Dneiper, Volga, and Dvina rivers were formed. This is an early Russian story that illustrates a creation myth of some of the most important water sources in western Russia, and how humans interact with the nature around them. Within the second tale, there are two branching stories that connect how the rivers came to be with the way people worship and respect these bodies of water. The two interconnected stories show the emphasis placed on these major tributaries and how people interpreted the world.

Plot Summary
"Sozh & Dneiper," tells of two brothers who are the sons of a blind man named Dvina. Their mother prefers Dneiper over his older brother, Sozh, so she convinces Dvina to give the family fortune to him. Dneiper is gifted with the magical ability to become a river, much to the disdain of Sozh. His father tells him that he must catch up to the river if he wants to take his brother's place but fails and falls into the river.

In the second story, "The Metamorphosis of the Dnieper, the Volga, and the Dvina," Dneiper is a brother to two sisters, Volga and Dvina. They are extremely impoverished children who work laborious jobs all day for mere scraps of bread. They decide one day that they will make better lives for themselves, so they spend the next three years in search of the perfect place to become rivers. When they do find a good spot, they settle down to sleep for the night, but the two sisters, Dvina and Volga, leave during the night to get a head-start for the best spot. When their brother wakes, he angrily chases after them, while becoming a river himself. His currents are speedy and rapid because he forever chases his two sisters out to the Black Sea to catch up with them.

A short addition to this story follows immediately. There was a man who created a mill on Lake Ilmen by the Black Brook that was trapping fish in the area. A man from Novgorod traveled to Lake Ilmen to the Chorny Ruchei (Black Brook) to see the man in black who guards the lake. He told the Novgorod man to look for a moujik man dressed in blue back in Novgorod and warn him of the mill. When the Novgorod man traveled to the moujik and told him of the news, the moujik told him he would tear down the mill. The story continues, describing how sacrifices were made to the rivers during this time, such as Stenka Razin, the insurgent chief of the Don Cossacks, sacrificing a beloved Persian princess to the Volga. This sub-tale differs from the other stories in that it is not about the creation of rivers, but sustaining a river. This story depicts a man interacting with local river deities to protect the natural wildlife.

History
These connected stories are lesser known in the genre of Russian folktales, unlike stories such as Baba Yaga. They feature important geographical locations across Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine. The Dneiper is a major tributary to these locations and provides transportation throughout the Black Sea.

The Dneiper is the main artery that branches off across the Russian landscape, forming the Volga and Dvina veins. It runs through the Ural Mountains and ends in Kyiv, Ukraine. Lake Ilmen is a lake in Russia that is a part of the Novgorod Oblast area.

The stories also mention many historical references. Stenka Razin, who was the insurgent chief of the Don Cossacks during 1670-1671, led an uprising against tsarist Russian nobility. They are East Slavic Orthodox Christians, endemic to the Ukraine region. The reference of Razin and the Persian princess in the story is tied to his defeat in Yaitsk (or the Ural River), where he attacked Persia, in where is now Azerbaijan today. He pillaged this area, until stopping in Suina in 1669.

Literary Context
The Russian wondertale (or folktale) is a wide genre, that is usually characterized by tales of adventure, magic, and sometimes animals. It predates children's writers like Aesop and was orally shared during Medieval Russia. Many of these tales were formulated during the Times of Trouble and can reflect the grim realities for life as a Russian serf.

These specific stories avoid Orthodox Christian religious connotations, and even reflect some pagan traditions, of worshiping daimons, or the Russian domovoi (although these are usually found in households). They are also different than many of the other wondertales that employ strong moral messages, or the use of Old Church Slavic that was common in many medieval Russian works.

The Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index (ATU Index)  is another literary resource that is used to categorize types of folktales. Most tales can be found here, although the tales of "Sozh & Dneiper" and "The Metamorphosis of the Dneiper, Volga, and Dvina" are not on any of the online-access websites.

Themes
The story "Sozh & Dnieper" employs themes of betrayal, animal guidance, and transformation.

"The Metamorphosis of the Dneiper, the Volga, and the Dvina" plays upon larger cultural themes of medieval Russia, like the Times of Trouble. The three children are shown in a terribly impoverished state, slaving away all day for scraps of bread. The magical aspect, where they choose to become rivers is escapism in a way, as the people who began the oral tradition were likely serfs themselves who wished for a better life, or hoped their children could have a better life.

The second half of the second story tells of a peasant sent on a quest by river daimons to destroy a manmade mill. This story has elements of overcoming a trial, appeasing local river deities to gain a prize in return, and historical settings to ground the story's background.

Each of these three parts of the story follow similar patterns of fairy tales where there is a problem with the order of the land, and the upstart heroines must set things right. They also offer escapist ways to imagine improving one's world or living conditions.

Translations
An English translation is available on the Gutenberg Project by W. R. S. Ralston, entitled Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore.

W. R. S. Ralston's translation is a major contribution to Russian folklore. This selection of translations are mostly taken from Alexander Afanas'ev's collections of fairytales, to whom he dedicated the book to. Ralston was the vice-president to the Folklore Society for roughly twenty years until his death in 1889. He played a major role in translating Russian wondertales and even German folktales, although it was apparent that he was not very fluent in German.

Russian translator Jack V. Haney is another contributor of wondertale literature. He wrote a multi-volume anthology collection on similar folktales to Ralston's, and even re-translated some of Ralston's. His first volume edition was copyrighted in 1999 by Taylor & Francis co.