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The Witch Girl
The Witch Girl, as a Russian fairy tale, or skazka-drama, was translated in English by W.R.S. Ralston and published 1873 in the Russian Fairy Tales A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore. The fairy tale originated around the areas of modern-day Ukraine and Russia, however due to the oral story telling nature of the original tale a proper period or specific region cannot be properly attributed to the origin of the fairy tale. The tale is likely to have variations as oral story telling evolves through time within differing location, but Ralston’s English version is taken from the collections of Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev. The short story follows a Cossack who arrives to a village and saves the villagers from the terror of a witch who kills at night. A lesser celebrated tale by main-stream media and scholars today, still explores significant cultural themes, ideologies, life.

Plot Summary
The Witch Girl opens with a Cossack man entering a village in search of a place to rest while he is travelling. The people of the village warn the man that Death is in their village and takes the life of an innocent person every night. The man sets a trap and waits, eventually finding that Death is a girl witch dressed in white and carries a sprinkler, which is implied she uses to kill her victims. Using his sabre he cuts off one of the witches' arms, and as she retreats, he cleans and hides it. In the morning when everyone is discovered to be alive, he calls on the Sotniks and Desyatnik and with them they search the village. When they reach the Ponomar’s home, they find the Ponomar’s daughter supposedly sick with her arm missing. The man tells the village what he had witnessed that night and his noble deed while presenting them with the witch girl’s arm. They then drown the witch, and he is compensated for his service to the village.

The story is structure is straight-forward, making the whole story short, not having much detail, and the dialog is conservative. The narration is a third person narration following a Cossack, who is unnamed. There is no additional background information on this Cossack, the village he arrives to, or the Witch Girl. Despite being the title of the story, the Witch Girl, who is also unnamed, is not the focus of the story, and the story does not give explanation for her killing the villagers or otherwise details to the story.

Literary Context
As a tale of defeating a witch, The Witch Girl falls into the genre of Russian fairy tales called the wonder tale, or volshebnaya skazka, which is characterized by a man’s heroic deeds. In the heroic wonder tale, usually the man is an older boy on the path to manhood, making the stories a type of coming-of-age tale. Although the Cossack’s age is not known, nor his larger quest, he is deemed a hero for stopping the killing of the innocent people in the village. Another characteristic of the heroic wonder tale is that the hero is only defined by a name, social status, and or physical prowess. The Cossack in The Witch Girl has no name and does not have a physical description but is defined by being a Cossack. Depending on the oral version that Ralston’s Afanasyev version is told from, the social standing of the Cossack people could change drastically. As an ethnic group, the Cossack people were semi-nomadic people who were militarized and had roots in Southern Russia and Ukraine. The character being Cossack fits into the social status aspect of the heroic wonder tale.

Themes
The Witch Girl follows a usual trope in Russian fairy tales, and cultures around the world, is the concept of the witch. The most notable Russian witch being Baba Yaga, who although is mostly known globally for her evildoings, is traditionally also shown as nice elderly woman. With most oral tales the evolution of stories and their characters is enviable, however the cultural attitude towards witchcraft and witches, which are associated with many pagan traditions, after the introduction and adoption of Christianity become increasingly negative. It is therefore understandable that a version of The Witch Girl transcribed after the adoption of Christianity would place any witch as an evil doer. The pagan aspects of the story are lessened and Christain aspects either supplement or replace traditional. As a pagan aspect of the story, and in many other Russian fairy tales as Ralston mentions, a common theme in wonder tales is water as magic. Although water can be dualistic in Russian folklore, being reviving or weakening, in The Witch Girl the water is used to weaken and kill. The witch carries with her a sprinkler, likely referring to an aspergillum, which she uses to kill the villagers, although this is not very clear. Ironically, when she is discovered, the villagers drown her. The story differs from others as the origin of the Water of Weakening, or Water of Death, is not explained in the traditional way, but aided by Christian beliefs. Throughout the tale, there are insinuations that Christianity and the religions ideas of evil are the source of the witch. With the mention of the aspergillum, the Cossack man witnesses the villager pray to God, exclaim God’s name in joy, and the Ponomar surname is as it also occupational surname for a sexton.