Sadko

Long ago in Novgorod there lived a lad called Sadko. His father had been a wealthy merchant, but he lost every coin he had and then died, so the boy was left with nothing at all except a dulcimer. Sadko earned a few kopecks by playing it while other people danced. He had blue eyes, curly hair and strong arms, and he might have been a cheerful young man, but it is tiresome to make music for everyone else’s fun. He never dared to dance with any of the girls himself. With no money he could not hope to marry, and he did not want to be chased off like a beggar. The young women of Novgorod hardly glanced at him. They saved their smiles for the dancers, and when they spoke to Sadko at all it was only to snap at him to play faster or not to stop.

So he lived by himself with his dulcimer. When there was no whole loaf he ate half of one, and when there was no soft bread he chewed the crust. He did not mind much what came his way, as long as he could wander along the Volkhov, the river that runs past Novgorod, or sit by the lake, watching the pale mist lift off the water and the sky turn bright at dawn and dusk while he played for himself. “No girl in all Novgorod is as lovely as my little river,” he liked to say, and evening after evening he sat on the bank singing to it.

Now and then he lent the fishermen a hand on the lake, and they paid his strong young arms with a small fish for supper. One evening they asked him to mind their nets on the shore while they carried the day’s catch into Novgorod to sell in the square.

Sadko settled on a rock and sang sweetly about the lake and about the river he thought prettier than any girl. As he sang, the lake began to spin. Little waves raced outward from a whirlpool, and in its hollow centre rose a head with long blue hair and a golden crown. Sadko knew at once that this was the Tzar of the Sea. The giant came striding up out of the depths, blue hair spilling over his huge shoulders down to his waist, ripples running away from him on every side.

Sadko could not decide whether to flee or stay where he was. Then the Tzar spoke in a voice like a storm of wind and water. “Sadko of Novgorod, for many days you have played beside this lake and along the Volkhov. My daughters love your songs, and so do I. Cast a net into the water and pull it in, and the water will pay you for your music. If you are content with the payment, you must come down and play for us in the green palace under the sea.” Then he sank again with a roar, and soon the lake lay as flat and still as before.

Sadko thought it over. “Throwing a net can do no harm,” he told himself, and he flung one out. He went back to his dulcimer, and by the time his song was done night had fallen and the moon hung over the lake. He began hauling in the ropes. The net slid up easily, dripping and glinting silver. “I must have dozed off and dreamed that giant,” he said, “for there is nothing in it.” But as the last of the net came ashore he felt something square and heavy in the mesh. He pulled out a wooden chest, opened the lid, and saw it brimming with jewels, green and red and gold, shining in the moonlight. The diamonds glittered like bundles of tiny sharp blades. “Dream or no dream, there is no harm in keeping these,” said Sadko.

He hoisted the chest onto his shoulder and staggered under its weight, strong as he was, and hid it somewhere safe. All night he guarded the nets, played and sang, and made plans. In the morning the fishermen came back merry from their night in town and gave him a little fish for his trouble. He lit a fire on the shore and cooked it, as he always had. “This is the last meal I eat as a poor man,” he said with a sigh. “Who can tell whether I will be any happier?”

Then he shouldered the chest and walked to Novgorod. The guards at the gate called out to ask who was coming. “Only Sadko who plays the dulcimer,” he answered. “Become a porter now, have you?” they laughed. “One trade is as good as another,” said Sadko, and in he went. He sold the stones a couple at a time and used the money to open a stall in the market. Small trade led to larger trade, and before long he was one of the wealthiest merchants in the city.

Suddenly every girl in town had sweet looks for him. One praised his golden hair, another said his eyes were as blue as the sea, a third declared he could carry the whole world on his shoulders. A little money opens everyone’s eyes. Yet Sadko himself did not change. When the market closed and the traders went home, he still took his dulcimer down to the Volkhov and sang there, and he still said that no girl in Novgorod could match his little river. He sailed far and wide to buy and sell like the greatest merchants, and whenever he came home from a voyage he went straight to the riverbank to greet his sweetheart, and he always tossed a small gift into the water for her.

Twelve years he lived in Novgorod without marrying, growing richer with every voyage. Plenty of mothers wished he would choose one of their daughters, and plenty of girls cried into their pillows over his blue eyes and golden hair.

In the twelfth year after he had walked through the gate with the chest on his back, Sadko was sailing the Caspian Sea, very far from home. Day after day he sat on deck playing and singing about Novgorod and the Volkhov flowing under its walls. The sea was blue, the waves stretched out in long white furrows like a ploughed field, and the wind filled the sails. Then, without warning, the ship stopped dead. Out in the open sea, far from any shore, she stood quivering in the water as if a giant hand were gripping her.

“We have run aground!” shouted the sailors. The captain ordered them to sound the depth. They found seventy fathoms at the bow and seventy at the stern. “We are not aground,” said the captain, “unless a rock pokes up like a needle in the middle of the Caspian.” “This is magic,” muttered the crew. The captain had more sail raised, and the masts bent and creaked, but the ship only shivered and stayed where she was. He ordered still more canvas. The masts groaned. The ship did not move.

“Someone aboard is unlucky,” said an old sailor. “We must draw lots to find out who, and throw him into the sea.” The others agreed, while Sadko went on playing. They cut a string for every person on the ship, all the same length, and cut one of them in half. They bundled the strings together and each man pulled one. Sadko paused his music just long enough to draw, and his was the short string.

“Wizard! Sorcerer! Unclean thing!” the sailors yelled. “No,” said Sadko. “I have just remembered a promise I made long ago, and I am glad to keep it.” Holding his dulcimer, he jumped over the rail into the blue water. The waves had barely closed over him when the ship leapt forward, skimmed the sea as lightly as a swan’s feather, and reached her harbour safely.

As for Sadko, he sank like a pebble dropped into a pond. The water turned from blue to green around him, and odd fish with bulging eyes and golden fins circled him as he fell, until at last he touched the sea floor. There stood a palace of green timber, built from the planks of every ship ever wrecked in all the world’s seas, each beam fitted so cleverly that the place was worth a ten-day journey just to look at. Two enormous knobbly sturgeons guarded the gate, each a hundred and fifty feet long, thrashing their tails. These were ancient, fantastic guardians of the underwater palace.

Sadko walked between them and into a great hall. The Tzar of the Sea lay stretched along it with his crown on his head, his blue hair drifting in the water and his scaly body filling a room big enough for a whole village, while fish swam in and out of the windows. “Ah, Sadko,” he said, “you accepted what the sea gave you, but you have taken your time coming to sing for us. For twelve years I have waited here.” “Forgive me, great Tzar,” said Sadko. “Sing now,” said the Tzar, in a voice like breaking waves.

So Sadko played and sang. He sang of Novgorod and of the Volkhov he loved, and in his song it was plain that no Novgorod girl was as pretty as the river. His music held the wind over the lake, the lap of water under a boat’s prow, the ripple on the shore, the river sliding past tall reeds and whispering at night. He played more skilfully than he ever had in the days when girls danced to his tunes for kopecks and crusts. The Tzar of the Sea had never heard anything like it.

“I want to dance,” said the Tzar, rising like a tall tree. “Keep playing.” He strode out through the gate, past the sturgeons, who churned the water with their tails. Huge as he had been in the hall, outside he grew vaster still, towering like a mountain, his feet like little hills, green scales all over him and blue hair down to his waist. Then he danced on the bottom of the sea. It was a mighty dance. The sea boiled and ships sank. Waves rolled as tall as houses, the water spilled over the shores and drowned whole towns, and the earth itself shook. When he was tired at last he came back, shrank down to pass through the gate, and returned to the hall, where Sadko was still playing.

“You have played well and given me great pleasure,” said the Tzar. “I have thirty daughters. Choose one, marry her, and be a Prince of the Sea.” “I love my little river better than any maiden,” Sadko replied, and the Tzar threw back his head and laughed until his blue hair floated across the whole hall.

In came the thirty daughters, every one of them lovely and graceful. Twenty-nine walked past while Sadko fingered his strings and thought about his river. When the thirtieth entered he cried out, “Here is the only girl in the world as pretty as my little river!” Her eyes shone like stars mirrored in running water, her hair was as dark as the river at night, and her laugh sounded like the river flowing. “And what is the name of this little river of yours?” asked the Tzar. “It is the Volkhov, which flows past Novgorod,” said Sadko, “but your daughter is as fair as the river, and I would gladly marry her if she will have me.” “How strange,” said the Tzar. “Volkhov is my youngest daughter’s name.”

He placed Sadko’s hand in hers, and they kissed. As they did, Sadko noticed a necklace at her throat and knew it was one he had thrown into the river as a gift for his sweetheart. She smiled and said, “Come,” and led him to a palace of her own, where she showed him a chest filled with bracelets, rings and earrings: every present he had ever tossed into the Volkhov. Sadko laughed with joy and kissed her, and she kissed him back. “Oh, my little river,” he said, “there is no girl anywhere as pretty as you.”

So they were married, and at the wedding feast the Tzar laughed until the palace shook and the fish scattered. Afterward Sadko and his bride went to her palace. Before they slept she kissed him tenderly and asked, “Sadko, you won’t forget me? You will sing and play for me sometimes?” “I will never lose sight of you, my pretty one,” he said, “and I will make music for you all day long.” “We shall see,” she answered, and they fell asleep.

In the middle of the night Sadko rolled over, and his left foot brushed against the princess. She was cold, as cold as January ice. The chill woke him, and he found himself lying beneath the walls of Novgorod with his dulcimer in his hand, one foot dangling in the Volkhov, and the moon shining overhead.

Old Peter, who tells this story, says people disagree about what came next. Some say Sadko went into the town and lived alone until he died. Old Peter sides with those who say he took his dulcimer, swam out to the middle of the river and sank once more to look for his princess, and that he found her and lives still in the green palaces at the bottom of the sea. When a great storm blows, they say, it means Sadko is playing and the Tzar of the Sea is dancing down there beneath the waves.

Where this story comes from

“Sadko” comes from Arthur Ransome’s Old Peter’s Russian Tales, illustrated by Dmitri Mitrokhin (New York: Frederick A. Stokes). In the book, old Peter tells stories to his grandchildren Maroosia and Vanya in a hut deep in the Russian forest. Here Sadko loves the river Volkhov more than any girl, and that love turns out to be real when the Sea Tzar’s youngest daughter has the river’s name. This telling leaves out the children’s interruptions but keeps both of Peter’s possible endings, because Ransome leaves the choice open.

In his opening note Ransome says he wrote the stories down mostly from memory and took his own way with them. He adds that versions of them can be found in chap-books and in Afanasiev’s great collection. He wrote the note in Russia with the Volkhov under his windows. A footnote to this tale explains that in England the Volkhov would count as a big river, and that Sadko and Peter call it “little” only out of affection.

Read the original: Arthur Ransome, Old Peter’s Russian Tales (Project Gutenberg #16981)

For older readers: includes threatened human sacrifice, drowned towns and a romanticised ending in which Sadko sinks into the river to seek his bride.

One listener’s pleasure, other people’s loss

Sadko’s music brings him wealth and the Tzar joy, but the dance sinks ships and floods towns. The palace celebration is therefore not a harmless reward when viewed from the surface. The green palace, built from wrecked ships, has already joined beauty to destruction.

The two endings change the cost of Sadko’s love. In one he lives apart from the river-princess; in Peter’s preferred ending he returns beneath the water. That second ending is supernatural storytelling, not a safe or attainable route to reunion. The sailors’ decision to sacrifice someone chosen by lot is likewise their dangerous belief, not justified evidence of guilt.

Compare what each ending preserves

For each ending, write what Sadko keeps and loses: music, the familiar city, companionship and life on land. Then retell the Tzar’s dance briefly from a sailor’s viewpoint. How does changing the listener change the mood?

Talk about it

• Why do the girls of Novgorod suddenly notice Sadko, and why does that not change how he feels?
• What promise does Sadko remember when the short string falls to him, and why does he jump instead of arguing?
• How does each of Old Peter’s two endings change the meaning of Sadko’s love for the river?

More stories like this

• The Firebird, the Horse of Power, and Princess Vasilisa — another tale from Old Peter’s Russian Tales, with a sea-princess and a test by water
• The Snow Maiden (Snegurochka) — a Ransome tale where love and cold meet
• The Tsarevna Frog — a Russian bride from an unexpected world