The Three Kingdoms: Gold, Silver, and Copper

Of all the wonder-tales that Alexander Afanasyev gathered in the great mid-nineteenth-century enterprise that gave Russia her three-volume Narodnye russkie skazki, none reveals the inner architecture of the Slavic volshebnaya skazka, the “magic tale,” more clearly than the three sister-variants he printed as numbers 128, 129 and 130, “Три царства – медное, серебряное и золотое.” The youngest son of a tsar descends through a pit at the foot of the world, passes in turn through realms of copper, silver and gold, defeats the monstrous Whirlwind who has carried off his mother, and is betrayed by his elder brothers when they sever the rope that should lift him home. From that abandonment beneath the earth he must climb back into the upper world by his own wit and the kindness of strange, lame helpers. The Russian listener heard in this plot the shape of every initiation story their ancestors had ever told.

The version printed below follows the Jeremiah Curtin recension of 1890 — the fullest English text and the one closest in cadence to Afanasyev’s Tambov original — supplemented at points by Norbert Guterman’s 1945 Pantheon translation and by Leonard Magnus’s 1916 London edition. The names are the canonical ones: the tsar is Бел Белянин (Bel Belyanin, “White White-skin,” a sky-king honorific older than the Christian era); his wife is Настасья Золотая Коса (Nastasya Zolotaya Kosa, Nastasya of the Golden Braid); his three sons are Pyotr, Vasily and Ivan Tsarevich; the abductor is Вихрь (Vikhr, “Whirlwind”); the queen of the golden realm is Елена Прекрасная (Yelena Prekrasnaya, Helen the Beautiful); and the subterranean servants of the magic whistle are Хромой да Кривой (Khromoi da Krivoi, “Lame and Crooked”). Generic invented names such as Dimitri, Zlata, Serebrina, Medeyka or the sorcerer Zmey, found in modern web retellings, have no warrant in Afanasyev or any of his nineteenth-century translators.

1. The Whirlwind Carries Off the Tsaritsa

In a certain land, in a certain kingdom, there reigned Tsar Bel Belyanin with his consort Nastasya of the Golden Braid. The Tsaritsa had three sons — Pyotr, Vasily and the youngest, Ivan Tsarevich. One bright spring afternoon she walked out into her green orchard with her maids and her nurses to take the new air. From a clear sky there fell suddenly a wind such as no earthly wind had ever been: it seized the Tsaritsa, lifted her clear of the apple-trees, and carried her — God preserve us — into a quarter no one could name. The orchard wall fell silent. The maids ran weeping to the palace.

Tsar Bel Belyanin grieved bitterly but knew not what to do. When his sons reached manhood he called them and said, “My dear children, which of you will go to seek your mother?” The two elder brothers, Pyotr and Vasily, made ready and rode off with great retinues. After many months they had wandered into the open steppe with thousands of soldiers but had found no trace. The youngest, Ivan Tsarevich, then begged leave to go. “Stay,” said the Tsar, “do not leave me old and alone.” But Ivan would not be turned. “Father,” he answered, “my heart pulls me to wander the white world and find our mother.” The Tsar at last gave his reluctant blessing. Ivan saddled his good steed and rode out alone.

He rode long or rode short — a tale is soon told but a deed is not soon done — and at length he came to a vast forest and to a castle of weathered stone set in the trees. There he found an old man who, hearing his lineage, embraced him as a kinsman: an uncle hitherto unknown. The uncle gave him a small clew or ball — klubochek in the Russian — and said: “Throw this before you and follow where it rolls. It will lead you to a range of steep mountains. In a cave at their foot you will find iron claws; fasten them to your hands and feet, climb the cliffs, and there you may discover your mother.” Ivan thanked his uncle and threw the ball forward. It went rolling over root and stream, and he followed. He met his two elder brothers in the open steppe; they had searched in vain, and now agreed to join him. The three rode together until the mountains rose before them, peaks so tall they pricked the sky.

2. The Copper, Silver and Golden Kingdoms

The ball rolled to a cave-mouth in the cliff face. Ivan dismounted, set his iron claws to hand and foot, and after a month of climbing reached the table-land of the upper mountains. The brothers waited below: “Three months we will wait for you, brother; longer would be no use.” Ivan walked across the high places until he came upon a castle wrought of copper, gleaming red-gold under a hard sky. At its gates terrible serpents were chained to copper rings and a copper bucket hung at a well by a copper chain. Ivan drew water and gave the serpents to drink. They lay down soothed, and he passed within.

The Queen of the Copper Kingdom ran out to meet him — a young woman with hair the colour of new metal and a coronet of beaten copper leaves. “Have you come of your own will, brave youth, or against your will?” she asked. “Of my own will,” he answered, “in search of my mother, Nastasya of the Golden Braid, whom the Whirlwind has carried off. Do you know where she is?” “No,” the queen replied, “but not far from here lives my middle sister, Queen of the Silver Kingdom. She may know.” She gave him a copper ball to roll before him and a copper ring on which all her realm was inscribed. “When you have killed the Whirlwind,” she pressed his hand, “do not forget me. Take me out into the free world.”

The copper ball led him on through a saddle of bare cliff into a colder air, and he came to the silver palace. There, too, serpents lay chained at the gate; he watered them at a silver well and passed in. The Queen of the Silver Kingdom received him in a hall hung with pale tapestries. “Three years,” she said, “has the mighty Whirlwind kept me here, and not a Russian voice have I heard in all that time. He visits me once in two months.” She gave him a silver ball, a silver ring of her own kingdom, and the same charge: “Forget me not. Take me up to the free world.”

The silver ball rolled on into a place where the rocks themselves seemed warm, and there at last he saw the golden castle, blazing “just like fire” in the words of Curtin’s text. Six-headed serpents hissed at its gate. Ivan drew water from a golden bucket and gave them to drink. Yelena the Beautiful, eldest of the three queens, met him on the threshold. Her hair was the colour of late afternoon sun and her gown was woven of soft gold thread. “I know where your mother is,” she told him. “She is not far. The Whirlwind comes to her once a week, and to me only once a month. Here is a golden ball — follow it. And here is a golden ring; in it lies the whole Golden Kingdom.” She said, more quietly: “Forget me not, Ivan. Take me to the free world.” And she handed him the third ring.

3. The Two Tubs and the Defeat of the Whirlwind

The golden ball led Ivan at last to a palace blazing with diamond and jasper. At its gate, six-headed serpents reared from chains of black iron. He gave them water, and they coiled to sleep. In the inmost chamber, seated on a throne of carved gold under a crown of seven points, sat Nastasya of the Golden Braid. She lifted her eyes; she saw her own youngest child. “Ah, is that you, my dear son? How have you come hither?” “So and so,” said Ivan; “I have come for you.” “It will be hard for you,” she said. “The Whirlwind reigns over all these mountains, and all the spirits obey him. Come quickly to the cellar.”

In the cellar stood two great tubs of water, one on the right hand, one on the left. The Tsaritsa whispered: “Drink from the right.” Ivan drank. “What strength is in you?” “I could turn this castle over with one hand.” “Drink more.” He drank again. “If I wished,” he said, “I could overturn the whole world.” She nodded. “In the right-hand tub is the Water of Strength; in the left, the Water of Weakness. The Whirlwind always drinks from the right. Exchange them. We must deceive him, or you can never overcome him.” Ivan moved one tub to the place of the other, set the Water of Weakness on the right and the Water of Strength on the left, and the trap was laid.

Then Nastasya placed her son under the great purple robe of her throne and stood waiting. The hall darkened, the diamonds rattled in their settings, and the Whirlwind blew in through the casement: at first a stream of grey air, then a column, then a man — black-bearded, broad-shouldered, with a heavy iron club in his hand and a hero’s sword at his hip. “Fie!” he said, sniffing. “Somehow it smells of Russia here. Have you had a guest?” “Who would visit me?” the Tsaritsa answered. “You see how I sit.” The Whirlwind ran to her to embrace her; and at that instant Ivan sprang from beneath the robe and laid hold of his club.

The Whirlwind howled, “I’ll eat you!” — and shot up through the roof into the sky, carrying Ivan with him into a vast cold black. Over mountains he hissed, “I’ll dash you on the rocks!” Over seas, “I’ll drown you!” But Ivan held the club tight. The Whirlwind flew over the whole white world. By and by his arms grew tired and he sank to the cellar to drink the Water of Strength on the right-hand side. Ivan ran to the left and drank his fill of the Water of Strength — for the tubs had been switched. At once Ivan was the mightiest hero on the earth and the Whirlwind was nothing but a heavy old man. Ivan tore the bright sword from his belt and cut off his head at a stroke. Voices in the dust cried, “Strike again, strike again, or he’ll come to life!” But Ivan remembered his mother’s instruction. “A hero’s hand,” he answered, “strikes not twice, but always finishes at a blow.” He made a fire, burned the head and the body together, and scattered the ashes to the upper air. Then he and his mother walked through the diamond palace, gathering up the three queens and rolling their rings closed, and went down to the linen that the brothers had stretched from peak to plain.

4. Betrayal, the Whistle, and the Long Way Home

From the top of the mountain Ivan let down on a rope of woven linen, first his mother, then Yelena the Beautiful, then the silver queen, then the queen of copper. The two elder brothers stood waiting at the foot of the cliff and divided the spoils at once: Pyotr would marry Yelena, Vasily would take the silver queen, the copper queen would be given to some lesser general. They looked up at the rope as it came down again, empty, for the last load; and Pyotr said, “Let us leave Ivan up there, and ride home and say that we found our mother ourselves.” They cut the linen at its lowest fastening. Ivan, his weight on the rope, fell back into the mountain. He sat down on a stone. What could he do? He wept. Then he rose and walked back through the copper realm, the silver realm and the golden realm; not a soul was left, for the rings of the queens contained their cities. At the centre of the Diamond Kingdom he came to a casement and saw, on its sill, a small bone whistle.

Ivan picked the whistle up and, for very weariness, blew it. Out from under the floor sprang two strange creatures — one with a foot twisted under him, the other with one eye gone — Хромой да Кривой, Lame and Crooked. They bowed. “What is your pleasure, Ivan Tsarevich?” “A meal,” he said, scarcely daring to hope. At once a table was laid before him with white bread, beet soup, fish under a sour cream, and Crimean wine. He ate. He blew again: a bed of feathers appeared, and he slept. He blew a third time: “Is everything possible?” “Everything is possible, Ivan Tsarevich. As we served the Whirlwind before, so we serve you now: only keep the whistle by you.” “Then,” said Ivan, “set me in my own city this minute.”

He stood blinking in the marketplace of his father’s capital. A bustling shoemaker passed by and asked him whence he came and what trade he had. Ivan, hiding his identity, said he could make any shoe. The shoemaker took him as apprentice; that night Ivan blew the whistle and Lame and Crooked stitched a pair of shoes finer than the king of Persia ever wore. Word reached the palace: Yelena the Beautiful, betrothed against her will to Pyotr, demanded a pair set with diamonds, made overnight, “or to the gallows with the shoemaker.” In the night Ivan blew the whistle, and the shoes appeared. Yelena turned them over in the morning light and said quietly, “Such shoes are only made in the mountains. Bring me the shoemaker.” She knew her rescuer by the diamond stitching. At her insistence the apprentice was brought to court; Ivan stepped from behind the shoemaker, set the three rings on the floor, and out of them unrolled the three kingdoms — copper, silver, gold — with their queens shining in the doorways. The Tsar embraced his youngest. Pyotr and Vasily fell at their brother’s feet; Ivan did not raise his hand against them but sent them to herd cattle on the steppe. Ivan married Yelena Prekrasnaya; Vasily was forgiven and given to the Silver queen, and the Copper queen, set free, chose a husband from among the boyars. And as the storyteller ends in Curtin’s text: I was at the wedding too, drank mead and beer; it ran down my moustache, but into my mouth not a drop fell.

The Moral — «Кто ищет, тот найдёт»

«Кто ищет, тот найдёт; кто стучится, тому отворяют.»
— Russian proverb collected by Vladimir Ivanovich Dahl, Пословицы русского народа (Proverbs of the Russian People), Moscow 1862, §1117. “He who seeks, finds; he who knocks, to him it is opened.”

The proverb is at root a Russian folk-Christianisation of Matthew 7:7 (Old Slavonic Ищите, и обрящете), and Afanasyev’s narrators clearly heard it behind every step of Ivan’s descent. Three brothers ride out; only one keeps going. The two who turn back to their soldiers in the open steppe gain nothing; the youngest, who has neither army nor retainer, comes to a copper queen because he was first willing to give water to her serpents. The kingdoms are not won by force but by the small acts of attention paid at each gate. The same logic governs the two tubs: the Whirlwind is undone not by greater violence but by the patience to switch a vessel of water in the dark. In Soviet-era criticism, Vladimir Propp made this tale his exhibit for the deep structure of the volshebnaya skazka — the “magic tale” — in which the hero must descend, be tested, receive a magic helper, lose his way home, be betrayed, and at last rise on his own merit. The Russian moral, then, is not chivalric. It is patient and almost peasant: seek long enough, listen to your mother, give the serpents their water, switch the tubs, do not strike twice, keep the whistle in your pocket.

Why the Tale Has Lasted

The Three Kingdoms is, in Vladimir Propp’s schema, the cleanest example of a Russian volshebnaya skazka: every functional slot of the tale-type ATU 301 is here filled with the bright vividness of metal — copper, silver, gold, diamond — that gives Russian wonder-stories their characteristic colour-charts. The image of three sister-kingdoms, each pitched on a higher metal than the last, became part of Russian visual imagination far beyond the page. Mikhail Vrubel painted the Princess Yelena in 1900; Viktor Vasnetsov took the three subterranean queens as the subject of his 1879–1881 canvas Три царевны подземного царства (“The Three Princesses of the Underground Kingdom”), now in the Tretyakov Gallery, where the Copper, Silver and Golden tsarevnas stand at the mouth of the pit in the same ascending order Afanasyev gave them. Ivan Bilibin made it the subject of his 1902 fairy-tale lithographs commissioned by the Expedition for State Papers; Konstantin Bilibin’s nephew Aleksandr Rou filmed it in 1955 as В тридевятом царстве; Aleksandr Ptushko built the underground sets for the 1957 Lenfilm Sadko from its iconography. In Estonia, the same tale-type circulates as Vaskhobune, Hõbehobune, Kuldhobune, “The Copper, Silver and Gold Horses.”

The structural anthropologist Eleazar Meletinsky pointed out, in his 1958 Герой волшебной сказки (“The Hero of the Wonder Tale”), that the descent into the lower world through a cliff-cave preserves a memory of pre-Christian Slavic eschatology in which the dead descended a stairway of metals (Vladimir Toporov calls it a medno-zolotaya lestnitsa, “copper-and-gold staircase”); the betrayal-on-the-rope motif (F102.1) survives in Norse Bothvarr Bjarki and in the German Dat Erdmänneken (Grimm KHM 91, “The Earth-Manikin”), but only in the Russian recension are the three kingdoms colour-coded by metal. Above all, the tale endures because it sets at the centre a child who is told do not go and goes anyway, and discovers in the going that the underworld is not the empire of a sorcerer but a country of three lonely queens waiting for one Russian voice and the gift of a little water at a serpent-guarded well. That is a story worth telling for as long as children have mothers, and for as long as a youngest child has thought to look for what an elder brother gave up on. «Я там был, мёд-пиво пил, по усам текло, а в рот не попало.»