Immortal Koschei: His Death Hidden Inside Layer Upon Layer

In Russian folktales, there is a most troublesome villain called "Koschei the Deathless." He is an old man skinny as a skeleton, knows magic, rides a talking horse, and specializes in stealing other people's brides and locking them in his castle. The "Koschei" in his name comes from the same root as the Russian word for "bone."

The hero in the story always manages to find the castle, but always fails to defeat him. Chop him down, he climbs back up; lock him up, he snaps the iron chains. In some versions, after the hero's wife is abducted by Koschei, the hero is hanged on a wall one time after another, bound by twelve iron chains, yet still breaks free.

Later the princess came up with a plan: while Koschei was in good spirits, she coaxed him into revealing the secret. Koschei vaguely said: My death is not in me, but in a faraway place. On the sea there is an island, on the island there is an oak tree, under the tree is buried an iron chest, inside the chest is a hare, inside the hare is a duck, inside the duck is an egg, and inside the egg is hidden a needle. Snap the tip of the needle, and I die.

The hero heard this and set out to find it. Along the way, he freed a trapped wolf, saved a bird about to starve to death, and released a caught fish. These animals later came one by one to help him: the wolf chased the hare that jumped out of the chest, the bird caught the duck that flew out of the hare's belly, and the fish retrieved the egg that fell into the water from the sea.

Finally, the hero took the egg in his hand and walked up to Koschei. Koschei sensed it and began to beg for mercy, promising anything. The hero broke the needle, and Koschei fell down, never to stand up again. In some versions, his corpse was also burned and the ashes scattered to the wind, so he would never return.

This notion of "hiding one's soul in something else" was later borrowed by many stories—for example, the Horcruxes in Harry Potter follow this same pattern.

In Russia, this story has been told for several hundred years, with many versions; how many layers the death is hidden in and what it is hidden in varies from telling to telling.

#Folklore #网络转载 #俄罗斯