The Spider: A Russian Fairy Tale

I'm reading a book of Russian fairy tales. I came across this one, and I love it. It's got the spider as the hero! Actually, in the version I first read, the spider is a knight, but "hero bold" will do. It's a tale that properly appreciates the role spiders play and their cleverness. This version comes  from a book of Russian Fairy Tales on the Project Gutenberg site. The rest of the publishing information is below the tale.

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The Mizgir [66]

In the olden years, long long ago, with the spring-tide fair and the summer’s heat there came on the world distress and shame. For gnats and flies began to swarm, biting folks and letting their warm blood flow.
Then the Spider[67] appeared, the hero bold, who, with waving arms, weaved webs around the highways and byways in which the gnats and flies were most to be found.

A ghastly Gadfly, coming that way, stumbled straight into the Spider’s snare. The Spider, tightly squeezing her throat, prepared to put her out of the world. From the Spider the Gadfly mercy sought.

“Good father Spider! please not to kill me. I’ve ever so many little ones. Without me they’ll be orphans left, and from door to door have to beg their bread and squabble with dogs.”

[Pg 69] Well, the Spider released her. Away she flew, and everywhere humming and buzzing about, told the flies and gnats of what had occurred.

“Ho, ye gnats and flies! Meet here beneath this ash-tree’s roots. A spider has come, and, with waving of arms and weaving of nets, has set his snares in all the ways to which the flies and gnats resort. He’ll catch them, every single one!”

They flew to the spot; beneath the ash-tree’s roots they hid, and lay there as though they were dead. The Spider came, and there he found a cricket, a beetle, and a bug.

“O Cricket!” he cried, “upon this mound sit and take snuff! Beetle, do thou beat a drum. And do thou crawl, O Bug, the bun-like, beneath the ash, and spread abroad this news of me, the Spider, the wrestler, the hero bold—that the Spider, the wrestler, the hero bold, no longer in the world exists; that they have sent him to Kazan; that in Kazan, upon a block, they’ve chopped his head off, and the block destroyed.”

On the mound sat the Cricket and took snuff. The Beetle smote upon the drum. The Bug crawled in among the ash-tree’s roots, and cried:—

“Why have ye fallen? Wherefore as in death do ye lie here? Truly no longer lives the Spider, the wrestler, the hero bold. They’ve sent him to Kazan and in Kazan they’ve chopped his head off on a block, and afterwards destroyed the block.”

The gnats and flies grew blithe and merry. Thrice they crossed themselves, then out they flew—and straight into the Spider’s snares. Said he:—

“But seldom do ye come! I would that ye would far more often come to visit me! to quaff my wine and beer, and pay me tribute!”[68]

[Pg 70] This story is specially interesting in the original, inasmuch as it is rhymed throughout, although printed as prose. A kind of lilt is perceptible in many of the Skazkas, and traces of rhyme are often to be detected in them, but “The Mizgir’s” mould is different from theirs. Many stories also exist in an artificially versified form, but their movement differs entirely from that of the naturally cadenced periods of the ordinary Skazka, or of such rhymed prose as that of “The Mizgir.”

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[66] Afanasief, ii. No. 5. Written down by a crown-peasant in the government of Perm.

[67] Mizgir, a venomous spider, like the Tarantula, found in the Kirghiz Steppes.

[68] In another story bearing the same title (v. 39) the spider lies on its back awaiting its prey. Up comes “the honorable widow,” the wasp, and falls straight into the trap. The spider beheads her. Then the gnats and flies assemble, perform a funeral service over her remains, and carry them off on their shoulders to the village of Komarovo (komar = gnat). For specimens of the Russian “Beast-Epos” the reader is referred (as I have stated in the preface) to Professor de Gubernatis’s “Zoological Mythology.”
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The tale is word-for-word and comes from a larger collection of Russian tales. I don't think any of the others feature heroic spiders, though.

Or, to put the license more specifically, as the Project Gutenberg people say it:

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Russian Fairy Tales, by W. R. S. Ralston

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. 

Title: Russian Fairy Tales
       A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore

Author: W. R. S. Ralston

Release Date: August 22, 2007 [EBook #22373]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 

Enjoy!