# The Fiend

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Russian fairy tale

This article is about the Russian fairy tale. For the 1972 film, see [The Fiend (film)](/source/The_Fiend_(film)). For the professional wrestler, see [Bray Wyatt](/source/Bray_Wyatt).

***The Fiend*** or ***The Vampire***[1] ([Russian](/source/Russian_language): Упырь *Upyr*) is a [Russian fairy tale](/source/Russian_fairy_tale), collected by [Alexander Afanasyev](/source/Alexander_Afanasyev) as his number 363.[2] The tale was translated and published by [William Ralston Shedden-Ralston](/source/William_Ralston_Shedden-Ralston).[3] It is also known as ***The Corpse Eater*** and classified as ATU 363 in the [Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index](/source/Aarne-Thompson-Uther_Index).[4]

## Plot synopsis

A young woman named Marusia goes to a feast where she meets a kind, handsome and apparently wealthy man. They fall in love with each other and Marusia agrees to marry him. She also consents to her mother's directive that she follow the boy to discover where he lives and more about him. She follows him to the church where she sees him eating a corpse. Later the fiend asks her if she saw him at the church. When Marusia denies having followed him, he tells her that her father will die the next day. Thereafter, he continually poses the question and with each denial he causes another of her family members to die. Finally he tells her that she herself will die. At this point Marusia asks her grandmother what to do. Her grandmother explains a way by which Marusia can come back to life after she dies (a condition of which is that she cannot enter a church afterwards). On coming back to life she meets a good man whom she marries, however he does not like the fact that she will not go to church and eventually forces her to do so. Thus the Fiend discovers that she is alive and kills her husband and her son, but with the help of her grandmother, the [water of life](/source/Fountain_of_Youth), and [holy water](/source/Holy_water) she brings them back and kills the fiend.

## Variants

Scholarship states that the tale type appears in Europe and Turkey. In Turkish variants, the heroine triumphs in the end over the dervish,[5] while in Europe the fate of the heroine may differ between regions (a Scandinavian and Baltic version, a West Slavic and Ukrainian one).[6]

### Estonian

There are two key versions of the tale in Estonia. In one variant, the corpse-eater is a man with a golden nose, and he and the heroine make three stops on their way to his house, either at a graveyard or church. After the heroine sees that he is a corpse-eater, she tells her mother about him. However, the corpse-eater had actually disguised himself as her mother, so he learns what the heroine has seen instead. The corpse-eater then eats the heroine, although some versions have her escape.[7]

In another Estonian variant, the gender of the hero is changed, to a man who wants a beautiful wife. A wise man suggests he seek one at a crossroads, and there he meets an old man who gives him a beautiful wife. Once at home, the wife acts oddly, and never eats anything in the house. The man follows her to a graveyard where he realizes she eats corpses instead. He hits her with a rod and she turns into a cow. In some variants, he asks a minister for help, and they work together to free him from the wife.[7]

## Analysis

### Tale type

The tale is classified in the [Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index](/source/Aarne-Thompson-Uther_Index) as tale type ATU 363, "The Vampire" or "The Corpse-Eater",[8][4] while in the [East Slavic](/source/East_Slavic_languages) Folktale Classification ([Russian](/source/Russian_language): СУС, [romanized](/source/Romanization_of_Russian): *SUS*) it is indexed as type SUS 363, [Russian](/source/Russian_language): Жених-упыръ, [romanized](/source/Romanization_of_Russian): *Zhenikh-upyr*, [lit.](/source/Literal_translation) 'Vampire Bridegroom'.[9] These stories are about a girl who marries a mysterious man. During their way home, they stop by a church and the man enters it. Worried about his long absence, the woman follows him and sees him devouring a corpse.[10][11][12] The man then disguises himself as one of her parents and eats her.[6]

The original name of the tale, *Упырь*, is the [word](/source/Upi%C3%B3r) for "[vampire](/source/Vampire)" in [Slavic languages](/source/Slavic_languages).[13]

### Themes

Many of these tales are moralistic: the corpse eater is a form of punishment for the heroine, who has asked for too much in a potential husband. Some northern variants of the tale seem designed to terrify for its own sake, a demonic encounter of the thriller genre.[6]

### Gender shifting

Pauline Greenhill and Emilie Anderson-Grégoire cite this tale type, ATU 363, as a rare example of a physical change in sex/gender within a folktale. In examining Volume 1 of [Hans-Jörg Uther](/source/Hans-J%C3%B6rg_Uther)'s 2004 folktale indices, they point out ATU 363 and ATU 514 ("[The Shift of Sex](/source/Ileana_Simziana)") as the only obvious examples of this theme. For "The Corpse Eater," the change of gender is described as temporary and contingent, while the transformation in "The Shift of Sex" is a permanent change, after a woman presents as a man for an extended period of time.[14] Similarly, Greenhill and Kay Turner identified the two tales, along with a partial example in ATU 706D ("St. [Wilgefortis](/source/Wilgefortis) and Her Beard"), as examples of sex change catalogued in Uther's 2004 volume.[15]

## References

1. **[^](#cite_ref-1)** Haney, Jack V. The Complete Folktales of A. N. Afanas'ev. Volume III. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. 2021. pp. 93-98.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-2)** Народные русские сказки А. Н. Афанасьева. Tom 3. Лит. памятники. М.: Наука, 1984—1985.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-3)** Ralston, William Ralston Shedden. *Russian Folk-tales*. New York: R. Worthington, 1878. pp. 24-31.

1. ^ [***a***](#cite_ref-:1_4-0) [***b***](#cite_ref-:1_4-1) Uther, Hans-Jörg (2004). *The Types of International Folktales: A Classification and Bibliography, Based on the System of Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson*. Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, Academia Scientiarum Fennica. p. 228. [ISBN](/source/ISBN_(identifier)) [978-951-41-0963-8](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/978-951-41-0963-8).

1. **[^](#cite_ref-5)** [Eberhard, Wolfram](/source/Wolfram_Eberhard); [Boratav, Pertev Nailî](/source/Pertev_Naili_Boratav) (1953). [*Typen türkischer Volksmärchen*](https://opendata.uni-halle.de/handle/1981185920/36665) (in German). Wiesbaden: Steiner. pp. 163–165. [doi](/source/Doi_(identifier)):[10.25673/36433](https://doi.org/10.25673%2F36433).

1. ^ [***a***](#cite_ref-:2_6-0) [***b***](#cite_ref-:2_6-1) [***c***](#cite_ref-:2_6-2) Kostiukhin, E. A. 1998. “Magic Tales That End Badly”. FOLKLORICA - Journal of the Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Folklore Association 3 (2): 9-10. [https://doi.org/10.17161/folklorica.v3i2.3670](https://doi.org/10.17161/folklorica.v3i2.3670).

1. ^ [***a***](#cite_ref-:0_7-0) [***b***](#cite_ref-:0_7-1) Risto, Järv; Kaasik, Mairi; Toomeos-Orglaan, Kärri, eds. (2009). [*Estonian Folktales I : 1. Fairy Tales. Summary*](https://www.folklore.ee/era/pub/files/EMj2009_engsummary.pdf) (PDF). Monumenta Estoniae Antiquae V. Vol. 1. Eesti Kirjandusmuuseumi Teaduskirjastus. p. 602.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-8)** Aarne, Antti; Thompson, Stith. *The types of the folktale: a classification and bibliography*. Folklore Fellows Communications FFC no. 184. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1961. pp. 126-127.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-9)** Barag, Lev. "Сравнительный указатель сюжетов. Восточнославянская сказка". Leningrad: НАУКА, 1979. p. 125.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-10)** Thompson, Stith (1977). *The Folktale*. University of California Press. pp. 40-41. [ISBN](/source/ISBN_(identifier)) [0-520-03537-2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0-520-03537-2)

1. **[^](#cite_ref-11)** Pavelková, Marta. "Motiv antropofágie jako součást světové mytologie a folkloru" [Anthropophagy as a part of international mythology and folklore]. In: *Studia Ethnologica Pragensia* 2018, Vol. 2. Univerzita Karlova v Praze, Filozofická fakulta, Vydavatelství. pp. 151-163.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-12)** Haney, Jack V. The Complete Folktales of A. N. Afanas'ev. Volume III. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. 2021. p. 536.

1. **[^](#cite_ref-13)** Andersen, Henning. 2021. „Pide. *peh2ur ‘ogenj’. Dve Slovanski Etimologiji“. In: *Slovenski Jezik* [Slovene Linguistic Studies] 13 (oktober). Ljubljana, Slovenija. pp. 11-12. [https://doi.org/10.3986/sjsls.13.1.01](https://doi.org/10.3986/sjsls.13.1.01).

1. **[^](#cite_ref-14)** Greenhill, Pauline; Anderson-Grégoire, Emilie (2014), Greenhill, Pauline; Tye, Diane (eds.), [""If Thou Be Woman, Be Now Man!": "The Shift of Sex" as Transsexual Imagination"](https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt83jj2k.8), *Unsettling Assumptions*, Tradition, Gender, Drag, University Press of Colorado, pp. 56–73, [ISBN](/source/ISBN_(identifier)) [978-0-87421-897-8](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/978-0-87421-897-8), retrieved 2025-04-13{{[citation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Citation)}}: CS1 maint: work parameter with ISBN ([link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:CS1_maint:_work_parameter_with_ISBN))

1. **[^](#cite_ref-15)** Turner, Kay; Greenhill, Pauline, eds. (2012). *Transgressive tales: queering the Grimms*. Series in fairy-tale studies. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. p. 306. [ISBN](/source/ISBN_(identifier)) [978-0-8143-3481-2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/978-0-8143-3481-2).

## External links

- [The original text, in Russian](https://ru.wikisource.org/wiki/%D0%9D%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%BD%D1%8B%D0%B5_%D1%80%D1%83%D1%81%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B5_%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B0%D0%B7%D0%BA%D0%B8_(%D0%90%D1%84%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B0%D1%81%D1%8C%D0%B5%D0%B2)/%D0%A3%D0%BF%D1%8B%D1%80%D1%8C) in Wikisource

- [Project Gutenberg Russian Fairy Tales by Ralston, William Ralston Shedden, 1828-1889.](https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/22373)

- [Russian Fairy Tale Stories, Zeluna.net.](http://www.zeluna.net/russian-fairy-tale.html)

v t e Russian fairy tales Key articles Skazka Bylina Folklore of Russia Alexander Afanasyev Alexander Pushkin Tales in Narodnye russkie skazki collected by Afanasyev "Koschei the Immortal" "Vasilisa the Beautiful" "Vasilisa the Priest's Daughter" "Father Frost" "Sister Alenushka and Brother Ivanushka" "The Frog Princess" "Vasilii the Unlucky" "The White Duck" "The Princess Who Never Smiled" "The Wicked Sisters" "The Twelve Dancing Princesses" "The Magic Swan Geese" "The Feather of Finist the Falcon" "Tsarevitch Ivan, the Firebird and the Gray Wolf" "The Bold Knight, the Apples of Youth, and the Water of Life" "Go I Know Not Whither and Fetch I Know Not What" "The Golden Slipper" "The Firebird and Princess Vasilisa" "The Wise Little Girl" "The Armless Maiden" "The Gigantic Turnip" "Storm-Bogatyr, Ivan the Cow's Son" "Emelya the Simpleton/At the Pike's Behest" "The Fiend" "The Lute Player" "The Language of the Birds" "The Maiden Tsar" "The Sea Tsar and Vasilisa the Wise" "The Norka" "Dawn, Midnight and Twilight" "Verlioka" "Sivko-Burko" "Donotknow" Tales by Pushkin "Ruslan and Ludmila" "The Tale of Tsar Saltan" "The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish" "The Tale of the Golden Cockerel" Other "The Little Humpbacked Horse" "The Scarlet Flower" "The Snow Maiden" "The Hairy Man" "King Kojata" "The Tale About Baba-Yaga" "The Wonderful Birch" "The Girl as Soldier" "Green-Vanka"

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Adapted from the Wikipedia article [The Fiend](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fiend) by Wikipedia contributors ([contributor history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fiend?action=history)). Available under [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Changes may have been made.