In the past, I’ve done roundups of familiar tales like Beauty and the Beast or Snow White. Today’s story is one I’ve talked about before but is much more scarce on the internet: “The Firebird, The Horse of Power, and The Princess Vasilisa.”
Some places just have this tale listed as “The Firebird and The Princess Vasilisa,” but I think that’s doing one of the main characters a disservice. In the story, which is a Russian fairy tale, a young archer gets himself into increasingly bad scrapes by meeting the Tsar’s demands, thus setting himself up for even impossible, more dangerous demands to be made. Each time, his talking horse–usually identified as “a Horse of Power”–saves the archer by giving him key advice.
This story isn’t in the folktext archive that I usually use (as far as I can tell!) but you can find some fun versions of it online:
- Of course, the wiki page is a good starting point: it gives a synopsis of the story that’s almost shorter than mine (above), but it does also note some variants, which is cool.
- Julia Gousseva, an author, has a full version of the story on her website that’s pretty close to what I remember reading as a kid.
- “A Gathering of Men” (??) has a version of the story that’s basically the same as Julia’s, but has a nice intro about the Horse of Power that I like; find it here.
- Last but definitely not least, there’s this adaptation which turns the story into a skit to be performed in a classroom. It’s very funny, from the cast descriptions to the last line. 🙂
So, why highlight this story, and especially the horse? Well, in The Carousel Capers–a series of short stories I release through my newsletters–one of the carousel horses we meet is the Horse of Power. It was one of my favorite horses to write. 🙂 And my newsletter is coming out today with another short story about a different magical horse! If you haven’t already subscribed, but would like to, just use the signup box on the right side of the screen. –>
In the meantime, be careful what you promise others you can do! 😉
