Abstract
The article concerns a fairy tale from A. Andreiev’s fairy-tale index, namely AA 967, which has greatly interested Russian researchers because of its connection with bylina. However, this story is not of East Slavic origin but has enetered the Russians’ repertoire as a substrate. The case is even more interesting since the same story is also known in far East Siberia, among the Paleoasiatic Kets and Samoyed Selkups. The Ket stories are vividly Siberian narratives of inter-tribal feud. The same applies to the story’s western distribution’s periphery - it has been told as a true story in Finland and P.-L. Rausmaa has indexed it as a historical legend. Finnish and Ket versions are similar, while Karelian, Vepsian and probably also the version spread to Russians from them has obtained fairy tale motifs. Undisputable is the common origin of all these stories: coinciding facts are too complex to assume random similarity. The article also discusses whether the narrative is hostile towards women.
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