Tugarin Zmeyevich

The swan came in as the ninth course, whole on its platter, and the princess took up the knife to carve it. Her attention was elsewhere. The blade went into her own left hand instead of the bird, and she wound the cut up in her sleeve and put her hand under the table, and when the boyar women asked what had happened she told them plainly: she could carve the white swan, or she could look at young Tugarin Zmeyevich, and she had chosen. Tugarin did not wait for a second offer. He speared the untouched bird on his own knife, swallowed it in one motion, and put a whole monastery loaf after it.

That detail about the knife matters more than it looks. He could have carved. He had the blade in his hand and he chose not to use it, and in a hall at Kiev under Prince Vladimir the carving of the swan was the whole point of the meal. Swan was not everyday food. It was barely food at all outside a prince’s feast, and the ritual of cutting it and passing the portions around was how everyone at the table learned exactly where they stood. Tugarin swallowed the social order along with the bird. He had already taken the best seat without being asked, come in without crossing himself, and greeted nobody.

From the entresol beam near the stove, the humblest perch in the room and the one he had picked on purpose, Alyosha Popovich started talking. He asked the prince what kind of blockhead he was feeding. Then he told a story about his father Fyodor, the priest of Rostov, who had kept an old cow so decrepit she could barely drag herself across the yard, until she got into the kitchen, drank down a whole vat of unfermented mash, and burst. He threw her down the slope by the tail. He said Tugarin would get the same. A dagger came across the hall at him, thrown hard, and his squire Yekim caught it out of the air. Alyosha remarked that he now had a blade to carve Tugarin’s heart with, and then went on eating.

He is described as a snake and behaves like a man. That contradiction sits at the centre of everything told about him. The word in his name, zmey, is the masculine form of the Russian for serpent, and it makes him the son of one, but the singers give him a body that is mostly human and mostly enormous: a head the size of a cauldron, shoulders that fill a doorway, an appetite that empties a table. He rides. He sits at meals. In some versions his torso crawls with small fiery snakes that he uses as weapons, and he tries to smother Alyosha in smoke, throws sparks at him, scorches him, shoots burning logs. Then the wings open and he goes up into the air, and whatever human shape he has been keeping stops mattering.

Where he came from depends on who is arguing. The most repeated explanation ties his name to Tugorkan, a Polovtsian khan who besieged Pereyaslavl in the spring of 1096 and died that July on the Trubezh against the armies of Svyatopolk and Vladimir Monomakh, the historical raider turned into a dragon by a few generations of retelling. Others point out that Tugarin is an attested medieval Russian personal name in its own right, built on the word tuga, grief, the kind of name that means the one who brings sorrow. Neither reading is settled. What is certain is that the song is old and was carried in mouths rather than books: about forty versions were taken down from village singers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, many of whom could not read, and the earliest written trace is a single scrap of seventeenth-century manuscript. The long text everyone quotes, three hundred and forty-four lines with the episodes doubled, comes from Kirsha Danilov’s eighteenth-century collection. In the prose retelling that circulated later, Tugarin is not merely a pagan but has gone about converting Vladimir’s realm to the Latin faith, which tells you rather more about the singers’ anxieties than about him.

The duel happens in open country, usually by the Safat River, where the two of them pitch pavilions. Tugarin is already in the sky when Alyosha arrives, roaring in a voice that carries across the field or hissing like the thing he is named for. Alyosha prays for rain. It comes. The wings sag, soak, fail, and Tugarin drops out of the air onto the wet grass, and in at least one version Alyosha, riding closer, sees what nobody in the sky could see: the wings were made of paper, and they were fastened to the horse. In another telling he does not fight fair at all. He swaps his clothes with a wandering psalm-singer, takes the pilgrim’s ninety-pood staff, and shuffles up to Tugarin pretending to be deaf, so that the giant has to lean in close to be heard. Then the staff comes round. The head goes off and rolls away heavy and dull as a cauldron, and Alyosha, riding back to Kiev, amuses himself by flipping it up and catching it on his spear point, which from a distance looks so much like something Tugarin would do that the watchers on the walls assume the wrong man won.

The body was cut into pieces and scattered across the field. Princess Apraksa took the news badly, and reproached Alyosha to his face for robbing her of her dear friend, and got an answer that the singers enjoyed repeating and that no polite translation quite survives.

His powers are the powers of a besieging army compressed into one body: he can go where walls do not reach, he burns what he passes over, and he consumes at a rate nothing local can sustain. His weaknesses are the same things read from the other side. The flight is borrowed rather than grown, and water ends it. The gluttony that makes him frightening at the table is also what makes him ridiculous, and ridicule is the opening Alyosha works through from the first course onward. And a creature who has spent the whole song insisting on his own importance never looks twice at a deaf old beggar with a staff.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Tugarin Zmeyevich?

Tugarin Zmeyevich is the serpent-descended giant of Russian epic song who intrudes on Prince Vladimir’s feast at Kiev and is killed by the young hero Alyosha Popovich. His name marks him as the son of a he-serpent, though the singers give him a largely human body and enormous size. He appears in roughly forty recorded versions of the bylina, the oldest surviving written trace being a scrap of seventeenth-century manuscript.

How was Tugarin Zmeyevich defeated?

Alyosha Popovich beat him with prayer and trickery rather than strength. Tugarin fought from the air on wings that some versions describe as paper and fastened to his horse, so Alyosha prayed for rain, which soaked them and brought him down. In another telling Alyosha disguised himself as a deaf wandering psalm-singer to get close, then took off Tugarin’s head with a borrowed ninety-pood staff.

Was Tugarin Zmeyevich a real person?

He may be based on one. Many scholars connect his name to Tugorkan, a Polovtsian khan who besieged Pereyaslavl in 1096 and died that year fighting Svyatopolk and Vladimir Monomakh. An alternative explanation notes that Tugarin is an attested medieval Russian personal name from the word tuga, meaning grief, and the question has never been settled.

Why does the swan matter in the story of Tugarin?

Carving and sharing the swan was how rank was displayed at a prince’s feast, and swan was not eaten in ordinary life at all. When Tugarin speared the whole bird on his own knife and swallowed it without carving, he was refusing to distribute the portions and so refusing the entire social order of the hall. The princess had failed to carve it because she was staring at him, and in many versions she is his lover.

What did Tugarin Zmeyevich look like?

He was a giant with a head so large that after Alyosha struck it off it rolled away like a beer cauldron. Although called a serpent, he keeps a broadly human shape, rides a horse, and sits at table. Some versions cover his torso with small fiery snakes that he uses as weapons, hurling sparks and burning logs at his opponent.

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