The Gigantic Turnip

"The Gigantic Turnip" or "The Enormous Turnip" (Russian: Репка, Repka, IPA: [ˈrʲepkə], literally "small turnip"; ATU 2044, ‘Pulling up the turnip') is a cumulative Russian fairy tale, collected in Arkhangelsk Governorate and published in 1863 by folklore researcher Alexander Afanasyev in his collection Russian Fairy Tales (tale number 89).[1]

For the Grimms' fairy tale about a giant turnip see The Turnip
Repka
Illustration by Elisabeth Boehm, 1887
CountryRussian Empire
Genre(s)Fairy tale
Published inНародные русские сказки
Media typePrint
Publication date1863

The story has been rewritten and adapted numerous times into other languages (e.g. into Ukrainian by Ivan Franko;[2] into Polish by Julian Tuwim;[3] into Bulgarian by Ran Bosilek[4]).

Plot

It is a chain tale, in which a grandfather plants a turnip, which grows so large that he cannot pull it up himself. He asks the grandmother for help, and they together still cannot pull it up. Successively their granddaughter and pets are recruited to help, until they finally pull the turnip up together. The specific ordering and set of people and animals varies. However, in the popular Russian version (based on the 1864 adaptation of Konstantin Ushinsky) their order is quite fixed, with rhythm and rhyme: it is the grandfather (dedka), the grandmother (babka), the granddaughter (vnuchka), the female-dog (zhuchka[note 1]), the female-cat (koshka) and finally only with the help of the female-mouse (myshka) can the giant turnip (repka) be pulled up.

Derivative works

Several version for children have been penned, including by Konstantin Ushinsky (1864), Vladimir Dal (1870), and Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy (1940).

The fairy tale has had multiple treatments in English. One of the unfinished projects of award-winning illustrator Ezra Jack Keats was a version of "The Giant Turnip"; artwork for the book was published in the 2002 collection Keats's Neighborhood: An Ezra Jack Keats Treasury.[5]

See also

References
Notes
  1. The original version had the word "suchka" (bitch), but kid versions replace that with "zhuchka", due to the original word having a negative meaning much like in English.
Footnotes
  1. Афанасьев, А. Н. (1984). "Репка: Сказка N 89". Фундаментальная электронная библиотека: Русская литература и фольклор. Retrieved 2008-11-29.
  2. "Franko, Ivan. Ripka".
  3. "Fundacja im. Juliana Tuwima i Ireny Tuwim".
  4. "chitanka.info".
  5. Keats, Ezra Jack (2002). Keats's neighborhood : an Ezra Jack Keats treasury. New York: Viking. ISBN 978-0-670-03586-1.


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