The Gigantic Turnip

"Repka"
"Repka"
Short story by {{{author}}}
	Illustration by Elisabeth Boehm, 1887
Country	Russian Empire
Genre(s)	Fairy tale
Publication
Published in	Народные русские сказки
Media type	Print
Publication date	1863

"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), a collection not strictly Russian, but which included stories from Ukraine and Belarus alongside Russian tales.^[1]^[2]^[3] The tale is well-known in Ukraine as adapted by Ivan Franko^[4]^[5]

The story has been rewritten and adapted numerous times in other languages, for example Polish by Julian Tuwim;^[6] Bulgarian by Ran Bosilek,^[7] and English by Jan Brett.^[8]

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.^{[citation needed]}

Adaptations and retellings

Several version for children have been penned, including by Konstantin Ushinsky (1864), Vladimir Dal (1870), and Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy (1940).^{[citation needed]}

A Hebrew version of the same folktale titled "Eliezer ve-ha-Gezer" ("Eliezer and the Carrot"), in which the identity of the root vegetable is changed to rhyme with the main character's name, has become a well known children's story in Israeli culture.^[9] It was published by Levin Kipnis as both a theatrical scene-poem (1930) ^[10] and children's book (1964).^[11]

It is retold as "The Turnip" by Barbara Suwyn in the World Folklore Series' The Magic Egg and Other Tales from Ukraine (1997), edited by Natalie Kononenko.^[3]

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.^[12]

Children's author, Jan Brett, wrote that the inspiration for her English-language retelling of The Turnip was travel in 2011 through Russia, and chose animals as characters in her version.^[8]^[13]

"Rep-repa" is an adaptation of a fairy tale, performed by the cult Serbian mock-folk group Rokeri s Moravu.^[14] Released in 1991,^[15] the song "Rep repa" deals with the assonance of the words "rep" (rap, a musical genre) and "repa" (turnip), hence it is a form of parody of the hip-hop style of the era.

In the Chinese city of Tianjin, near the Tianjin Foreign Language University, there is a statue of children pulling out a giant turnip with a little help from animals. However, the statue lacks the figures of the grandparents.^[16]

References

Notes

^ Some Slavic versions used the word "suchka" (female dog), but children's versions often replace that with "zhuchka", due to the former potentially having a negative connotation, much like the English word "bitch". ^{[citation needed]}

Footnotes

^ Афанасьев, А. Н. (1984). "Репка: Сказка N 89". Фундаментальная электронная библиотека: Русская литература и фольклор. Retrieved 2008-11-29.
^ Suwyn, Barbara (1997). Kononenko, Natalie (ed.). The magic egg and other tales from Ukraine. World folklore series. Englewood, Colo: Libr. Unlimited. pp. xxi. ISBN 978-1-56308-425-6.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
^ ^a ^b Suwyn, Barbara J. (1997). Kononenko, Natalie O. (ed.). The magic egg and other tales from Ukraine. World folklore series. Englewood, Colo: Libr. Unlimited. pp. 41–43. ISBN 978-1-56308-425-6.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
^ "Franko, Ivan. Ripka".
^ Гукало, Юлія (2018-10-13). "РОЛЬ КАЗОК ІВАНА ФРАНКА У ФОРМУВАННІ НАЦІОНАЛЬНО-КУЛЬТУРНИХ ЦІННОСТЕЙ УЧНІВ ПОЧАТКОВОЇ ШКОЛИ". Молодь і ринок. 9 (164). doi:10.24919/2308-4634.2018.144327. ISSN 2617-0825. S2CID 187396169.
^ "Fundacja im. Juliana Tuwima i Ireny Tuwim".
^ "chitanka.info". 18 August 2008.
^ ^a ^b "The Turnip". www.janbrett.com. Retrieved 2023-06-12.
^ Zer-Zion, Shelly (2019). "Theater for Kindergarten Children in the Yishuv: Toward the Formation of an Eretz-Israeli Childhood". Images. 12 (1): 70–84. Retrieved 9 November 2023.
^ Kipnis, Levin (1930). Eliezer ve-ha-Gezer [Eliezer and the carrot]. Gilyonot 2. p. 23.
^ Kipnis, Levine (1964). Eliezer ve-ha-Gezer. Tel Aviv: S. Zimzon.
^ Keats, Ezra Jack (2002). Keats's neighborhood : an Ezra Jack Keats treasury. New York: Viking. ISBN 978-0-670-03586-1.
^ "The turnip | WorldCat.org". www.worldcat.org. Retrieved 2023-06-12.
^ Jugodisk Beograd (2015-05-06). Rokeri s Moravu - Rep repa - (Official Video 1991). Retrieved 2024-07-26 – via YouTube.
^ ""Rokeri s Moravu" album of 1991 at Dicogs".
^ "Children pulling on a giant carrot, Tianjin China - Figurative Public Sculpture on Waymarking.com". www.waymarking.com. Retrieved 2024-07-26.