What was the name of the matchmaker from "The Tale of Tsar S altan"?

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Rereading once again the fairy tale by A. S. Pushkin "About Tsar S altan", you ask yourself: who is this matchmaker, who is she to the heroes of the fairy tale, and what is her real name? By the way, having turned the Internet, you are surprised to find that the problem “What was the name of the matchmaker?” more than one generation of admirers of A. S. Pushkin and literary researchers decided, and a definite answer was never found. Let's try to analyze the facts and find the truth.

Let's walk in a related way

To begin with, let's determine what family ties are the heroes of the fairy tale about Tsar S altan connected with? What is the relation of the royal family to the matchmaker Baba Babarikha, and why did she hate the queen and her offspring so fiercely?

According to Wikipedia, a matchmaker is the mother of one of the spouses in relation to the parents of the other spouse, that is, the mother-in-law of a son or the mother-in-law of a daughter. In this case, to whom and by whom does it belong? Tsar S altan mother-in-law or young queen mother-in-law? If the matchmaker Baba Babarikha is the mother of S altan or the young queen, then it is simply blasphemous to hate your own grandson so much! Only a step-grandmother could pitch a newborn into a barrel and throw it into the open sea at the behest of the waves.

It can be assumed that the matchmaker is an aunt or a breadwinner for someone from the royal family. The conversion of a baba in this case is justified. But what about marriage? Could it be that in 1831 a woman engaged in matchmaking could be called a matchmaker? That is, a matchmaker who harbored a grudge and found herself a companion of two unsettled sisters of the young queen - a weaver and a cook?

And what if we assume that Baba Babarikha was the mother of the first wife of Tsar S altan? Where her own daughter is, history is silent, but it becomes clear both the hatred for the new wife of the son-in-law and the intransigence towards the “grandson”. In relation to the young queen, ex-mother-in-law S altana combines the roles of mother-in-law and stepmother at the same time. The mixture is explosive, you can’t imagine worse. So, we found out the nature of the woman's hatred, now we can start determining what the name of the matchmaker was.

We all noticed that in Pushkin's fairy tale, the woman in marriage does not even have a proper name, but is simply called Babarikha. Something like a nickname is obtained, dismissive-offensive. What is it: a derivative of the name / surname of the husband or his occupation? Or does this indicate her, Svatina, "specialization"? Let's start in order.

Let's turn to a philologist for help

As Doctor of Philology A. Superanskaya noted, in the old days a woman, a wife, a wife, was jokingly called a woman, a woman, as they now mockingly call a woman or woman. In Pushkin's fairy tale, Superanskaya notes, there was a twist, and the babarikha turned into a babarikha, taking shape with the suffix -iha, typical for female nicknames.

The suffix -iha is generally very common for nicknames of personsfemale and female animals: elephant - elephant, hedgehog - hedgehog. The same suffix could be used to denote the name of the wife, nicknamed her husband.

If the woman's husband's name was Babar, then the woman's nickname is Babarikha (by analogy, Danila's wife is Danilikha). But there is no such name in any dictionary of proper names. It would be more logical to assume that the name of the husband of the matchmaker was Babarin - hence Babarikha.

The matchmaker could become a Babarikha if the husband of the matchmaker was a woman by profession. Let's turn to the sources: there were a grabar, a kobzar, a fisherman, but there was no babar. There is no such craft in the nineteenth century in Russia!

And if it's a calling?

And in general, there is not a word about the husband of the matchmaker in the book, so let's turn to the occupation of our heroine, from here, perhaps, we will find out what the name of the matchmaker was.

Babit - so called in ancient times the ability to give birth and help the mother in the first days to care for the newborn. It was believed that a girl, although elderly, could not be a midwife, just like a childless woman. Only a woman who was giving birth could be entrusted with this responsible business, otherwise “how will she baby if she didn’t torture herself”?

Here, an oil painting is already being drawn: the character of Babarikha appears in the text only after the birth of Tsarevich Gvidon. Therefore, she is really a midwife who took birth with the queen. Being part-time former mother-in-law of the king, she, taking advantage of her close position, finds a way to slanderqueen and get rid of the heir.

What is the conclusion?

Summing up our research, it is worth recognizing that we did not succeed in answering the main question, what was the name of the matchmaker. We only approached and found out that the literary nickname of the matchmaker was based on her specialization. Who was she really - maybe Varvara Ivanovna?..