ABSTRACT
as a song in verse, “About the Merchant Terenty” has been recorded just five times, but as a prose tale, it has been collected many times in Russian folklore (Smirnov and Smolitskii 1978: 445–46). The most complete variant, which has been translated here, appears in Kirsha Danilov’s collection, which was taken down in the middle of the eighteenth century. Basically this is an anecdote about how an old husband, with the aid of clever helpers, catches his unfaithful young wife with her lover and punishes them. The Russian version is set in the city of Novgorod and involves Terenty, who is an old husband and a rich merchant, and his young wife, Avdotya. She complains about an “ailment” and sends her credulous husband for a doctor or sorcerer to treat her. In the city, Terenty runs into some skomorokhs near the Exaltation of the Cross Church. They first tease him in good humor but then decide to help him when he promises to give a hundred rubles to anyone who will cure his wife’s ailment. The perceptive skomorokhs, who here are called “merry youths,” take him to buy a bag and club, hire a porter to carry him in the bag, and go to Terenty’s home, where they tell his wife that he has died. She is happy to hear that the “whore’s son” is dead and invites the skomorokhs in, whereupon they sing a song telling Terenty to cure his wife’s ailment with the club.
