ABSTRACT
The song “Ilya Muromets and Kalin Tsar” is one of the few Russian epics that concerns the struggle with the Tatar Golden Horde from the thirteenth through the fifteenth centuries. This bylina is so closely connected with several others, especially “Battle on the Kama” and “Ilya Muromets, Yermak, and Kalin Tsar,” that they all are usually examined together as different realizations of the same subject. Although they vary considerably in their details, the three main versions of this song essentially relate how a Tatar army commanded by Kalin Tsar approaches the city of Kiev and how this force is defeated either by Ilya Muromets alone or by a group of bogatyrs whom he rallies to defend the city (Propp 1958b: 301–54).
