Uncensored Russian Folklore: Highlights from Afanasyev’s “Russian Secret Tales”

We chose three adult Russian folk tales to make one point clear: the folklore of our ancestors was far more explicit — and far bolder — than you might expect. Alongside familiar fairy-tale staples like talking animals and magical transformations, these stories openly explore the body, taboo sex (including sex across species), gigantic phalluses, bondage, and even same-sex themes.

Alexander Afanasyev, a nineteenth-century literary scholar and one of the most important collectors of Russian folklore, wrote down and edited a vast number of oral tales in the 1860s. These texts show both the sheer inventiveness of peasant storytelling and how matter-of-factly people treated sexuality. They weren’t afraid to talk about love and the body, they knew how to laugh at intimate situations, and they expressed their feelings openly and freely.

The Fool

There once lived a peasant man and his wife, and they had a son who was known as an idiot. He got it into his head that he wanted to marry and sleep with a wife, and he kept pestering his father:

“Marry me off, Dad!”

His father said:

“Hold on, son. It’s too early to get you married: your dick still doesn’t reach your ass. When it reaches your ass — that’s when I’ll marry you.”

So the boy grabbed his dick with both hands, pulled it as hard as he could, and checked. Sure enough, it fell a little short.

“Yeah,” he said, “it is too early for me to marry. My dick’s still small — it doesn’t reach my ass. I’d better wait a year or two.”

Time passed. And the fool’s only “job” was stretching his dick. Eventually he got results: it grew so much that it didn’t just reach his ass — it reached past it. He went to his father and said:

“Well then, Dad! Now it’s time to marry me off: my dick reaches right past my ass! I won’t be ashamed to sleep with a wife; I’ll satisfy her myself and won’t let her go looking elsewhere!”

His father thought, “What good can you ever expect from a fool?” And he told him:

“Well, son. If your dick has grown so big that it reaches past your ass, then there’s no reason to marry you at all — stay single. Sit at home and use your own dick to fuck yourself in the ass!”

And that was the end of it.

The Soldier and the Priest

A soldier gets it into his head to have sex with the priest’s wife — how can he pull it off?

He dresses in full uniform, takes his rifle, and shows up at the priest’s yard.

“Listen up, Father. There’s a new decree: all priests are to be reamed. So bend over and present your arse.”

“Oh, soldier… can’t you let me off?”

“Nice try! So I should get punished because of you? Hurry up, drop your trousers, and get on all fours.”

“Have mercy, soldier! Couldn’t you do it to my wife instead?”

“Well… I suppose it could be done. But no one must find out, or we’ll be in real trouble. So, Father — what are you offering? I won’t do it for less than a hundred.”

“Take it, soldier — just help me out of this mess.”

“Right. Go lie down in the cart. Put your wife on top of you. I’ll climb up and make it look like I’m screwing you!”

The priest lies down in the cart, the priest’s wife lies on top of him, and the soldier hikes up her skirt and goes at it with gusto. The priest lies there and lies there — and before long he gets worked up too; his dick strains, pushes through a hole in the cart’s boards, and sticks out — bright red, and huge. The priest’s daughter watches and watches, then says:

“Now that’s a soldier! What a massive dick he has — he’s pierced straight through Mum and Dad, and the tip is still wobbling!”

Sowing Dicks

Once upon a time there were two peasants. They ploughed their land and set off to sow rye. An old wanderer came walking by, went up to the first peasant, and said:

“Hello there, good man!”

“Hello, Grandpa!”

“What are you sowing?”

“Rye, Grandpa.”

“Well, may God help you — may your rye grow tall and full of grain!”

The old man then went up to the second peasant:

“Hello there, good man. What are you sowing?”

“What’s it to you?” the peasant snapped. “I’m sowing dicks!”

“Well then — may your dicks sprout!”

The old man walked on. The peasants finished sowing, harrowed the field, and went home.

Spring came, and with it the rains. In the first man’s strip of land the rye came up thick and high. But in the second man’s strip, nothing came up except dicks — red-headed dicks — covering the whole plot. There wasn’t a place to put your foot: everywhere, dicks.

The peasants rode out to see how things were growing. The first man could hardly contain himself with joy as he looked at his field; the second man’s heart sank.

“What,” he thought, “am I supposed to do now with these devils?”

Harvest time arrived. They went to the fields: one started reaping rye, while the other just stared — on his strip, dicks had grown to a yard and a half long. Red-headed, standing there as if a field of poppies were in bloom. He looked and looked, shook his head, and rode back home. Then he gathered knives, sharpened them as keen as he could, took thread and paper, returned to his plot, and began cutting the dicks down.

He’d cut off a pair, wrap them in paper, tie them up neatly with string, and toss the bundle into his cart. When he’d cut them all, he hauled the load into town to sell.

“Maybe,” he thought, “I can sell at least one pair to some fool of a woman!”

He drove down the street shouting at the top of his lungs:

“Dicks for sale! Dicks!Ddicks! Fine dicks for sale! Dicks! Dicks!”

A lady of the house heard him and sent her maid:

“Run out and ask what that peasant is selling.”

The girl ran out.

“Hey, peasant! What are you selling?”

“Dicks, ma’am!”

She went back inside, embarrassed to say it out loud.

“Speak up, you idiot,” the lady snapped. “Don’t be shy. So — what is he selling?”

“Well, ma’am… the scoundrel is selling dicks.”

“You fool! Run, catch him, and haggle — how much does he want for a pair?”

The maid stopped the peasant and asked:

“How much for one pair?”

“No haggling — one hundred rubles.”

As soon as she told her mistress, the lady pulled out a hundred rubles at once.

“Here,” she said. “Go and choose the best ones — longer and thicker.”

The maid brought him the money and pleaded:

“Please, peasant — give me the best ones you’ve got.”

“They all grew in splendidly,” he said.

The maid took a good pair and brought them to the lady. The lady looked them over and liked what she saw. She tried to put them where she meant to — but they wouldn’t go in.

“What did the peasant tell you,” she asked the maid, “how to give them orders so they’ll work?”

“He didn’t say anything, ma’am.”

“You idiot! Go ask him this minute.”

The maid ran back:

“Listen, peasant — tell me how to command your goods so they’ll do their job.”

The peasant said:

“If you give me another hundred rubles, I’ll tell you.”

The maid rushed to her mistress.

“He won’t say for free, ma’am — he wants another hundred.”

“A thing like that is worth two hundred,” said the lady.

The peasant took the second hundred and said:

“If the lady wants them to start, let her just say: ‘Giddy-up!’”

The lady lay down on the bed, hitched up her skirt, and commanded: “Giddy-up!” At once both dicks latched onto her and began pounding away. Before long she was sorry she’d asked — yet she couldn’t pull them off.

How to get rid of the trouble? She sent the maid again:

“Run after that son of a bitch and ask what to say so they’ll stop!”

The maid flew down the street.

“Tell me, peasant — what does she have to say for the dicks to let go? They’re wearing my mistress out!”

The peasant replied:

“Another hundred, and I’ll tell you.”

The maid came running back. The lady was barely alive on the bed.

“Take the last hundred from the chest,” she gasped, “and bring it to that bastard — quickly! Or I’ll die!”

The peasant took the third hundred and said:

“Tell her to say: ‘Whoa!’ — and they’ll stop at once.”

The maid ran back and saw the lady nearly senseless, her tongue hanging out — so she herself shouted at them:

“Whoa!”

Both dicks sprang off immediately.

The lady felt better, got up, hid the dicks away, and started living for her own pleasure. Whenever she wanted, she’d take them out, give the command, and they’d go to work — until the lady cried:

“Whoa!”

Once it happened that she went visiting another village and forgot to bring the dicks with her. She stayed until evening, grew bored, and prepared to head home. The hosts begged her to stay the night.

“Impossible,” she said. “I forgot one secret thing at home, and without it I can’t fall asleep!”

“If you like,” her hosts said, “we’ll send a trustworthy man to fetch it and bring it back safely.”

The lady agreed. They immediately sent a footman with a good horse to the lady’s house to fetch the item.

“Ask my maid,” the lady instructed. “She knows where it’s hidden.”

The footman arrived; the maid handed him the two dicks, each wrapped in paper. He shoved them into his back pocket, mounted up, and rode back. On the way he had to climb a hill. The horse was lazy, and as soon as he began urging it on — “Giddy-up!” — both dicks suddenly sprang out and started pounding him in the ass. The footman nearly died of fright.

“What the devil is this? Where did these cursed things come from?”

He was almost in tears, not knowing what to do. But then the horse started trotting briskly downhill, and he yelled:

“Whoa!”

At once the dicks popped out of his ass.

He gathered them up, wrapped them again in paper, brought them back, and handed them to the lady.

“All went well?” she asked.

“To hell with them,” said the footman. “If there hadn’t been a hill on the road, they’d have fucked me all the way to the yard.”

About the author and the book

Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev (1826–1871) is remembered as one of the most prominent researchers of Slavic spiritual culture. He was trained as a lawyer, but his interests went far beyond official documents and the legal system. He was drawn to folklore — traditional popular culture that had long been passed down orally: fairy tales, legends, oral histories, and songs.

In 1860, Afanasyev published a collection titled Russian Folk Legends. It retold stories about saints and about Christ as ordinary people understood and recounted them. The Church and the state censorship authorities considered the book dangerous, and it was quickly banned: popular belief did not always match official doctrine.

Afanasyev’s most scandalous work was Secret Tales — a collection of Russian erotic folk narratives. He knew it would be impossible to publish such material in nineteenth-century Russia because of censorship, so he sent the manuscript to Europe. It was first printed there after his death, while in Russia the book did not appear until 1992.

The edition opens with an epigraph taken from one of the tales: “What is there to be ashamed of? Stealing is shameful, but saying it out loud — nothing wrong with that; you can say anything.”

All the tales can be read on Wikisource.

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