One of my favorite wizard rock songs, often one I point newbies towards, is “The Peverell Story” by The Butterbeer Experience – a stunning retelling of “The Tale of Three Brothers” from Death’s perspective, one that’s captured fan imaginations enough for several fanvids to make their way onto YouTube.

Now, it turns out “The Peverell Story” has inspired further fanworks: a Russian translation of the song, set to the same video on YouTube! With Russian lyrics written by Alexey Bright and sung by Anastasiia Reshetnova.

This was so exciting, since there aren’t nearly enough wrock translations out there!  Anastasiia’s voice is more than up to the vocal grandeur the song demands.  Furthermore, the translation isn’t actually a line-by-line translation, so much as it takes the structure and subject of the song and makes it very much its own.  In fact, I thought the artistry of the translation merits a deep dive into the lyrics!  By contrasting the two, we can gain an appreciation for how two different artists tackle crafting a song based on the same material.

The first thing that struck me upon listening was the switch in gender – while the original song, told from the first person, does not gender Death, Death is referred to as “he” in the original “Tale of Three Brothers.”  In Russian, all nouns are gendered, and verbs are conjugated differently based on the gender of the subject.  In Russian, “death” is a female noun, and so Death in this song is also female.

The Russian version also names all three brothers, in a departure from Lena Gabrielle’s original, which mentions “the first brother” and “the next brother,” and only Ignotus by name.  The translation does not refer to them as such, instead singing, “Said Antioch…” and “Cadmus pleaded…”  In this way, the Russian version is a bit more “inside baseball” than the English, assuming the listener knows the name of the Peverell brothers.

Alexey Bright included some more ominous foreshadowing in his version.  For instance, when Death gives the Elder Wand to the eldest brother, Lena sings, “I fashioned a wand for he thought he was worthy / And gave Elder Wand to the eldest of three.”  The Russian version ends the stanza on a more sinister note: “I made a wand for the eldest brother / Satisfied, he left, not knowing the cost.”

The next verse – the first soaring rendition of “Go brother, I bid thee good night!” – is where the lyrics really depart from their English counterparts.  We immediately hear that this is a more bloodthirsty version of the fairy tale – instead of “I promise you’ll win all your battles and fights,” Ana sings, “Your foes will fear dying.”

This is followed by a haunting visual; in place of “Your wand will be stolen, and you will be slain,” the Russian version sings, “A knife will have its fill of your blood.”  This actually references something from the original “Tale of Three Brothers,” since Antioch’s killer “slit the oldest brother’s throat.” (TBB page 91).

In fact, the most significant overall change in lyrics was to evoke more visuals.  This is a general difference in Russian music versus English – many Russian pop songs focus on some very distinct visual (engagements rings, bouquets, photos) instead of on nebulous concepts like love.  In this way Alexey’s “Story of the Peverells” truly does Russify “The Peverell Story,” with talk of bloody knives in place of being slain.

Where Alexey Bright’s retelling of the first brother’s journey was far bloodier than Lena’s, his attitude towards middle brother Cadmus is far more charitable than the original.  Lena sings that “The next brother cried, ‘Give me magic instead / The power to bring others back from the dead.’”  This is in keeping with the fairytale, where Cadmus “was an arrogant man [who] wanted to humiliate Death still further, and asked for the power to recall others from Death.” (TBB88-89)  There is no mention of bringing back his lost love until he actually does so, reacting with “amazement” and “delight.” (TBB92)

Alexey Bright, on the other hand, makes the lost love Cadmus’s primary motivation for asking for the Resurrection Stone. “Cadmus begged, ‘I need one thing: return to life she, who died long ago.’”  There is no mention of Cadmus’s arrogance, it sounds like his grief over his lost love was at the fore of his mind.  Here, we again see an emphasis for visuals: in English, the stone “would bring back the dead,” in Russian, the stone “Gives life to those, who are in a grave now.”

For the third brother, the Russian version also has a different reading of the tale.  In Lena’s song, as in Beedle’s tale, Ignotus requests Death “leave me alone ‘til the end of my days.”  In Russian, however, there’s a very curious way of phrasing it: Ignotus says, “Begone! You’re Death – that’s how the end of my life will be delayed.”  It’s a fine nuance, but instead of wanting to live to “the end of his days,” it sounds like Russian Ignotus wants to actually extend his life beyond what he expects.  (Then again, if he’s facing down Death, perhaps expecting a short life in that moment is quite understandable!)  Death’s response seems to agree with this – where the English lyric is “go live out your life,” the Russian one is, “your life will be long.”

Finally, the last three lines of the Russian version are pure poetry.  There’s an inversion of the order: in English, the emphasis is on Ignotus’s escape, yet ends with Death claiming the brothers; in Russian, it’s the opposite.  And here we see, to full effect, the Russian emphasis on visuals used to tell a story.  The lyrics diverge after the brothers depart with the wand, stone, and cloak.  For reference, the English lyrics to close out the song are:

“And I bade young Ignotus be selfless and roam
And many years passed ’til he called me his home
But I took the other two for my own”

The Russian lyrics:

“Time flowed as though sand through fingers,
And all three departed to the kingdom of shadows,
But only Ignotus of his own volition.”

So now, hopefully, you can appreciate the cleverness of Alexey Bright’s Russian lyrics when listening to his “Story of the Peverells” – which I’ll be doing quite often, until I probably have the lyrics as committed to memory as Lena’s original genius!  Perhaps this shows why there aren’t more translations of wrock songs out there – it’s really not as simple as Google Translating the lyrics and fixing the rhymes, at least not if the final product is to reflect both the character of the new culture’s music and the intent of the original song.  Mad props to Alexey Bright and Anastasiia Reshetnova for crafting this!