"The Tale of the Priest and of his Workman Balda" is a fairy tale in verse by Alexander Pushkin. Pushkin wrote the tale on September 13, 1830, while staying at Boldino. It is based on a Russian folk tale which Pushkin collected in Mikhaylovskoye early on. The Tale of the Priest and of his Workman Balda consists of 189 extremely varied lines that range from three to fourteen syllables but made to rhyme in couplets. In the summer of 1831, Pushkin read the tale to Nikolai Gogol who liked it a great deal. The Tale was first published posthumously by Vasily Zhukovsky in 1840 with considerable alterations due to censorship; the Priest character was replaced by a merchant.