Baba Yagá

Baba Yagá by Ivan Bilibin (1902)

This post is dedicated to our "Little Russian" Kelsey Guggenheim

Since it's getting close to Halloween I've decided to write about my favorite witch of all time...Baba Yagá!

Baba Yagá (pronounced bah-bah yah-GAH) is a witch or mother forest spirit that lives in the deep dark woods of Russia.  Her house stands on top of chicken legs that spin the cottage around in circles, there are skulls on the pickets of the fence that are lit up like lanterns.  She drives a mortar and pestle to fly around and she has three horsemen that ride by her house, one clad in white riding a white horse (daylight, represent!) rides by in the morning, a red clad horse man (the sun, represent!) rides by around noon, and a black clad horse man (night, represent!) rides by at dusk.

Baba Yagá appears as an old hag with iron teeth.  She is said to kidnap and eat children, as happens in the story of "Baba Yagá's Geese", where the heroine, a little girl, Marya must rescue her baby brother from the witch after he was stolen away by Baba Yagá's flock of geese. The most common tale featuring Baba Yagá is the tale of Vasilissa the Beautiful (an alternative version is Vasilissa the Wise).  In one version of the story Vasilissa escapes the witch's clutches with the help of a doll her mother left her and/or a cat that had been abused by Baba Yagá while in another Baba Yagá lets Vasilissa go with a skull lamp from her fence to take back to Vasilissa's wicked stepmother and step sisters.

In some tales Baba Yagá is a single fearsome entity however in others there are several Baba Yagás.  For instance, in the tale of Koshcei the Deathless, Koshchei claims that his magnificent jade horse was a reward from a baba yagá for doing such a good job of watching the mares of that baba yagá (Ralston).  Baba Yagá isn't always portrayed as a villain, some times she helps heroes and other times she is neutral.  Baba Yagá was featured in an episode of Lost Girl as a cannibalistic hag that, when evoked, will help young slavic girls get revenge on a man that had wronged them.  However, in Patricia Polacco's children's book Babushka Baba Yaga and Don Bluth's Bartok the Magnificent feature a Baba Yagá that is lonely and misunderstood.  For instance, in Babushka Baba Yaga, Baba Yagá is the last of her kind, misunderstood and accused of being a child eating witch.  In Polacco's story the baba yaga heroine becomes a babushka to a young boy and his mother, even saving the little boy from a pack of wolves.





Resources:

Bartok the Magnificent.  Writ. Jay Lacopo. Dir. Don Bluth and Gary Goldman.  1999.

Carey, Bonnie. "Baba Yaga's Geese". Baba Yaga's Geese and Other Russian Stories. Ontario: Indiana University Press, 1973. pp. 92 - 95. Print.

"Mirror, Mirror". Lost Girl.  Writ. M. A. Lovretta.  Prodegy Pictures, 2009.

Newall, Venetia. "Easter Eggs". The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 80, No. 315 (Jan. - Mar., 1967), pp. 3-32. Web. 17 Sep. 2013. http://www.jstor.org/stable/538415.

Polacco, Patricia. Babushka Baba Yaga. New York: Philomel Books, 1993. Print.

Ponsot, Marie. "Vassilissa the Beautiful". Russian Fairy Tales. New York: Golden Press, 1960. pp. 21 - 30. Print.

Ralston, William and Sheldon Ralston. "Koshcei the Deathless".  Russian Folk-Tales. New York: R. Worthington, 1880. pp. 103. Print.

Riordan, James. "Vasilissa the Wise and Baba Yaga". Russian Folk-Tales. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. pp. 6 - 17. Print.