A couple
days ago I went to a party in my daughter’s kindergarten dedicated to Women’s
Day. And there, the kids even went into a deep forest to congratulate Baba Yaga.
And they found out that she is not as evil as fairytales tell us. She may have
a bad temper, but after all, she is a woman, too. ;)
That gave
me an idea to write a blog post about some feminine characters in Russian
mythology. And guess who will be the first one I mention?
Baba Yaga
Here are
some pictures of this well-known character:
These two pictures are taken from well-known Russian movies. Several generations of children grew up seeing Baba Yaga as it is depicted there. The role of Baba Yaga was played by a Russian actor Georgiy Millyar.
This picture was made by an artist Ivan Bilibin in 1911. This
image is closer to the original description of Baba Yaga. And here's how she is portrayed in the folklore:
1) She is as thin as a skeleton.
That’s why she is called Baba Yaga bony leg (in Russian - Баба Яга костяная нога).
2) She has iron teeth.
3) She has a very long nose that rattles
against the ceiling of her hut when she snores in her sleep.
4) Oh, and she sleeps
on her brick oven/furnace. You can learn more about the Russian ovens if you look at this Wikipedia article.
5) She lives deep in the forest, in a hut which stands on chicken legs. The hut is surrounded by a fence made of human bones and skulls. You can see one of the pictures to the left.
6) She had no power over "blessed" people: protected by the power of love, a mother's kiss, pure at heart.
What did
she do? Well, she flew everywhere on a huge mortar and kidnapped children (possibly
to eat them). She knew magic and sometimes young men went to her because they needed her knowledge and wisdom in order to save a beautiful girl or to fight another evil creature (that creature is usually called Кощей Бессмертный / Koschey the immortal). If they were smart enough and didn't let her eat them, she usually helped them. So it's impossible to say that she was all evil, or all good. She was unpredictable, that's for sure. The folklore researchers say that, on the one hand, she was like the goddess of the forest (she knew everything about it and she ruled over every single plant or animal), so people needed to keep her happy. On the other hand, she was a cannibal who ate children and young people. And besides, she knew everything about nature and her knowledge and wisdom were extremely valuable for people.
The folklore researchers say that Baba Yaga represents the beliefs of Slavs before Christianity. As you probably know, ancient Slavs were pagans, so they believed in many gods. And Baba Yaga was a guide who helped people from the world of humans to go to the "other side" where they could find the spirits they needed to fight. She usually noticed that somebody entered her place by the smell (that's why some scientists presume that she was blind). That probably means that the living beings have a different smell than dead bodies. Young men came to seek her help when they needed to save a princess, and the first thing they asked her about was some food. Not that they were hungry, but they needed to consume something that would help them enter the world of spirits. So she gave them food. But first, she always tried to kill and eat them. After that "test" was over, Baba Yaga helped her guests because now they belonged to both worlds. Only after that did that person acquired new, magic traits and could talk to animals and ask them for a favour, or just plainly order them to help him, overcame all evil creatures and saved the beautiful princess who was held in captivity in Koschey's castle.
Probably, one of the types of this character were witches/healers/witchdoctors. In ancient times, they lived in forests and gathered all kinds of herbs. People would normally seek their help when somebody was sick, but they were still afraid of those witches and there were lots of rumours about them going around. Maybe Baba Yaga is one of those rumours which turned into a popular legend. The tales about Baba Yaga often go together with myths about ancient witches, so maybe this suggestion is not far from the truth.
In 2004, the village named Kukoboy was proclaimed the "native village" of Baba Yaga. The Russian Orthodox Church disapproved of it, or course. But it seems that nowadays this character is becoming more and more friendly to people and is seldom seen as an evil witch and a cannibal.
Hope I didn't scare you too much with this post :) Let me know what you think about it!
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