BABA YAGA

Baba Yaga by Fabiano Mello de Lima. A digital sculpture by the storyboard

artist Fabiano Mello de Lima that desexes Baba Yaga. An original feature is the
pair of small hands protruding from the aperture in the vehicular mortar on
which she is seated, presumably belonging to a captured child who will become
Baba Yaga’s meal and end up as a skull to be added either to Baga Yaga’s fence
or to those dangling from the mortar. Illustration by Fabiano Mello de Lima,
Fabiano Lima <[email protected]>.
 BABA YAGA
The Wild Witch of the East in Russian Fairy Tales

Introduction and Translations by Sibelan Forrester

Captions to Images by Helena Goscilo

Selection of Images by Martin Skoro and Helena Goscilo

Edited by Sibelan Forrester, Helena Goscilo, and Martin Skoro
Foreword by Jack Zipes
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Manufactured in the United States of America First printing 2013
∞
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Baba Yaga : the wild witch
of the East in Russian fairy tales / introduction and translations by Sibelan
Forrester ; captions to images by Helena Goscilo ; selection of images by Martin
Skoro and Helena Goscilo ; edited by Sibelan Forrester, Helena Goscilo, and
Martin Skoro ; foreword by Jack Zipes.
pages : illustrations ; cm
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-61703-596-8 (cloth : alkaline paper) — ISBN 978-1-61703-778-8
(ebook) 1. Baba Yaga (Legendary character) 2. Tales—Russia. I. Forrester,
Sibelan E. S. (Sibelan Elizabeth S.), translator, editor of compilation. II. Goscilo,
Helena, 1945–, editor of compilation. III. Skoro, Martin, editor of compilation.
IV. Zipes, Jack, 1937–, writer of added commentary.
GR75.B22B22 2013
398.20947—dc23 2013003373

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

 CONTENTS

Illustration by Ivan Bilibin (1876–1942).

FOREWORD Unfathomable Baba Yagas, by Jack Zipes

PREFACE, ACKNOWLEDGMENTS, AND TRANSLATOR’S NOTE
INTRODUCTION Baba Yaga: The Wild Witch of the East
BRIEF BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR FURTHER READING

Tales of Baba Yaga

“Baba Yaga I”
“Baba Yaga II”
“Baba Yaga and the Kid”
“Baba-Yaga and the Runt”
“Finist the Bright Falcon II”
“Go I Don’t Know Where, Bring I Don’t Know What”
“Ivanushka”
“Mar’ia Morevna”
“Moon and Star”
“Prince Danila-Govorila”
“Prince Ivan and Beloy Polyanin”
“The Bear Tsar”
“The Bogatyrs Soska, Usynia, Gorynia, and Duginia”
“The Brother”
“The Daughter-in-Law”
“The Enchanted Princess”
“The Feather of Finist the Bright Falcon”
“The Firebird”
“The Frog and the Bogatyr”
“The Frog Princess”
“The Geese and Swans”
“The Stepdaughter and the Stepmother’s Daughter”
“The Tale of the Daring Young Man and the Apples of Youth”
“The Tale of the Fine Young Man and the Apples of Youth”
“The Tale of the Fine Young Man and the Apples of Youth II”
“The Three Kingdoms”
“The Three Kingdoms—Copper, Silver, and Gold”
“The Tsar-Maiden”
“Vasilisa the Beautiful”

Notes
Index
 FOREWORD

Unfathomable Baba Yagas

JACK ZIPES

Illustration by Viktor Vasnetsov (1848–1926).

In Baba Yaga: The Ambiguous Mother and Witch of the Russian Folktale,
the most thorough study of Baba Yaga to date, Andreas Johns demonstrates that
Baba Yaga has appeared in hundreds if not thousands of folktales in Russia,
Ukraine, and Belarus since the eighteenth century, if not earlier. She is not just a
dangerous witch but also a maternal benefactress, probably related to a pagan
goddess. Many other Russian scholars such as Joanna Hubbs in Mother Russia:
The Feminine Myth in Russian Culture, Linda Ivanits in Russian Folk Belief, and
Cherry Gilchrist in Russian Magic: Living Folk Traditions of an Enchanted
Landscape have confirmed this: Baba Yaga transcends definition because she is
an amalgamation of deities mixed with a dose of sorcery. Though it is difficult to
trace the historical evolution of this mysterious figure with exactitude, it is
apparent that Baba Yaga was created by many voices and hands from the pre-
Christian era in Russia up through the eighteenth century when she finally
became “fleshed out,” so to speak, in the abundant Russian and other Slavic tales
collected in the nineteenth century. These Russian and Slavic folktales were the
ones that formed an indelible and unfathomable image of what a Baba Yaga is. I
say “a Baba Yaga,” because in many tales there are three Baba Yagas, often
sisters, and in some tales a Baba Yaga is killed only to rise again. And no Baba
Yaga is exactly like another.
A Baba Yaga is inscrutable and so powerful that she does not owe allegiance
to the Devil or God or even to her storytellers. In fact, she opposes all Judeo-
Christian and Muslim deities and beliefs. She is her own woman, a parthogenetic
mother, and she decides on a case-by-case basis whether she will help or kill the
people who come to her hut that rotates on chicken legs. She shows very few
characteristics and tendencies of western witches, who were demonized by the
Christian church, and who often tend to be beautiful and seductive, cruel and
vicious. Baba Yaga sprawls herself out in her hut and has ghastly features—
drooping breasts, a hideous long nose, and sharp iron teeth. In particular, she
thrives on Russian blood and is cannibalistic. Her major prey consists of children
and young women, but she will occasionally threaten to devour a man. She
kidnaps in the form of a Whirlwind or other guises. She murders at will. Though
we never learn how she does this, she has conceived daughters, who generally
do her bidding. She lives in the forest, which is her domain. Animals venerate
her, and she protects the forest as a mother-earth figure. The only times she
leaves it, she travels in a mortar wielding a pestle as a club or rudder and a
broom to sweep away the tracks behind her. At times, she can also be generous
with her advice, but her counsel and help do not come cheaply, for a Baba Yaga
is always testing the people who come to her hut by chance or by choice. A Baba
Yaga may at times be killed, but there are others who take her place. Baba Yaga
holds the secret to the water of life and may even be Mother Earth herself. This
is why Baba Yaga is very much alive today, and not only in Mother Russia, but
also throughout the world.
While a Baba Yaga is still a uniquely Russian folk character, she has now
become an international legendary figure and will probably never die. Stories
about her dreadful and glorious deeds circulate throughout the world in
translation. Fabulous book illustrations, paintings, and colorful designs
imprinted, painted, or carved on all kinds of artifacts have flourished in the
twentieth and twenty-first centuries. She is often the star figure in children’s
picture books, even though she functions primarily as a witch. Films, animated
cartoons, and digital images have portrayed a Baba Yaga as omnipotent,
dreadful, and comical. In many of the images, she is shown flying about in her
mortar and wielding her pestle as in the illustrations by Viktor Bibikov, Dimitri
Mitrokhin, and Viktor Vasnetsov. She seems always obsessed and vicious. Some
artists such as Aleksandr Nanitchkov and Rima Staines are fond of showing her
in weird types of huts on chicken legs. No matter how she is portrayed, there are
always hints of her Russian heritage in the images. The emphasis on traditional
dress and nineteenthcentury styles are especially evident in the famous
illustrations for Vasilisa the Beautiful by Ivan Bilibin and the gouache paintings
by Boris Zvorykin for Vasilisa the Fair. In particular, Bilibin’s watercolors have
had a profound influence on how Baba Yaga and other characters were to be
imagined. That is, he set a high artistic standard at the beginning of the twentieth
century. Yet, no matter how Baba Yaga is portrayed, it is her strange Russian
otherness that paradoxically strikes a common chord in readers of her tales. This
strange commonality can be viewed in a wide array of illustrations, designs, and
artifacts created by artists of different nations, many which have been carefully
selected by Martin Skoro for this volume.
While Skoro’s colorful selection of images reveals the breadth and depth of
numerous artists inspired by Baba Yaga tales, the superb translation of the
Russian tales by Sibelan Forrester provides an unusual opportunity to appreciate
the cultural significance of Baba Yaga in the nineteenth century. Forrester has
carefully selected tales in which Baba Yaga plays a key role from Aleksandr
Nikolaevich Afanas’ev’s Russian Folk Tales (1855–1866) and Ivan
Aleksandrovich Khudiakov’s Great Russian Tales (1860–1862), two of the
pioneer collections of Russian folktales. As Jack Haney has pointed out in his
significant study, An Introduction to the Russian Folktale, Afanas’ev and
Khudiakov were not alone during this period when many writers and scholars
began collecting folktales, but their collections are generally considered the
richest and most interesting, especially with regard to the oral wonder tales that
feature Baba Yaga. Afanas’ev did not collect most of his tales himself but relied
on the archives of the Geographical Society in Moscow and on tales sent to him
by friends and colleagues. As for Khudiakov, he actually went into the
countryside to collect his tales, and he had a keen eye for satirical stories.
It was not easy for either Afanas’ev or Khudiakov to publish their tales
because of the strict censorship in the Russian Empire during the nineteenth
century, and any work that appeared to be anticlerical, politically questionable,
or scatological was often denied permission for publication. Or, the texts were
heavily edited and changed. In general, tales largely told by peasants, which
might reinforce belief in ancient rituals, beliefs, witches, wizards, and
supernatural animals, were looked upon with great suspicion by the
governmental authorities, the church, and the upper classes. Nevertheless, it had
been impossible before and still was in the nineteenth century for the church and
state to prevent the oral dissemination of wonder tales that were deeply rooted in
pagan traditions. By the nineteenth century their appeal to intellectuals grew.
Indeed, the national and cultural interest in historical Russian folklore had grown
stronger among the literate classes so that social conditions in the latter part of
the nineteenth century favored the publication of all kinds of tales. Finally, we
must bear in mind, as Haney has suggested, that Russians, especially the
peasants, continued to believe deeply in the meanings of the tales for their lives
and in such figures as Baba Yaga, Russalka, Kolschei the Deathless, fierce
dragons, and bears with magical powers. What may seem fiction and superstition
to us today was fact and faith in the nineteenth century.
The Baba Yaga tales chosen for this volume by Forrester are vivid depictions
of how Baba Yaga functioned and figured in different tale types of the mid-
nineteenth century and lent a distinct Russian aura to the stories. But it is
important first to bear in mind the commonalities of the tales that were
widespread in Europe and the Middle East during the nineteenth century. For
instance, “Again the Stepmother and the Stepmother’s Daughter” is similar to
numerous western European tales in which a wise woman in an underground
world bestows gifts on an industrious young girl and punishes a lazy, arrogant
girl. “Vasilisa the Beautiful” belongs to the great Indo-European tradition of
“Cinderella” tales. The motif of incest in “Prince Danila-Govorila” was a
significant one in numerous medieval romances and tales in Europe. “Finist the
Bright Falcon” is related to the numerous beast bridegroom tales that were
disseminated throughout Europe. Other motifs such as the magic tablecloth, the
invisible cloak, the flying carpet, the stick that hits by itself, and the donkey that
spews gold were common in Europe and the Middle East. “The Three Kingdoms
—Copper, Silver, and Gold” recalls numerous Italian and Arab tales,
distinguished by plots in which a youngest brother is sent down a well by his
two older brothers to rescue three princesses, only to be abandoned by them in
the well after he is successful. The only way the youngest brother can return to
his father’s kingdom and claim that he was the true rescuer is by riding a magic
eagle that eats some of his flesh. Almost every tale in the collection translated by
Forrester can be found in other European or Middle Eastern collections of tales
in the nineteenth century that speak to the amazing oral and print dissemination
of wonder tales and say something about the universal appeal of these tales.
Yet, there are differences that reflect cultural particularities, and the most
distinguishable feature of Russian wonder tales, in my opinion, is Baba Yaga.
No matter what a tale type or how common it may be in the Indo-European
tradition, she will emerge in the story as the decisive figure and turn the plot in
favor of or against the protagonist. Moreover, I know of no other witch/wise
woman character in European folklore who is so amply described and given such
unusual paraphernalia as Baba Yaga. Most important, she clearly announces how
enmeshed she is with Russia whenever she senses Russian blood is near. No one
has ever fully explained why it is that she is always so eager to spill and devour
Russian blood and not the blood of some other nation. One would think that, as a
protector of Russian soil, she might always be helpful when Russians appear at
her hut. Yet, she is most severe with Russians and seems strangely to be
protecting Russian soil from the Russians. She also demands the most from
Russians and shows no mercy if they fail to listen to her. A Baba Yaga is the
ultimate tester and judge, the desacralized omnipotent goddess, who defends
deep-rooted Russian pagan values and wisdom and demands that young women
and men demonstrate that they deserve her help. But what Baba Yaga also
defends in the nineteenthcentury tales collected in this volume are qualities that
the protagonists need to adapt and survive in difficult situations such as
perseverance, kindness, obedience, integrity, and courage. If we bear in mind
that these tales reflect the actual living conditions of the Russian people in the
mid-nineteenth century to a large degree, and that they were listened to and read
at face value, they are very profound “documents” about the struggles of
ordinary Russians and their faith in extraordinary creatures to help them in times
of need. They are also dreams of compensation for their helplessness. Stories of
hope. The tales are filled with sibling rivalry, bitter conflicts between
stepchildren and stepmothers, incest, class struggle, disputes about true heirs,
ritual initiations, the pursuit of immortality, and so on. Though the tales may
take place in another time and realm, they are always brought down to earth by
the storyteller at the end, for what may happen metaphorically to the characters
in the tales is very close to the conditions experienced by the listeners. In all the
tales Baba Yaga is compelling and dreaded, because she forces the protagonists
to test themselves and not to delude themselves that there is an easy way to
reconcile conflicts. This is also why Baba Yaga transcends Russia and has
become woven in other cultures, to be sure, in ways that are much different from
the nineteenthcentury tales in this collection.
The intercultural weaving of witches and wise women is a fascinating aspect
of all folklore throughout the world. Indeed, when we begin to study the
otherness of such characters as Baba Yaga, we learn a great deal about our own
culture by noting differences, while, at the same time, we can make startling
comparisons that show why Baba Yaga may be connected to other folk traditions
of folk sorcery throughout the world. In a fascinating study of recorded stories of
Sicilian fairies and witches from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, Gustav
Henningsen writes: “Like southern Spain, Sicily was a region in which sorcery
and black magic thrived, but where popular notions of witchcraft were absent.
However, in contrast to Spain, Sicily could boast of a particular type of
charismatic healer, who was a specialist in curing diseases caused by the fairies:
these healers were women and sometimes men, too, who claimed to possess
‘sweet blood’ (sangre dulce), and who therefore each Tuesday, Thursday, and
Saturday night were obliged to rush out in spirit (in espíritu) and take part in the
meetings and nocturnal journeyings of ‘the company.’”1 Henningsen explains
that numerous Sicilian women from the sixteenth through the nineteenth
centuries asserted they were healers, donas di fuora (ladies from outside), and
that they often combined the qualities of a witch and a fairy to perform healing
acts to offset the evil of some other fairies or supernatural creatures. In other
words, the donas di fuora were very similar to the Baba Yagas of Russian
tradition; they belonged to a dualistic system of widespread belief and could
cause harm or do good. Even if fairy-witches caused harm, there were ways
through offerings or expiation to repair damage. Henningsen believes that the
fairy cult was, to a certain extent, compensation for the hopeless poverty of daily
life throughout Sicily. More important, he explains that the fairy cult is “a
variant of a widely extended and therefore presumably old and deep-rooted
Mediterranean and east European complex of shamanistic beliefs.” In Sicily, the
belief in fairies and sorceresses led to the creation of a character called La
Mamma-dràa (Mamma-draga the Ogress) by the nineteenth century. She appears
in numerous Sicilian wonder tales and is connected to the “ladies from the
outside.” Though this figure (sometimes a male) is never amply described in the
tales, she functions like a Baba Yaga, dangerous and benevolent, a cannibal and
a wise counselor.
It is not necessary, I believe, to draw “exact” parallels between the Sicilian
fairy cult and the shamanistic Baba Yaga cult in Russia. There is enough
evidence to indicate that there were strongly held beliefs in pagan goddesses in
Sicily and Russia that were transformed into tales that enabled peasants in both
countries to contend with their suffering and to offer some hope for a better life.
It is perhaps strange to conclude that Baba Yaga may be a symbol of hope
because she is so ambiguous, as often frightening as benevolent. But hope may
be best generated when a wise woman does not mince her words, and a true
Baba Yaga is never one to mince her words.