Baba Yaga

 

Hi!

The slavic folklore has an extensive mitology full of magical creatures and mysterious forces which ruled the societies prechristian. Within their tales we found a witch called Baba Yaga, althought her name can refer to one of three witches. She looks like an old women with a big nose that use to smell her victims. Also can change the way she looks to trick them and devour them more easily. Lives in the depths of the forest in a hut supported by one or more chicken legs, and  flies in a mortar holding a broom.

The origins of Baba Yaga or a faithful transcription of the myth, as well as the rest of folk tales, is difficult to establish because were stories  transmitted orally. So the nature of this witch is ambiguous in her representations, mainly because of her duality between the threat of destruction as a form of release of the victim. One of her most famous appearence in literature, is from a tale compiled around 1800 by Aleksandr Nikolayevich, a Russian folklorist who collected the story of Baba Yaga together with other Slavic stories.

In the tale of Vasilia the beautiful, her father married again with the sister of Baba Yaga. One day the stepmother, conspiring to kill her, send Vasilia to the Baba Yaga's hut for one of her shining skulls. When she comes there Baba Yaga give to her multiple seemingly impossible tasks, if she makes it will get the skull in otherwise will be eaten. To Baba Yaga's surprise Vasilia makes all the tasks. Back to home, her stepmother’s plan to kill her is discovered by her father. However there are different versions of how it ends, in one the skull ends up incinerating the whole family of Vasilia, in other she becomes a seamstress and reunites with her father.

Thanks for reading!