When was baba yaga created

There are various versions of the Baba Yaga witch story. Some say that she is either a single witch or a trio of witches who all share the same name. Most stories tell us that she rides around the forest in a giant mortar and uses a pestle to grind up the bones of the people she eats. When flying, she holds the pestle in her right hand and a broom in her left. The pestle also works like a rudder that steers the mortar as she flies around.

The broom wipes away all of her trails so that no one can find her. In other versions of the tale, she flies around on a traditional witch broom. Baba Yaga has a frightening ability to remove her hands from her body so she can have them do her bidding.

The Slavic witch has the power to help or hurt anyone who crosses her path. Those who seek her wisdom, truth, and knowledge must first complete several tasks. Only upon completion of the tasks will she provide help. If the tasks are not fulfilled and the seekers have not found a way to escape, she will cook and eat them. One version of the tale closely resembles the story of Hansel and Gretel.

If they do not fulfill the tasks, she will put them in the oven and cook them for dinner. As Vice explains , she's nearly equally likely to be a cannibal monster or supernatural mother figure, sometimes even in the same story. As an example, across the course of the famous story "Vasilisa the Beautiful," the Baba Yaga is equal parts trickster, monster, and savior in succession. This ambiguity is no accident, but rather is tied to her connection to femininity and the natural world, as a sort of earth mother.

In one story, a young princess flees the witch's hut to escape ending up in her oven, and during her flight ends up creating a mountain range, a forest, and a lake with various magical items to slow the Baba Yaga down. In this way, the seemingly monstrous Baba Yaga has led to the creation of a new world. This duality reflects Russian culture's overall perception of women, as figures of both maternal love and mercurial, seductive duplicity, and especially a fear of a woman who operates outside the bounds of a male-dominated society.

The Baba Yaga is both a mother and a trickster because these are the modes in which many men see all women. Arguably the most famous fairy tale featuring the Baba Yaga, and maybe even the most famous Russian fairy tale period, is "Vasilisa the Beautiful," which tells of a pretty young girl who—stop us if you've heard this one—lives with her wicked stepmother and two ugly stepsisters.

The stepmother runs Vasilisa ragged with increasingly difficult chores, which the girl is always able to accomplish through the agency of a magical doll given to her by her late mother.

When Vasilisa becomes old enough to marry, her stepmother decides to get rid of her so her beauty will stop distracting suitors from her own daughters. To this end, she sends Vasilisa on her hardest errand yet: to fetch fire from the Baba Yaga. The girl makes her way to the chicken leg hut, where the Baba Yaga immediately puts her to work to pay for the fire.

The witch sets before the girl a series of impossible tasks, which she is able to finish thanks to her magic doll. Despite being surrounded by eerie sights like disembodied pairs of hands and the Baba Yaga eating inhuman amounts of food, Vasilisa keeps her cool and is polite to her witchy benefactor.

In the end, the witch gives Vasilisa fire held within a skull, which, when Vasilisa brings it home, burns the stepmother and stepsisters to ashes. Vasilisa survives and marries the Tsar, of course. One of the most notable details from the story "Vasilisa the Beautiful" is not the strange and menacing happenings inside the Baba Yaga's hut, like the invisible servants or the constant looming threat of cannibalism, but rather what the title heroine spies through the window happening just outside the chicken leg house.

When the Baba Yaga tasks the girl with separating a pile of grains, Vasilisa's magic doll tells her to rest and let the doll take care of it. When Vasilisa wakes in the morning and sees the firelit dim inside the skull-topped fence posts, she spies a rider dressed all in white galloping upon a milk-white horse around the house. The rider then jumps a wall and vanishes. Soon she spies a rider in red on a blood-red horse who does the same.

In the evening, when the Baba Yaga returns to check on Vasilisa's work, the girl sees a rider in black on a coal-black horse galloping around the hut before vanishing like the others. After Vasilisa has done all of the witch's tasks to her liking, the girl works up the courage to ask the Baba Yaga who these riders were.

The Baba Yaga reveals that the white, red, and black riders were the day, the sun, and the night, respectively, all of whom she refers to as her faithful servants. Wisely, Vasilisa asks no more questions of the witch. Some stories attribute unusual behavior to the Baba Yaga that is not ever mentioned again in other stories, but which nevertheless stick in your head just from pure strangeness. Go to Foreigners in Russia. Baba Yaga is a famous witch of the East, well-known in Russia.

She has spooked and scared little children across Eastern Europe for many centuries. The name of Baba Yaga is composed of two elements. Baba means "grandmother" or "old woman" in most Slavic languages.

There are two versions of the origin of this name. Yaga is probably a diminutive of the feminine name Jadwiga, in turn, is a Slavicized form of the Germanic Hedwig. Another version is saying the name of Baba Yaga comes from the old Russian verb yagat which means to abuse, to find fault. Baba Yaga is single, presumably old spinster. However, some Russian peasants saw her living with a daughter Marinka short from Marina. She lives on the edge of the forest in a wooden hut, but it's like no other that you have ever seen, for it stands on a pair of giant chicken legs.

It usually has no windows, sometimes not even a door. The house does not reveal the door until it is told a magical phrase: Turn your back to the forest, your front to me.

The fence surrounding Baba Yaga's palisade is made of human bones with skulls on top, often with one pole lacking its skull, leaving space for another victim. That evening, after Baba Yaga flew back home from whatever business she had been on, the old witch could not hide her surprise at all that her guest had managed to achieve the task in one day.

Here, use this bucket. Still that night, when the little rag doll urged her not to feel despair, she knew in her heart that something wonderful might happen to help her — and it did. For as she stood by the stream holding the sieve in her hand, the red horseman rode by, took it from her and swept over to the hut where he hurled it through the open window.

When Vasilisa returned she found that the tank was filled with fresh water. That evening Baba Yaga dipped her bony finger in the tank and tasted a drop of the fresh water. Tonight you can stay up and count the number of stars in the sky. If you tell me the right number in the morning, you can take your light and go free, but if your answer is wrong, even if you tell me one star too many or too few, then I shall have you for my breakfast. That night Vasilisa gazed out of the window at the sky and tried to count the stars — 1,2,3, 5… But by the time she reached stars she was no longer sure whether or not she was counting the same ones again, and she had to start all over again.

It did not help that the hut kept moving around so that the view kept on changing. Eventually, Vasilisa began to sob quietly. I cannot guess the number of stars in the sky, and in the morning the witch shall surely eat me. Have courage and keep faith, and all will be well. But you had better not be wrong — for if you are, I shall eat you. Baba Yaga picked up a plate and threw it across the room so that it smashed against the wall.

Then she picked up a knife and Vasilisa was sure she meant to kill her. I suppose it was morning and day that helped you with the other tasks I set you? I will do you no harm. Wait here while I go on my business. I have no tasks for you today. Tonight you shall return home with a light. That evening, after Baba Yaga flew home on her mortar, she took Vasilisa out into the courtyard and gave her one of the skulls with blazing eyes.

Vasilisa took the skull and returned back down the path to her village. She expected that her stepmother would have found a light by now, but in fact the house was not lit. Instead her relatives were sitting in complete darkness. But she received no reply, for as soon as the light fell on her stepmother and sisters, they turned to dust.