Baba Yaga

M. Fasmer erects ^{[10] the} name Yaga to Praslav. * (j) ęga , whose reflexes are the Serbochor. jeza “horror”, jeziv “dangerous” , verbal . jeza “anger”, jeziti “angry” , dr . jeze "lamia" , czech. jezinka "forest witch, evil woman" , Polish. jędza “witch, woman-yaga, evil woman”, jędzić się “get angry,” etc. However, in the Russian language there is a cognate to all these examples from the Slavic languages: an ulcer, which calls into question the existence of a connection between the name Yaga and the examples given from Slavic languages. An etymology is also possible, in the framework of which the ancient borrowed name was rethought by the Slavs and brought closer to the derivatives of the Pre-Slavic * (j) egа (folk etymology), which explains the fluctuation expressed in the presence of variants with -z- and -ž- in the Western Slavic languages (the name is reinterpreted) and the presence of the variant with -g- in Russian (not rethought).

Fasmer brings the word together, except for the Slavic languages, also with the Baltic, English, Icelandic, rejecting the connection with the Turkic, Indian, Albanian, Latin languages.

Etymologists bring together the Pre -Slavic yaga ( * ęga ) with the designation of snakes, reptiles, which indicates the chthonic origins of the image ^[5] .

The written mention of Baba Yaga was made in 1588 by the English traveler Giles Fletcher in the book “On the Russian State”. He read about the worship of the idol "golden or yaga-baba", having arrived in the Perm region to Samoyeds , he discovered that it was an "empty fable" ^[11] .

The Eastern Slavs

In Slavic folklore, Baba Yaga has several stable attributes : she knows how to conjure, fly in a mortar , lives on the edge of the forest in a hut on chicken legs (or propped up by pancakes ^[5] ), surrounded by a fence of human bones with skulls. She lures good fellows and small children to her, ostensibly in order to eat them. She pursues her victims in a mortar, chasing her with a pestle and sweeping a trail of a broom (broom). In the tale "Ivan Tsarevich and Marya Morevna" ^[3] lives Yaga Yagishna (woman Yaga, bone leg) "for the distant lands, in the fifties kingdom, not far from the sea beyond the river of fire", where he owns a herd of glorious mares. Yaga is the mother of three demonic daughters (sometimes a princess, a wonderful bride of a hero), a snake killed by a fairy tale hero ^[5] .

V. I. Dahl adds: “she is simple-minded and in one shirt, without a girdle: both are the top of outrage” ^[12] .

According to V. Ya. Propp , the largest specialist in the theory and history of folklore, there are three types of Baba Yaga: a donor (she gives the hero a fairy horse or a magic item); kidnapper; Baba Yaga-warrior, fighting with which "not for life, but for death", the hero of the tale moves to a different level of maturity. Moreover, the malice and aggressiveness of Baba Yaga are not its dominant features, but only manifestations of her irrational, non-deterministic nature.

The dual nature of the Baba Yaga in folklore is connected, firstly, with the image of the mistress of the forest, which must be appeased, and secondly, with the image of the evil creature who puts children on a shovel to fry. This image of the Baba Yaga is associated with the function of the priestess conducting the teenagers through the initiation rite ^[13] . So, in many tales, the Baba Yaga wants to eat a hero, but either, having fed and watered, releases him, giving him a ball or some secret knowledge, or the hero runs away.

The Southern Slavs

In the former Slavic lands of Carinthia in Austria, “ Baba Yaga Pekhtra ” ( German: Pechtrababajagen ) is a ritual ritual character ^{[14] [15]} when going around houses on Epiphany evening and before Ash Wednesday (on Pancake Week ). During the tour, sometimes in the group someone would attach a wooden leg and walk with a limp - in the old descriptions, Pekhtra had a large “goose” leg.

At the Pomurie Slovenes, during a spring meeting on Yuryev’s day , when they took “ Green Yuri ” or “Vesnik”, they called winter Baba Yaga ^[16] :

Original Zelenega Jurja vodimo, Maslo in jajca prosimo, Ježi-babo zganjamo, Mladoletje trošimo! [17]

Transfer We drive Green Yuri, We ask for butter and eggs, Banish Babu Yaga Sprinkle spring!

In Serbia, Montenegro and Croatia, it is called Baba Roga (that is, the Horned Baba) and it scares young children when they are capricious and do not want to go to bed ^[18] (cf. Babai ).

In Montenegro (in the city of Risan ), in the ceremony of carnival at Maslenitsa, one of the participants dresses as Baba Ruga (“ grandfather's woman”) and wears a “child” (doll) in her arms. The image symbolizes the ancestors and is believed to provide fertility for the coming year.

Appearance

Baba Yaga is usually depicted as a large humpbacked old woman with a large, long, hunchbacked and hooked nose ("Baba Yaga lay from corner to corner, bone leg, nose to the ceiling, lips hang on the lintel " ^[19] ). According to Belarusian ethnographers, here Baba Yaga appears in the guise of a deceased in a coffin- home, and this explains why, "the nose has grown into the ceiling" ^[20] .

In a popular print she is dressed in a green dress, a lilac brush , bast shoes and trousers ^[21] . In another picture, Baba Yaga is wearing a red skirt and boots ^[22] . In fairy tales there is no emphasis on the clothes of Baba Yaga.

Mythological Archetype

M. Zabylin considered her a “hellish goddess” ^[23] :

Under this name, the Slavs worshiped the infernal goddess depicted by a monster in an iron mortar with an iron staff. They made a bloody sacrifice, thinking that she feeds her with her two granddaughters, whom they attributed to her, and at the same time enjoys the shedding of blood.

In the modern view, Baba Yaga is the mistress of the forest, the ruler of animals and birds, the omnipotent old woman of things, the guardian of the borders of the “other kingdom”, the kingdom of Death ^[1] . According to this version, Baba Yaga is a guide (souls of the dead) to the other world and one of her bones is leg in order to stand in the world of the dead.

The female image of Baba Yaga is associated with matriarchal ideas about the structure of the social world. The mistress of the forest, Baba Yaga, is the result of anthropomorphism . A hint of the once animal appearance of Baba Yaga, according to V. Ya. Propp, is the description of the house as a hut on chicken legs ^[13] .

The appearance (bone leg, iron teeth, long gray hair, saggy breasts, the ability to smell someone else’s smell, etc.) indicates a connection with the demonic characters of another world, the dead (hut as a coffin house); attributes, activities and supernatural abilities - a stupa and pestle, a stove (where she fry stolen ones), spinning, flying through the air in a stupa, on a broomstick - also belong to female mythological characters, witches ^[5] .

The image of the Baba Yaga is associated with legends about the hero’s transition to the other world ( Far Far Away ). In these legends, the Baba Yaga, standing on the border of the worlds (the bone leg), serves as a guide, allowing the hero to penetrate the world of the dead, due to the performance of certain rituals.

Thanks to the texts of fairy tales, it is possible to reconstruct the ritual, sacred meaning of the actions of the hero falling into Baba Yaga. In particular, V. Ya. Propp, who studied the image of the Baba Yaga on the basis of a mass of ethnographic and mythological material, draws attention to a very important, in his opinion, detail. After recognizing the hero by smell (Yaga is blind) and ascertaining his needs, she will surely drown the bath and evaporate the hero, thus performing a ritual bath. Then he feeds the newcomer, which is also a ritual, “deceased”, a treat that is not permissible for the living so that they do not accidentally enter the world of the dead. And "demanding food, the hero thereby shows that he is not afraid of this food, that he has the right to it, that he is" real ". That is, an alien through a test of food proves Yaga the sincerity of his motives and shows that he is the real hero, in contrast to the false hero, the impostor-antagonist ” ^[13] .

This food "opens the mouth of the deceased," says Propp, convinced that the tale is always preceded by a myth. And, although the hero did not seem to die, he will be forced to temporarily “die for the living” in order to fall into the “kingdom of the thirties” (another world). There, in the “thirtieth kingdom” (the underworld), where the hero keeps his path, there are always many dangers that he has to anticipate and overcome. “Food, refreshments are certainly mentioned not only when meeting with Yaga, but also with many equivalent characters. ... Even the hut itself has been adapted by the storyteller to this function: it is “propped up with a pie”, “covered with a pancake”, which in children's fairy tales of the West corresponds to a “gingerbread house”. This house sometimes pretends to be a food house with its appearance ” ^[13] .

Parallels in Comparative Mythology

Scientists associate with Baba Yaga a number of similar characters from other nations.

According to the index of plots of fairy tales , a plot similar to the tales of Baba Yaga is very common in the world. According to the generally accepted classification of Aarne-Thompson, the plot has the number AT480 "Stepmother and stepdaughter." In addition to Baba Yaga, fairy tales feature similar characters in fairy tales: Russian Morozko ^[24] , German Frau Holle ( Mrs. Metelitsa ) ^{[24] [25]} , who is also the “mother of the winds”, the Swedish “Forest Mistress”, and other ancestral spirits ^[26] . Experts believe that this reflected the ancient rite of age-related initiation of boys and girls. A symbolic death was staged in it (for example, passing through a fire - the “Baba Yaga furnace”), and after the rite, the subject was considered to be born in a new quality ^{[27] [25] [13]} . According to this interpretation, the stepdaughter passed a similar test in the fairy tale “Morozko,” and her stepmother’s daughter died ^[26] . Another story that is very popular all over the world is AT327B, about a little boy who defeated the cannibal. This story is also associated with the rite of initiation of young men into men. The most famous fairy tale with this story is Charles Perrault's Little Boy with a Finger . Other well-known representatives are: in the collection of Afanasyev's fairy tale No. 105 “Baba Yaga and Zamoryshek”, “ Likho ”, the myth of Cyclops Polyphemus and Odyssey. Folklorists point out that the fabulous Yaga, Frau Holle, Morozko, cannibals, and other fabulous old men and women are all descended from characters who guard the entrance to the world of the dead . The hut of Baba Yaga and the cave of Madame Metelitsa, which many scholars consider ancient burial sites ^{[25] [26] [27] [24]} , are associated with the same.

The East Slavic male counterpart of Baba Yaga is Koschey the Immortal . His name is associated with the word "bone", and carries the idea of ​​a cyclically dying and resurrecting deity . If Koschey is already present in the tale, then Baba Yaga appears as his mother or aunt ^[24] .

Yu. S. Stepanov draws parallels with characters of other nations on a number of grounds. It marks characters whose name, like that of Yagi, has a similar -ie root. This is: ind. Pit (lord of the kingdom of the dead), lat. Janus (god of entrances and exits), Greek Jaso (goddess of healing) and Jason (lit. "healer"). Janus has a wife, Iana , who is his feminine hypostasis, sometimes there is a variant of “Diana” ^[28] .

Yu. S. Stepanov analyzes the belonging of the characters to “two worlds” at once. As the two-faced Janus is the god of the transition between two opposite worlds, the turning hut of Baba Yaga is also the transition between the ordinary world and the magical one, and in addition it has a transition to the world of death - to the furnace ^[29] . The plot of children is also close: in myths, Janus in the person of his couple (Diana or Karda) either protects children from vampires, or, on the contrary, allows them to sleep in the house. Baba Yaga is the same - it puts the children on a shovel to put in the oven, then lets them go, sitting on the shovel itself ^[30] .

Stepanov analyzes the presence of a bone leg. Bone leg - attribute of other ind. Pits ^[30] . Relationship with Greek is noted. Empuses. Mythical empus girls are succubi - vampires who turn into dogs , daughters and companions of Hecate . In the myths of Hekate, too, there were cemeteries and intersections, like the female couple Janus Diana ^[31] . The empus had one donkey leg, the other bronze; Hekata herself wore bronze sandals. And in Baba Yaga, in different fairy tales, the leg can be bone or metal, or the legs are different - “one leg is shitty, the other is ground” ^{[31] [32]} .

Relation to the German Frau Holle (Golda, mistress of the kingdom of the dead) and Berta ( Perkhta , associated with fertility of the earth and spinning) also emphasizes the presence of both an ugly leg, and Berta’s presence of an iron nose (moving the attribute in the character’s image) ^{[33] [ 34]} . At the same time, there is a third German analogue of these characters - Stamp, whose name translates as “crush, crush” and “hard to step, stomp”, and is associated with the words “stupa” and “step” ^[35] . This is seen as a connection with Baba Yaga, which without a stupa, its inapplicable attribute, walks poorly ^[35] or does not walk at all ^{[24] [32]} . Stepanov also, relying on the work of A. A. Korolyov , suggests a connection between Berta-Perkhta - the good hypostases of Baba Yaga - with the Celtic Brigita ^[36] .

Other analogues of Baba Yaga in modern folklore are the Lithuanian goddess Ragana , and the Basque goddess Marie - the mistress of Mount Amboto ^[24] . Greek Calypso ^{[25] [32]} , the old woman Louha of the Karelian epos Kalevala ^{[37] [38]} and characters of other mythologies ^{[25] are also associated} .

Chicken Legs Hut

In ancient times, the dead were buried in dominos - houses located above the ground on very high stumps with roots peeking out from the ground, like chicken legs (cf. the modern Ukrainian "domino" - coffin). Domovins were placed in such a way that the hole in them was turned in the opposite direction from the settlement, to the forest. People believed that the dead fly on coffins. People treated deceased ancestors with reverence and fear, never disturbed them for nothing, fearing to bring disaster, but in difficult situations they still came to ask for help. So, Baba Yaga is a deceased ancestor, a dead man, and she often scared children. According to other sources, the Baba Yaga among some Slavic tribes is a priestess who led the rite of cremation of the dead ^[39] .

The image of Baba Yaga is seen as belonging to two worlds at once - the world of the dead and the world of the living. According to A. L. Barkova , the image of the “chicken legs” hut in the forest symbolized her being either in another world (in the forest more often as in the center of the underworld), or at the exit from it (a hut at the edge of the forest entrance) and the “chicken legs” were “chicken” (fumigated with smoke) pillars on which the Slavs put the “house of death” - a log house with the ashes of the dead man inside (Slavic funeral rite of the 6th – 9th centuries). Baba Yaga inside such a hut was both alive and dead: it lay motionless and did not see the living people who came from the world (the living do not see the dead, the dead do not see the living) until they sensed the “Russian spirit”, since the smell of the living is unpleasant to the dead.

As a rule, the hero met the hut of Baba Yaga on the border of the worlds when he went to another world, wanting to free the captive princess. To join the world of the dead, the hero asks Baba Yaga to feed and drink him (give him food of the dead), steam in a bathhouse and put him to bed (which is associated with preparing the dead man for burial). There are variations in which the hero is eaten by Baba Yaga and thus falls into the world of the dead.

So, having passed the trials in the hut of Baba Yaga, the hero, like her, turns out to belong to both worlds, acquires magical qualities, subjugates the various inhabitants of the world of the dead, defeats the monsters inhabiting him, conquers the beautiful princess from them, and in the final himself becomes the king.

Localization of the hut on chicken legs is associated with two magical rivers, either fiery ^[40] (cf. jahannam , over which a bridge is also stretched), or milk (with jelly banks - cf. the characteristic of the Promised Land : milk rivers Num. 14: 8 or Muslim Jannat ) ^[41] .

Glowing Skulls

An important attribute of Baba Yaga’s dwelling is tyn , on whose stakes horse horses are used, which are used as lamps ^[42] . In the fairy tale about Vasilisa, the skulls are already human, but they are the source of fire for the main character and her weapon with which she burned her stepmother’s house ^[43] .

Magic Helpers

The magic assistants of Baba Yaga are geese-swans in the fairy tale of the same name , “three pairs of hands” and three horsemen - white, red and black (respectively, day, dawn and night) ^[43] .

Characteristic Phrases

Fu Fu, it smells like Russian spirit

• Baba Yaga ;
• How Baba Yagi saved a fairy tale ;
• Geese-swans ;
• Princess frog ;
• Vasilisa the Beautiful ;
• Marya Morevna ;
• Ivan Tsarevich and Bely Polyanin ;
• Hut on chicken legs ;
• Finista's feather is clear of a falcon ;
• Go there - I don’t know where, bring that - I don’t know what (processing by A. N. Afanasyev and A. N. Tolstoy );
• To third cocks ( Vasily Shukshin );
• About Fedot the archer, a daring young man ( Leonid Filatov );
• The tale of the three royal divas and Ivashka, the priest’s son (A. S. Roslavlev);
• The Tale of Masha and Van ;
• Sonko-Filipko .

• Potebnya A. A. , On the mythical significance of certain rites and beliefs. [Ch.] 2 - Baba Yaga, “Readings in the Imperial Society of Russian History and Antiquities”, Moscow, 1865, pr. 3;
• Veselovsky N. I. , The current state of the issue of "Stone broads" or "Balbals . " // Notes of the Imperial Odessa Society of History and Antiquities, vol. XXXII. Odessa: 1915. Dep. impression: 40 s. + 14 tab.
• Toporov V.N. , Hittite salŠU.GI and Slavic Baba Yaga, “Brief Communications of the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR”, 1963, c. 38.
• Malakhovskaya A.N. , The legacy of Baba Yaga: Religious views reflected in a fairy tale, and their traces in Russian literature of the 19th — 20th centuries - St. Petersburg: Aletheya, 2007 .-- 344 p.
• Grechishkina A. Familiar stranger // Young local historian, 2015, No. 10, p. 53-56

In 2004, the village of Kukoboy, Pervomaisky District, Yaroslavl Region, was declared the "homeland" of Baba Yaga, and the Baba Yaga Museum was also created there. The Russian Orthodox Church sharply criticized this undertaking ^[44] .

Russian writers and poets A. S. Pushkin , V. A. Zhukovsky (“The Tale of Ivan Tsarevich and the Gray Wolf”), N. A. Nekrasov (“Baba Yaga, Bone”) repeatedly addressed the image of the Baba Yaga in his work. leg ”), A.N. Tolstoy , V.I. Narbut and others. Picturesque interpretations of her image were widely used among silver-age artists: Ivan Bilibin , Victor Vasnetsov , Alexander Benois , Elena Polenova , Ivan Malyutin , etc.

In music

The ninth play “The Hut on the Chicken Legs (Baba Yaga) ” by the famous suite of Modest Mussorgsky “ Pictures from the Exhibition - Memoirs of Victor Hartman ”, 1874, created in memory of his friend, artist and architect, is dedicated to the Baba Yaga image. The contemporary interpretation of this suite, Pictures at an Exhibition , created by the English progressive rock band Emerson, Lake & Palmer in 1971 , where Mussorgsky's musical pieces alternate with original compositions by English rock musicians, is widely known: “The Hut of Baba Yaga "(Mussorgsky); “The Curse of Baba Yaga” (Emerson, Lake, Palmer); "The Hut of Baba Yaga" (Mussorgsky). A symphonic poem of the same name by the composer Anatoly Lyadov , Op. 56, 1891-1904 The collection of musical plays for piano by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky “ Children's Album ” in 1878 also contains the play “Baba Yaga”.

On the screen

More often than others, the role of Baba Yaga was played by Georgy Millar , including in the films:

• " Vasilisa the Beautiful " (1939)
• “ Frost ” (1964)
• “ Fire, water and ... copper pipes ” (1967)
• The Golden Horns (1972)

Films

• " Merry Magic " (1969) - Valentina Sperantova
• “ At the thirteenth hour of the night ” (1969) - Zinovy ​​Gerdt
• “ Lada from the country of Berendeys ” (1971) - Maya Bulgakova
• “Baba Yaga” ( Italian: Baba Yaga ) (France-Italy, 1973). Director Corrado Farina ( ital. Corrado Farina ) with Carroll Baker in a leading role (on the basis of erotico-mystical comics Guido Krepaksa ( ital. Guido Crepax ) from a series "Valentine" ( ital. Valentina ))
• “ New Year's Adventures of Masha and Viti ” (1975) - Valentina Kosobutskaya
• “ How Ivan the Fool went for a miracle ” (1977) and “The Tale of the Painter in Love” (1987) - Maria Barabanova
• “ There, on unknown paths ... ” (1982) and “ After a Rain on Thursday ” (1985) - Tatyana Peltzer (kind Baba Yaga)
• The Purple Ball (1987) - Svetlana Kharitonova
• “ The Island of the Rusty General ” (1988) - Alexander Lenkov (robot Baba Yaga)
• Father Frost (1996) - Donald O'Connor
• “The Tale of Fedot the Archer ” (2001) - Olga Volkova
• “ Miracles in Reshetov ” (2004) - Yela Sanko
• " Forest Princess " (2004) - Galina Moracheva
• “The New Old Tale ” (2006) - Elena Sanaeva
• The Book of Masters (2009) - Leah Akhedzhakova
• “ Adventures in the Fiftieth Kingdom ” (2010) - Anna Yakunina
• “ Frost ” (2010) - Kristina Orbakaite
• “The Real Tale ” (2011) - Lyudmila Polyakova
• “Fairy Godmother” ( Spanish: Hada Madrina) (Spain, 2015) - Macarena Rivero
• “ Legendy Polskie. Jaga ”(Poland, 2016) - Katarzyna Pospiech
• “ The Last Athlete ” (2017) - Elena Yakovleva / Svetlana Kolpakova (young)
• Helboy (2019) - Neil Marshall

Cartoons

• “ Ivashko and Baba Yaga ” (1938, voiced by Osip Abdulov )
• " Geese Swans " (1949)
• The Frog Princess (1954, voiced by Georgy Millar )
• “ The End of the Black Marsh ” (1960, voiced by Irina Masing )
• " About the evil stepmother " (1966, voiced by Elena Ponsova )
• “ The Tale is Affecting ” (1970, voiced by Klara Rumyanova )
• “The Frog Princess ” (1971) (dir. Yu. Eliseev, voiced by Zinaida Naryshkina )
• “ Vasilisa the Beautiful ” (1977, voiced by Anastasia Georgievskaya )
• Two Maples (1977, voiced by Harry Bardin )
• Zhikharka (1977, voiced by Vasily Livanov )
• The Flying Ship (1979, a female group of the Moscow Chamber Choir)
• “ Baba Yaga is against! "(1980, voiced by Olga Aroseva )
• “ Ivashka from the Palace of Pioneers ” (1981, voiced by Yefim Katsirov )
• “ And in this fairy tale it was like that ... ” (1984, voiced by Elena Chernova )
• “ Kuzya’s Brownie ” (1985-1987, voiced by Tatyana Peltzer )
• “ Well, wait a minute! "(16th edition) (1986)
• “ Dear Goblin ” (1988, voiced by Victor Proskurin )
• “ Two heroes ” (1989, voiced by Maria Vinogradova )
• “ Dreamers from the village of Ugora ” (1994, voiced by Kira Smirnova )
• “ Bartok the Magnificent ” (1999, voiced by Andrea Martin )
• “ Grandma Yozhka and others ” (2006, voiced by Tatyana Bondarenko)
• “New Adventures of Grandma Yozhka” (2008, voiced by Tatyana Bondarenko)
• “ Dobrynya Nikitich and Zmey Gorynych ” (2006; Russia) directed by Ilya Maksimov , Natalya Danilova voiced Babu Yaga
• “ About Fedot the Sagittarius, a daring young man ” (2008; Russia) directed by Lyudmila Steblyanko , Babu Yaga was voiced by Alexander Revva
• “ Ivan Tsarevich and the Gray Wolf ” (2011; Russia) director Vladimir Toropchin , Baba Yaga voiced by Liya Akhedzhakova
• “ Three heroes on distant shores ” (2012; Russia) directed by Konstantin Feoktistov , Babu Yaga was voiced by Elizaveta Boyarskaya
• Tsarevny (2018; Russia) directed by Elena Galdobina , Konstantin Bronzit and Darina Schmidt , Sergey Dyachkov voiced Babu Yaga

Also appears in the additional level of the game " Rise of the Tomb Raider ".

• Befana
• Kalinov bridge