Baba Yaga: Afanasyev's Witch Is Also the Hero's Helper

Where the name first turns up

A first-ink date is the date of the earliest written record of a name or story that can be checked. It marks where the paper evidence starts, not where the figure began, and for Baba Yaga it is harder to fix than her fame suggests. English Wikipedia, citing Andreas Johns's 2004 study, places the first clear reference in Mikhail Lomonosov's Russian Grammar of 1755, where "Iaga baba" appears near a list of Slavic gods paired with Roman ones. Russian Wikisource dates the grammar to 1755 and its printing to 1757, but a search of its transcription of the 1952 edition did not turn up the name, so the 1755 record is reported here, not checked.

Lubki, popular Russian woodblock prints, carry the name too. The caption on the one below names "Iaga baba" and has her ride a pig, pestle in hand, to fight a crocodile.

Wikimedia Commons dates this print to the early 17th century, while English Wikipedia places prints of this kind in the late 17th and early 18th centuries and reports Dmitry Rovinsky's reading of the scene as a parody aimed at Peter the Great. With its date unsettled, the print is not used here as a first-ink date.

Villain, tester, giver

In Afanasyev's collection Baba Yaga is a character, not a plot. She turns up in tales that folklorists file under different types, and the table sets seven texts side by side with her part in each as the text describes it. Here a villain tries to kill or eat the hero, a tester sets tasks and rewards or punishes the result, and a giver hands over what the quest needs.

Table data: baba-yaga-roles.csv, with the tale type as reported and the source link for every row.

Is Baba Yaga good or evil? The texts give both answers. Of the seven Afanasyev tales in the table, three make Baba Yaga a villain and three a giver, and in Vasilisa's tale she both threatens and gives.

A 2005 review in Folklorica reports a similar three-way split in Andreas Johns's 2004 book on the Russian tales: a donor Baba Yaga, an ambiguous one and an evil witch. In that summary, Johns ties the difference to the hero who meets her. With children, boys meet a threat and girls a figure who rewards or punishes their behavior; the donor appears almost only in tales of grown men looking for brides.

The oven scene in no. 114 sits close to the Grimms' "Hansel and Grethel." In Magnus's translation, Baba Yaga loses patience with the girl on the shovel, says "Just look at me and see how it is done," sits on it herself and is shut in. In Margaret Hunt's 1884 translation of the Grimms' 1857 text, the witch shows Grethel how to climb in, and "Grethel gave her a push that drove her far into it." English Wikipedia notes that this "show me how" trick marks type ATU 327A but also turns up in other subtypes of ATU 327; the two scenes are set side by side here, with no claim that one comes from the other.

Vasilisa and the doll

Vasilisa's help comes from her mother. In Ralston's 1873 translation the dying mother says, "together with my parental blessing, I bequeath to you this doll," and the doll does the work Baba Yaga sets, from clearing the wheat to cleaning the poppy seed. When the witch asks how the work gets done, Vasilisa answers, "My mother's blessing assists me." Baba Yaga throws her out ("I don't want bless'd people") but still hands her the skull, whose eyes burn the stepmother and stepsisters "to cinders" by morning.

Help from a dead mother links this tale to Cinderella. In the same Grimm edition, as Hunt translated it, the heroine plants a hazel twig on her mother's grave and waters it with tears, and a white bird in the grown tree throws down whatever she wishes for. Cinderella Around the World dates that tale and its relatives, and it sets the doll and the grave tree side by side as matching motifs only.

Vasilisa's tale also has its own number. English Wikipedia reports that the East Slavic tale catalogue files it as SUS 480В* (with a Cyrillic В), "Stepmother and Step-daughter," and that Jack Haney numbers it AT 480B*. How such numbers are assigned, and why one label can mean different things in different catalogues, is the subject of the Aarne–Thompson–Uther index entry.

The hut on chicken legs

Afanasyev's texts describe the hut more than they explain it. In no. 102 a peasant comes on "избушка на курьих ножках," a little hut on chicken legs, and turns it to face him: "Избушка, избушка! Стань к лесу задом, а ко мне передом," "Little hut, little hut! Stand with your back to the forest and your front to me" (Translation: Where Tales Began). In no. 235, a Finist tale, the hut is cast iron and never stops turning, and in no. 269 it stands on chicken feet. Ralston in 1873 described the hut as supported "by fowl's legs," and Magnus in 1915 wrote that the forest witch "lives in a hut on cocks' legs."

Illustration

No Afanasyev text read here explains the chicken legs. English Wikipedia, citing Johns's book, reports a proposal that the hut resembles storehouses raised on tree stumps among Finno-Ugric peoples; it is a comparison, not a record of where the picture came from.

The detail may be older in print than Afanasyev. English Wikipedia, citing Jack Haney, reports a Finist tale printed in 1795 in which the heroine passes three Baba Yagas whose huts spin on chicken legs. That text was not read for this page, so the chart below marks 1795 as reported.

Chart data: baba-yaga-record-layers.csv, with the source and link for every row.

Goddess, ogress or tale figure?

Was Baba Yaga a Slavic goddess? No source checked for this page records a shrine, an offering or a prayer to her. In every text read here she is a character in a tale, and Ralston's summary of those tales puts it plainly: "The Baba Yaga generally kills people in order to eat them." In the sources checked here, the goddess idea appears only as a later reading of the tales, and it has plenty of company.

The Alpine Krampus makes a useful comparison. English Wikipedia describes him as a horned figure who comes with Saint Nicholas on the night of December 5 and punishes badly behaved children, and Baba Yaga plays the threat in some tales too: she plans to eat the girl in no. 103, and a "yagaya-baba" orders the boy Lutonya roasted in no. 111. Both have been read as pre-Christian survivals, and the Krampus entry tests that claim against dated records as this one does for Baba Yaga. The two are set side by side as figures with a similar job, with no claim that either comes from the other.