Baba Yaga - The Crone in the Woods

Michael deMeng explores the legends and stories about the mysterious witch of Russia and Slavic lore, Baba Yaga.  Learn about her strange house that hops around on chicken legs and how this tale influenced Michael's artwork.

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Hi everybody. My name is Michael deMeng and welcome to Strange Tales of Myth and Magic. In this podcast, we're going to explore mythology and magic and fairy tales and wives tales and maybes some snakes' tales. We'll take a peek at some of the strange legends and stories throughout history and how they affected culture and how they affected me as an artist. So sit back and let me tell you a story.  In this week's episode: The Crone in the Woods Baba Yaga.  So who is Baba Yaga? Well, Baba Yaga is a witch and I think, the best way to envision Baba Yaga would be think of her as almost like the witch in the Hansel and Gretel. You know, she he's a craggily old witch, and she lives far and the forest hidden away, creeping around and maybe potentially eating children...where as Baba Yaga is a little less particular. She doesn't necessarily just want to eat children. She'll pretty much eat anyone, any time, anywhere. So let's start off with a bit of a physical description. So she's the typical old crone. She's craggily and old, though not always. But usually she's one old lady,  worn  and tattered and skinny and bony. And, you know, it said that her teeth are made of metal, which, of course, makes it easier to be cannibalistic and devour whoever she wants to eat. So, yes, so she's this old crone and definitely not really pretty. Some of the some of the attributes to give to her, though, is that she's a good sniffer. She's often found inside her house, sniffing and potentially smelling for food, I'm assuming,   but but sniffing away and she's she is often also seen hunched over a pot and, of course, preparing yummy yummy yummy dinners. Now she gets around is kind of interesting. She has, you know, like a mortar and pestle. You know, the things you grind up spices and such with, well, she actually flies around in like a larger version of a mortar. And so she's in there, and she used the pestle to sort of steer the thing and she cruises around the forest, because she lives deep, deep, dark in the woods. And so she cruises around looking for whatever she's looking around for. One of the coolest aspects of Baba Yaga, though, is her house. Her house is a rickety little house, and the unique aspect about it is that it is perched high upon a giant chicken leg...and sometimes it's chicken legs, but at least one giant chicken leg, which allows her the opportunity to turn. So the house itself can turn. So she's sitting in the living room or the kitchen and looking out the window. The house can turn to show her a different view. Probably people coming and and messing with her, or she wants a good sunset, who knows. But it also gives you the opportunity to hop around change locations, because I can't imagine she's super popular. So sometimes it's handy to be able to move, and who needs moving vans when you can just hop to the next place.   There are a variety of Baba Yaga tales, and each one differs a little bit. But but some of the descriptions about her place talk about some of the hardware and fixtures like hinges that are made of human hands and doors that are made of human feet and really creepy, eerie, eerie.  You know, horror movie type of stuff. One thing is pretty consistent, and it goes with one of the tales, it's that her fence post is capped with skulls, human skulls, and often they're burning light. So inside there's like a fire burning. It sort of keeps, keeps them lit up. And, you know, sometimes the actual fence itself is made of human bones. But but the fence post caps are usually human skulls, and it said that she always leaves at least one empty because you never know who's gonna be popping by for dinner. So Baba Yaga is primarily a Russian folk tale and that you can find it in Slavic nations and but predominantly in Russia in that sort of region. And the thing is, is that she is not necessarily always a villain in these stories. She's always dangerous. That's to be certain, but she's not necessarily the bad guy of the story. She's often, in some cases a necessary evil. Some cases she's actually a benefactor, but by and large she's a dangerous, uncontrollable force. In some ways, she's sort of like the task that the hero has to overcome to ultimately be successful. Sometimes the task is defeating her, but sometimes it's merely to get something from her to get her help. So she's a complicated character, somewhat ambiguous in in some regard. The stories about Baba Yaga often are not dissimilar from the Cinderella story. Many of the heroes are actually young girls or young, beautiful women. So the first story is, you know, the basic Cinderella story, and this case, we will call her Anastasia, I have yet to come across the name for this particular girl in the story, which is young girl, and yes, has the evil stepmother with sadistic tasks and all that stuff. And  poor Anastasia is sort of screwed because, you know, the father is always away and the stepmother plays little tricks on her and all that stuff. So one day Anastasia's Dad says, "you know, I got to go out of town. I got some business to do. I'm not sure when I'm gonna be back. And he goes, of course this breaks young Anastasia's heart because she knows what's in store. And yes, right away, the stepmother says "hey Anastasia  I need some some sewing done. And I need you to go visit my sister deep, deep, deep in the woods. And, um, she'll help you out. Yeah, and here's the address." And so off Anastasia goes deep into the dark, dark woods. Now Anastasia knows what's going down. She knows that deep, deep, deep, dark in the woods is where Baba Yaga lives. And she knows that her stepmother is going to send her there. So Anastasia decides to take a little detour. And she goes to her real aunt,  who's living in woods, and she stops in and said they used the plan. I think my stepmother is gonna get me in. The aunt says, " Hey dearie. So, um, Baba Yaga is not to be messed. So let me give you some things that can help you out. Here's a little bacon. Here some bread. Here's some ribbon. Um, and here's some butter. All these things will help you out. So this is your only way of surviving this task. So Anastasia has got her goods and off she goes. And sure enough, not long after she comes across Baba Yaga's house and yes, it's perched on a big chicken leg, and it's got skulls all over the place and dogs are barking. And then the the trees are encroaching, and and she sees one limb, and what she does, she ties the ribbon that her aunt gave her onto one of the scratchy limbs. And she continues, and meanwhile, the house is shifting and moving and through the window, she sees Baba Yaga.  Baba Yaga flings open the shutters and says, "What are you doing? What are you doing out there?".  Anastasia tells her, "Hey, I'm your niece. And, you know, I need some help sewing" and then Baba goes, "Oh, yes, yes, my niece. Yeah, that's it. Oh, yes, I do need some sewing, so come on in." So Anastacia comes in house. Baba Yaga is very pleasant and they get to the little sewing task that the evil stepmother had had put forth to the young Anastasia. And then Baba Yaga says, "You know, you're really, really dirty. Uh, why don't you go take a bath? A really good scrubbing." And so off to the bath she goes. And meanwhile, Baba Yaga tells her nasty cat, "Now you keep an eye on her when she's in the bathtub. If she tries to escape you scratch her."  The cat goes, "Sure I can do that."  So off Anastasia goes to bath. She's scrubbing way, and she's like,  I need to get out of here but cat is like, "No, you're not going anywhere."  Well, Anastasia then gives the cat a little piece of bacon. Now the cat is amazed. Nobody gives him bacon. It was like, "Wow, you're really, really nice." And the cat says, "Hey, let me give you a little something too. So here's a here's a comb and here's a towel. These, believe it or not, are gonna come in handy. So you go ahead and sneak out, but be careful of the door because the door squeaks and be careful of the dog, the dog is trouble and be careful of the trees. Cuz they scratch." Anastasia says thanks and she sneaks out.  She takes out the butter, comes to the big door and rubs the hinges with butter and the doors like, "Wow, that's groovy, man." And the door opens up without making a sound. Here comes a dog. The dog comes running across the yard and she reaches in and she grabs some yummy yummy bread. The dog eats it up. It's like, "Wow, you're great, your great Go ahead, Go wherever you want, I don't care ".  And so she comes running out and the trees are there and the trees are ready to grab her And then it goes, "Hey, you're the one who put the ribbon on me. That's really nice. I look good" and opens up and she heads on out. Now Baba Yaga kind of catches a hint that something's going on. She's like, what? And he yells at the cat, yells at the dog, yells at the door, yells of the tree! And then she jumps into her mortar and flies after her.  Well, poor Anastasia, she's fleeing as quick as she can, and then she remembers of course, the comb that the cat gave her  and she flings it over her shoulder and the comb then sprouts up into a forest witch slows down, Baba Yaga.  And Baba Yaga finally catches up again. And then the young Anastasia grabs the towel and flings it over a shoulder and that turns into a raging river, which slows Baba Yaga down to where Baba goes, "Screw it!" And so Anastasia heads back home. She gets back home And, of course, she tells her dad what happened, and what her dad does is, you know, shoots the stepmother.  The End. Yeah, I know. The the old folk fable tale are a little harsh at times. But that's old school for you.  A slight variation of the story, actually is the story of Vasilisa and Vasilisa is similar but is older in this story. But Vasilisa's story actually starts out when she is a young girl and her real mother is on her deathbed. And Vasilisa is very sad and very weepy and then her Mom says, "Look, here is a doll". A doll that her mother had made for her.  "When I'm gone, I want you to put all your sorrow into the doll. But always every time you grieve to it, give it something to eat." And so, through the years Vasilisa did that. Every time there was trouble, she would feed it.  And, of course, not long after Vasilisa's mom passes way, her dad marries an evil stepmother, except this time, evil stepmother has evil stepdaughters. So she's got evil step Mom and even evil stepsisters..so really great. So she's using the doll, feeding the dollar a lot, grieving to the doll a lot. I'm not gonna go into the minutia of this story, but basically  the father goes away once again, and the mom decides to move deep into the woods and they need some fire. And the fires are the fires air having trouble so she sends Vasilisa out into the woods and says, You got to Baba Yaga and you get fire because she has those nice flaming skulls and I want you to get Baba Yaga's fire. Now this is dual, if she comes back with fire, it's great, if she doesn't she's taken in by Baba Yaga. So it's a win win for the stepmother.  Vasilisa. does as she's told. She, of course, brings her doll with her and she gets to Baba Yaga's house. Same sort of deal as the past story, creepy house comes out inside and, um, you know, tells Baba Yaga, "Look,  I'd like to get some fire from you". Baba Yaga goes, "I'll give you fire. But, um, you have to do all the tasks that I say" To make a long story short, basically the tasks or impossible tasks, you know, like a sweep the floor with three strands of straw, that type of thing. So all day Vasilisa would work and try as hard as she could to try and finish the tasks. Of course, she couldn't. But she would always sneak away a little bit of food from supper and put it in her putting her little apron. And then at night she would grieve to the doll and feed the doll and the doll said, "Hey, don't worry about it. I'll finish your tasks. When you wake up, everything will be good." Sure enough, every day the tasks were done. Baba is like, "Wow, you're amazing!" And then, of course, the task would get more and more complex. Um, until finally, eventually Baba Yaga goes, "Okay. Okay. You've earned the fire. I guess you can go." And of course, she does this begrudgingly, because she never expected her to finish the tasks and she really just wanted to eat her. But, you know, deal's a deal. And she said, "You know, one thing, though, is I want to know how it is you managed to get everything done. I want to know what you did."  "Of course, Vasilisa is a  pretty bright gal, and she knows that it's kind of a trap because if she says the doll did it, well,  she didn't really do the tasks the doll did it. So she's smarter than that and says, "Well, I was able to achieve this with the blessing of my mother". Now Baba Yaga freaks out "Blessings! There will be no blessings in this house. Here's your fire. Here's your little skull full of fire. You get the hell out of here because I don't want blessings in this home."  Vasilisa says, thanks and she heads out the door. She gets back to her home with evil stepmother and stepsisters. And of course, they haven't been able to light fire since then. Every time they bring  a log in  that was on fire, it would go out. So ever since Vasilisa left fire has never ignited  in the home. But Vasilisa brings the burning skull into the house and... poof... in flames. The stepmother and stepsisters go, they're gone and out of the picture. Now the story meanders on and it talks about how Vasilisa ends up being a seamstress and marrying the Tsar and all that stuff and happy ending. Now, perhaps my favorite story about Baba Yaga is about a Russian couple when they aren't able to have children. So,  what they do is they're told that if you if you steal an egg from all the neighbors, in this case there are 41 neighbors, apparently they steal the eggs and  they put 41 eggs underneath a hen and yes, poof. They popped out as young Children. So they have 41 boys. And these boys grow up to be handsome men. 40 of them, anyway, One of his kind of an ugly duckling. A nerd, so the 41st one we'll call him Hank. Hank is kind of a geek. The other ones are sort of like Ryan Reynolds.  Sort of types always getting the gal. But it comes a time when they need to settle down and the parents find out  who happens to have 41 daughters is... Baba Yaga. Now, you would think this would be a bad idea. You would think that the couple would know better, but okay, that's fine. So it's getting close to the wedding day, and the and the 41 boys are at Baba Yaga s house. And so are the 41 daughters, which apparently are beautiful. It's the night before the wedding, and they're sleeping in separate parts of the house And the 41st boy Hank says, "You know, I'm not trusting this scene, so I think we should swap clothes with our betrothed." And the guys are like, "What do you talking about? That's crazy,"  Hanks says "Trust me. " So they do it. They put on the womens' nightgowns and the daughters put on the men's nightgowns and they go to sleep. Well, meanwhile, in a back room, Baba Yaga has been telling her servants, "Okay, I want you to go around, and I want you to cut off the heads of all the suitors, cut off all the young men's heads, and I want you to put them on my fence posts." And the servants  go sneaking around at night, everybody is asleep. And of course, the clothes are changed and they kill the daughters instead of the sons by accident. Next morning, Baba Yaga wakes up and she goes, "Holy crap, What have you guys done?" She yells that the servants probably eats the servants, actually, and goes chasing the men off. And I think in this one there's actually a magic handkerchief that kind of does like the towel that turns into a giant river, some obstacle to keep Baba Yaga at bay. And you know, in this case, they managed to thwart the rage of Baba Yaga. So when I was doing research for this particular podcast, I was trying to find a contemporary versions of Baba Yaga and there really aren't many. There is a version, if you are a comic reader, Hellboy actually has Baba Yaga character and actually Vasilisa is a character in that as well. The film, the most recent one anyway,  isn't that good, but it's OK. Actually the best part about the film is the Baba Yaga scene with the house moving. It's very, very cool. The famous composer Modesto Musorgsky actually did a composition that was about Baga Yaga's chicken leg house in the woods, which is kind of cool. Musorgsky was the guy, if you ever saw  Disney's Fantasia, it's the night on Bald Mountain scene with the giant devil coming out of the mountain.  In my own work, I've actually incorporated Baba Yaga, though I, predominantly if not exclusively, have always focused on her cool house and I would always create the house almost as it's like an existing entity which is isn't far off...being like a  living thing.   But in my version, not only would it have a leg like structure, but I also gave it actually moving wings, flapping wings, because I thought, you know, getting away on a foot is one thing. But being able to get away and fly away also would be really cool. So there's a really interesting book, and it's by the author, and I'm gonna I'm gonna butcher this name, Taisia Kitaiskaia. Yeah, I think is how you might pronounce it. But she has a book called "Ask Baba Yaga", which is like a dear Abby sort of book. But the author, actually she grew up in Siberia, and Baba Yaga was part of her childhood, and so what she created was actually what if Baba Yaga answered, but I'm not quite as dark and sinister,, but earthy and and gritty advice. Sort of to the point sort of advice. So, for instance, like one person writes:" Dear Baba Yaga, I think I must crave male attention too much. I fear that without it, I would feel invisible."  And then Baba Yaga replies, "When you see others this way, you are invisible. Nonetheless, your shawl is covered in mirrors in which others admire themselves. This is why they greet you so passionately. It is good to be seen, but is better to see. Find a being to look hard into, and you will see yourself and what is more than you."  So kinda cool, actually, And this is sort of leads to the next segment about Baba Yaga. And  that is that Baba Yaga is essentially nature. She is ambiguous. She is not necessarily moral. She understands the way the universe works, and she understands what it does. And you were merely just another part of the universe. And the universe is very complex. I mean, one person's hero is another person's villain.  When you're the hero of the story, you might easily be doing harm to something else. It's like a bear feeding, you know, if a bear attacks you, of course, the bears a villains to you, but it's not a villain to the cub. To the cub, the bear is a protector.  The bear, is a giver of life. So Baba Yaga is the embodiment of nature, you know, for all things to live, things must die She is essentially like death. She is the span of time where things come and things go but doesn't matter to her. Your cause does not necessarily matter. And sometimes she'll do good for you. And sometimes she'll do bad for you. And sometimes she'll do neither. So the Baba Yaga stories they're, you know, sort of like what life is.  You know, we have a little dance, but ultimately, someday every single one of us, every single living thing is gonna end up in Baba Yaga's pot, and we're gonna be cooked and eaten. But from that, other things will grow. Other things will live. You know, the skulls that have the fire burning in them, you know, in on her fence, post these are great metaphors. Because if you think about what fire symbolizes from a human standpoint, fire is something that really does help keep humans alive. Without it, humans would really, really struggle. So fire, in essence, is a life giver, symbolically, but what it is being encased in, what it's being carried in is a skull...the symbol of death. So life and death are wrapped together in one iconic symbol. Kind of yin and yang-ish, don't you think? And if there's a moral to the story, that would be if you see Baba Yaga, I would flee. But the thing is, is you may not necessarily have a choice. Sometimes she'll pop up when you least expect her, and all we can do as humans is do our best to figure out a way of avoid her pot for the time being. All right, thanks for listening, you guys.  Be sure to pop in again. There's gonna be new tales of myth and magic popping up in the future. So tell your friends, that's always helpful. And if you're interested, stop by my website www.michaeldemeng.com dot and you can see some of the artwork that I create that might relate to what we're talking about. So until we meet again, I'll be mything you.