Now Vasilisa was even more afraid. But she held tight to the little doll in her pocket.
The Baba Yaga said, ‘Who are you and what do you want?’
Vasilisa answered politely, ‘Good evening to you, Grandmother. I am Vasilisa. My sisters have sent me to ask you to give us a little light, so that we can see to finish our work.’
‘Hmm, have they now?’ said the Baba Yaga. ‘Well, if you want something from me, you must do something for me. Come in, and we will see what you can do.’
They went into the Baba Yaga’s hut. There was a big pot of soup bubbling on the fire. ‘I’m hungry,’ said the Baba Yaga. ‘Serve my supper.’
Vasilisa put some soup into a bowl and the Baba Yaga gobbled it up.
‘I’m still hungry,’ she said. ‘Give me some more.’
Vasilisa put out more soup, and more. When the Baba Yaga had finished the whole big pot full, she rubbed her belly, burped, and said: ‘You can have what is left. Then wash up and tidy up. You can sleep by my fire, and in the morning, while I am away, you must sweep my house, wash my clothes, cook my food and pick out all the stones that have got mixed into my wheat store. If I am pleased with what you do, I will give you what you need.’
And without saying another word, the Baba Yaga rolled herself up in her blankets and started to snore.
Vasilisa scraped the last few spoonfuls of soup out of the bottom of the pot and into a bowl. When she was sure that the Baba Yaga was asleep, she took the little doll out of her pocket and gave it half the soup.
She whispered to her little doll, ‘I’m scared. What shall I do?’
‘Eat, then sleep, Vasilisa,’ said the doll. ‘The morning is wiser than the evening. Don’t worry. I will help you do the Baba Yaga’s work.’
So Vasilisa tried her best to sleep by the Baba Yaga’s flickering fire. She was woken in the morning by a rushing sound, as the Baba Yaga paddled her great bowl away into the sky.
Vasilisa looked around. The work was all done! The doll had done everything while she slept. Even the stones were in a neat pile beside the wheat store. All Vasilisa had to do was rest, and cook food in time for the Baba Yaga’s return.
As the day ended, the horseman dressed in black rode by, and night fell. Back came the Baba Yaga. She looked around her tidy hut, poked her long nose into the wheat store and sucked her teeth. Vasilisa put a great steaming bowl of food in front of her. The Baba Yaga grunted. ‘You have done well, little one.’ Then she gave a shrill whistle, and three pairs of hands with no bodies appeared in front of her.
‘Grind my wheat!’ she ordered, and the hands disppeared with the wheat store held between them.
Vasilisa stared and stared, but the doll jiggled about in her pocket, to warn her to keep quiet. So she did.
When the Baba Yaga had finished her huge meal, she spoke to Vasilisa. ‘You have done well today, so now you can ask me a question.’
Vasilisa shyly said, ‘Grandmother, when I was on my way to your house, three riders went past me. Who are they?’
The Baba Yaga said, ‘The rider in white is my Bright Day. The rider in red is my Warm Sun. And the rider in black is my Dark Night. Do you want to ask any more questions?’
Vasilisa thought of the strange hands. She opened her mouth to ask what they were, but the doll jiggled about in her pocket, to warn her to keep quiet. She said, ‘No thank you, Grandmother, I have asked enough questions.’
‘Hmm,’ said the Baba Yaga. ‘It’s good that you did not ask about my servants. What happens here in my house is nobody’s business but mine. Now, tomorrow you must clean and wash and cook once more, and also pick the dust out of my store of poppy seeds. When that is all done, I will give you the light you need.’
Then the Baba Yaga rolled over and began to snore.
Again Vasilisa quietly fed her little doll, and again the doll said, ‘Don’t worry, Vasilisa. I will help you with the work. Go to sleep now. The morning is wiser than the evening.’
When Vasilisa woke, the doll had already done all the work, and so she was able to rest until it was time to cook supper for the Baba Yaga.
When the Baba Yaga had eaten another huge meal, she whistled for the strange hands and sent them away to crush the clean poppy seeds for their oil. Then she squinted at Vasilisa with her beady little eyes.
‘Somehow you have done all my work. What makes you so clever?’
Vasilisa answered, ‘I am not clever, Grandmother. It is my mother’s blessing that helps me.’
And she showed her little doll to the Baba Yaga. The Baba Yaga shrieked, ‘A blessing? We want no blessings here! Take your blessing and your light and get out of my house!’
Well, Vasilisa was glad to go, so this was no hardship. The Baba Yaga bustled her out into the yard and grabbed one of the skulls from the fence. Its eye holes burned with a fierce red light. ‘Here is your light. Take it and go!’ said the Baba Yaga, and pushed Vasilisa towards her bony gate.
Vasilisa went out into the forest, carrying the skull on its long leg bone. Its red eyes lit up the path for her. She walked all night, until the white horseman passed her. It began to get light. Then the red horseman rode past, and the sun rose. The light in the skull went out, but Vasilisa carried it carefully all the way home. It was getting dark again by the time she saw her house in the distance.
When she knocked on the door the two sisters flung it open. They were wearing every coat and scarf they owned. ‘We are freezing!’ they moaned. ‘Since you left we have not been able to light a candle or start a fire. Have you brought the light?’
‘I have,’ said Vasilisa, and as she spoke, the eye holes in the skull began to burn with bright fire once more. The two sisters squealed and hid their eyes. Their mother pushed past them and grabbed at the skull. But it burned her hands, and she dropped it. Flames from it rushed across the carpet and up the curtains. Vasilisa ran out of the house, but nobody followed her. The house, and everyone in it, burned up in a fierce and flaming fire.
When Vasilisa’s father came home from his travels, his house was gone. His own dear daughter was staying with a neighbour. Her doll was the only thing that the fire had not destroyed. He hugged his daughter, and when he heard all that had happened to her, he promised he would not go away without her again. They built a new house and lived there together, as happy as could be.
And somewhere in the forest, the Baba Yaga chuckled.
1. THE GIRL WHO FOUND THE STORIES
My friend the storyteller June Peters told me this story years ago, and I have loved telling it ever since. I only discovered where it comes from quite recently, when I found it in the book Songs My Paddle Sings, by Jim Riordan. It is a First Nation story from North America.
2. TIPINGI
I learned this story from my friend, storyteller Tony Aylwin. It is in a book of stories from Haiti collected by Diane Wolkstein. Haiti is a country on one of the islands in the Caribbean. It has many brilliant folk stories, which Diane’s book helped to make well known around the world.
3. THE GIRL WHO WASN’T AFRAID
This story is new to me, and I have only just started telling it. I wanted to find an Irish story to include in this book, and I like this bold girl a lot. My version is based on one collected by Henry Glassie in The Penguin Book of Irish Folktales, with elements from a story I heard the Irish storyteller Susanna Steele tell years ago.
4. MOLLY WHUPPIE
I have been telling Molly Whuppie’s story for a long time, and I knew I had it in a book somewhere, but I had to search my bookshelf before I found it, in Jane Yolen’s Favourite Folktales from Around the World. She calls it an English story, but I have always thought it was from Scotland, and there is a version in which Molly has a Scots Gaelic name, in John Francis Campbell’s Popular Tales of the West Highlands.
5. SEREN
This is a story from North Wales. You can find it in W. Jenkyn Thomas’s The Welsh Fairy Book.
6. THE THREE SISTERS
My friend storyte
ller Amy Douglas tells this story, and she put it in her first collection of stories from Shropshire, in England.
I said to her, ‘But it’s a Welsh story, the rivers rise in Wales.’
She said, ‘But the Severn comes through Shropshire.’
You can find her version of this story in her book Shropshire Folk Tales. You will have to decide for yourself whether it is a Welsh story or an English one!
7. MOSSYCOAT
This is a sister story of Cinderella, as you probably guessed. It’s one of my favourite Cinderella tales, and I tell it a lot. It’s an English Gypsy version. Tinkering was one of the jobs the Gypsies used to do as they travelled around. People often say they feel sorry for the tinker and ask me what happened to him. I’m afraid I don’t know his story, only Mossycoat’s. You can find Mossycoat’s story in The Penguin Book of English Folktales, edited by Neil Philip.
8. THE DAUNTLESS GIRL
This is the story that gave me the idea for this book. Like ‘Mossycoat’, it is in The Penguin Book of English Folktales.
9. THE GIRL WHO SANG HERSELF TO SAFETY
This story from Spain is in a book of stories with songs collected by storyteller Helen East, called The Singing Sack. You can hear the original song on the CD included with her book. My version of the song is a bit simpler, because I am not very good at singing!
10. RED RIDING HOOD
This French version of the well-known story of a little girl and a wolf is included by Angela Carter in The Virago Book of Fairy Tales. It is just a note (at the back of her book, on p. 241) to the much better-known story made famous by Charles Perrault. Angela Carter introduced it like this: ‘This little girl, colour of clothing unknown, is not an awful warning but an example of quick thinking.’
That’s why I like it.
11. THE LITTLE GIRL SOLD WITH THE PEARS
The novelist Italo Calvino published a wonderful collection of folktales from his motherland, Italy. This is my favourite story in his book, though I must admit I haven’t read every story he included.
12. IBANANG
When I first got interested in storytelling, about thirty years ago, I used to go to workshops exploring stories with storytellers Mary Medlicott and Karen Tovell, and that is where and when I first heard ‘Ibanang’. I didn’t like it to start with, because I thought the swallowing drum was horrible. But the story grew on me, and now I tell it a lot, and I really like this story of a brave girl and her even braver mother. I have never found it in a book, though I am sure there must be collections which include it.
13. CLEVER ILDIKO
I wanted to include a story called ‘The wise little girl’ in this book, because I really like it. The one I know is Russian, but I already had a Russian story, ‘Vasilisa’. Then the storyteller Janet Dowling sent me a weblink to some Hungarian folk tales. I found a story called ‘The mayor’s clever daughter’ in that collection, and as it is a Hungarian version of ‘The wise little girl’, I decided to include it. I have given the mayor’s clever daughter the name of one of my Hungarian friends.
14. VASILISA
I love stories about Baba Yaga, and this is one of the most famous. It is in Aleksandr Afanasiev’s collection of fairy tales from Russia, where you can also find other Baba Yaga stories.
Here are some books where you can find other versions of the stories in Folk Tales for Bold Girls:
Aleksandr Afanasiev, Russian Fairy Tales (Pantheon, 1945)
Italo Calvino, Italian Folktales (Penguin, 1982)
John Francis Campbell, Popular Tales of the West Highlands, Volume 1 (Edmonston & Douglas, 1890)
Angela Carter, The Virago Book of Fairy Tales (Virago, 1991)
Amy Douglas, Shropshire Folk Tales (The History Press, 2011)
Helen East (ed.), The Singing Sack: 28 Song-Stories from Around the World (A & C Black, 1989)
Henry Glassie (ed.), The Penguin Book of Irish Folktales (Penguin, 1993)
Neil Philip (ed.), The Penguin Book of English Folktales (Penguin, 1991)
James Riordan, Songs My Paddle Sings (Chrysalis Children’s Books, 1996)
W. Jenkyn Thomas, The Welsh Fairy Book (Dover, 2001)
Diane Wolkstein, The Magic Orange Tree and Other Haitian Folktales (Pantheon, 1997)
Jane Yolen (ed.), Favourite Folktales from Around the World (Pantheon, 1986)
Folk Tales for Bold Girls Page 7