The age-old human fantasy of flight has persisted down to our own aero-age, into mass culture and its genres (sci-fi, cartoon strips, films), and has bred two of the mythical mega- icons of our time: Superman and Batman. Interestingly, among the mass media myth-icons of our time, there aren’t any strong female counterparts. Wonder Woman stays in the margins. Even in the lowlier zones of human imagination, the pilots’ seats are reserved for men.
Only in ancient mythical zones is women’s power of flight unlimited. There they fly on equal terms with men. In the oldest times of all, aerial traffic was unusually dense: the heroes flew on huge birds and magic carpets; along with anthropomorphised winds, flashes of lightning and thunderbolts, dragons and witches, flying daggers, brooms, mortars, dark forces, demons and demonic creatures, gods, deities and brave heroes went in search of their sweethearts – pea-hens, doves, swans and graceful ducks – falcons, eagles and hawks. In these zones, Baba Yaga herself could fly freely. She flew in her mortar, in her mortar-womb, to be sure, but the thing is, she flew.
Remarks
Your author’s narrative has a striking ornithological framework: the story in the first part, for example, is set in a three-year temporal framework which limits the invasion of the starlings to one of Zagreb’s neighbourhoods, and their departure likewise. In the second part, right on the first day we learn from the newspaper that Arnoš Kozeny is reading that the H5 strain of bird ’flu has been discovered, while on the last day, we learn – again from Arnoš Kozeny’s newspaper – that thousands of hens were slaughtered on Czech farms because of suspicions that they were infected with the H5N1 virus. All in all, there are feathery motifs to spare. I shan’t offer a more detailed analysis here, rather I shall leave you to brood a while on the symbolical eggs in your author’s text.
OLD AGE
In one of the old Bulgarian legends, the Archangel Michael meets a woman and asks where she comes from and who she is. ‘I’m a witch, and I slither into the house like a snake,’ the woman replies. The archangel ties her up and starts to hit her with an iron rod. ‘I shall beat you until you tell me all your names,’ he says. The witch reels off her names, until she reaches the nineteenth. The legend is hard to translate because the multiple oral traditions have produced a ‘Chinese whispers’ effect, creating a delightful alloy of Hebrew, classical Greek, Bulgarian and who knows what else, so that many words can hardly be deciphered with any certainty. This is how it happens that – in the text that has come down to us – the witch did not reveal all her names or all her faces.
Likewise with Baba Yaga. The story about her circulated for hundreds of years by word of mouth, from ear to ear. Although the storytellers (and later the interpreters) set about her with their interpretive rods, they still could not bring all her ‘names’ to the surface. Only partly misogynistic herself, Baba Yaga was (and remains) the object of frightful misogyny: they beat her, dunked her, threw her in the fire, shoed her like a horse, banged nails into her, cut off her head, pierced her with swords, forged her tongue on an anvil, roasted her in the oven, monstrously insulted her in fairytales, children’s jokes and epic poems.41
Let us say it once again: Baba Yaga is a witch, but she does not belong to the coven of witches; she can be both good and evil; she is a mother, but she is her own daughter’s killer; she is a woman, but she has no man, nor ever had one; she is a helper, but she also plots and schemes; she has been excommunicated from the human community, but she does communicate with humans; she is a warrior, but a housewife too; she is ‘dead’, but also a living being; she roasts a little child in the oven, but the outcome has her being roasted herself; she flies, but at the same time she is riveted to the ground; she only has a ‘supporting role’, but she is the hero’s mainstay as he (or she) makes his (or her) way to fame and fortune.
Baba Yaga’s character emerged from oral traditions, innumer able nameless storytellers, male and female, who built it up and added to it over many decades. She is a collective work, and a collective mirror. Her biography begins in better times, when she was the Golden Baba, the Great Goddess, Earth Mother, Mokosh. With the transition to patriarchy, she lost her power and became an outlawed horror who still manages to prevail through sheer cunning. Today Baba Yaga ekes a life in her hut like a foetus in the womb or a corpse in a tomb.
In modern terms, Baba Yaga is a ‘dissident’, beyond the pale, isolated, a spinster, an old fright, a loser. She never married, and apparently has no friends. If she had any lovers, their names are not known. She does not care for children, she is no devoted mother, nor – despite her advanced years – has she become a granny surrounded by beloved grandchildren. She is not even a good cook. Her function is at once crucial and marginal: ‘courteous’ or ‘rude’ heroes stop when they reach her hut, they eat, they drink, they steam in her bath, take her advice, accept magical gifts that help them to reach their goals and then disappear. They never come back with a bunch of flowers and a box of chocolates.
The chief reason for Baba Yaga’s heresy is her great age. Her dissidence only takes place within the system of life-values that we ourselves have made; in other words, we forced her into heresy. Baba Yaga does not live her life; she undergoes it. She is an old maid or virgin, who serves as a screen for the projection of (castrating) male and (self-punishing) female fantasies. We have stripped away the mere possibility of accomplishment on any level and left her nothing but a few tricks to scare little children with. We have pushed her to the very edge, in the forest, deep in our own subconscious; we have made a symbolical doll and assigned her a symbolical lapot.42 Baba Yaga is a surrogate-woman, she is here to get old instead of us, to be old instead of us, to be punished instead of us. Hers is the drama of old age, hers the story of excommunication, forced expulsion, invisibility, brutal marginalisation. On this point, our own fear acts like acid, which dissolves actual human drama into grotesque clownishness. Clownishness, it is true, does not necessarily have a negative overtone: on the contrary, in principle it affirms human vitality and the momentary victory over death!43
Remarks
It is interesting that your author chose to foreground old age as the most relevant theme, although in truth she gave clear warning of this in her introduction (‘At first you don’t see them…’). Precisely because the author promotes this theme above the others, she achieves an interesting re-semantisation of all the elements linked to the character of Baba Yaga. I shan’t analyse this more deeply, because that’s not my job, but I will mention one example. The title of the first part, ‘Go there – I know not where – and bring me back a thing I lack’, is the slightly changed title of a Russian fairytale (Go there, I know not where, bring back I know not what / Pojdi tuda – ne znaju kuda – prinesi to – ne znaju chto) and one of Baba Yaga’s most popular riddles. And the title of the second part – ‘Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies’ – belongs to one of Baba Yaga’s sayings in a folktale Vassilisa the Beautiful, although it differs a bit in its meaning from the original (Sprashivaj; tol’ko ne vsjakij vopros k dobru vedet /, Ask, but not every question leads to something good). For some reason your author left out the next bit of Baba Yaga’s reply, which goes: ‘If you know too much, you grow old too soon!’(Mnogo budesh znat’, skoro sostareesh’sja!) All in all, the riddle is meant to prove Baba Yaga’s wisdom and manipulative powers. In your author’s text, Baba Yaga’s riddle suggests the opposite: deeply moving senility. There are other such details. Rereading your author’s text through the prism of Baba Yaga, and vice versa, once again reading Baba Yaga through the thematic prism of old age that your author provides, is a refreshing experience. Don’t let’s forget that epochs of history, cultures and whole civilisations are the result of a struggle for meaning. Once, long ago, Baba Yaga was the Great Goddess, the Golden Baba. Living through the long and burdensome history of her own degradation, Baba Yaga has come down to our own day as, unfortunately, her own caricature.
BABA YAGAS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!
Baba Ya
ga is a ‘dissident’, excommunicated, reclusive, an eyesore, a failure, but she is neither alone nor lonely. In many mythic and ritual folklore traditions besides the Slavic ones, she has innumerable sisters.
The Slovak Ježibaba (also Jenžibaba, or in Czech, Jahababa or Jahodababa) has a nose like a pot and a wide, fat mouth. She uses different stratagems to get her way: she turns princesses into frogs, and can turn herself into a frog or snake. Ježibaba is polycephalic: she can have seven, nine or twelve heads. Polycephaly, cannibalism, metamorphosis and great wickedness are the chief traits of this dangerous Czecho- Slovak Ježibaba. She possesses magical objects: shoes for walking on water, a skull that can bring rain, a golden apple, a golden purse, a stick that turns anything living into stone. Ježibaba often comes into contact with hunters who are hunting the forest animals in her vicinity.
There is an ancient female terror in the folklore of the Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, Slovenes, Macedonians and Montenegrins. She is called Baba Roga, Baba Jega, Gvozdenzuba (Irontooth). These peoples are much more afraid of their local witches and sprites than of Baba Yaga. Baba Roga is a bugbear that very few people take seriously, and in that sense it is hard to compare her with the Russian Baba Yaga. Serbian folklore, to be fair, has the Forest Mother (Šumska majka), who combines the characteristics of witch, water-nymph, mountain fairy and Baba Yaga. The Forest Mother is described as a young woman, full-breasted, with long, black, wanton hair and long nails (though she can also be old, ugly and toothless). She shows herself to people naked or dressed in white. The Forest Mother has the power to turn herself into a haystack, a turkey, a cow, a pig, a dog or a horse. She most often appears at midnight. She is skittish, she attacks the newborn babes and infants, but she defends them too. She knows how to cure barren women with preparations of forest herbs. The Forest Mother supposedly has a beautiful voice and is unusually sensual: she often waylays men, leading them deep into the woods, where she has sexual intercourse with them.
Instead of Baba Yaga, the Bulgarians have the Mountain Mother (Gorska maika), who causes insomnia among little children, as well as ‘the witch Mag’osnica’, the Samodiva (a sort of Bulgarian Rusalka) and the Lamia, a female monster, who is a Slavic derivation from the ancient Greek creature of the same name.
The Romanian Mamapadurei lives in the woods in a hut with hen’s legs. The hut is surrounded by a palisade fence with human skulls stuck on the posts. She steals little children and turns them into trees. Baba Cloanta (Jaws) is a tall, ugly old hag with teeth like rakes. She guards a barrel of human souls. Baba Coaja is a child-killer with a long glass nose, one leg made of iron, and nails of brass. Baba Harca lives in the oven and steals stars out of the sky. The Romanian equivalent of Serbian St. Petka (Friday) or St. Paraskeva is Sfinta Vineri, who oversees women’s weaving work. She looks human, but her hen’s foot gives her away.
Vasorru baba is an old woman with an iron nose almost reaching her knees, who lives in Hungarian folktales. Vasorru baba tests young heroes and heroines, and if they aren’t kind to her, she turns them into animals or stones.
The Ragana is a mythical Lithuanian evil-doer (regeti is Lithuanian for to know, to see, to predict; ragas means horn or crescent moon). The Ragana has a mortar that she sleeps in or flies in, propelling herself with a broom and pestle. In winter, the Raganas swim in the open air, amid the ice, and sit high in the birch-trees combing their long hair. Their evil nature is more obvious in summer, when they destroy the crops, curdle the milk, kill newborn babes and make trouble at weddings, where they have been known to turn the groom into a wolf. The Ragana is connected with death and resurrection, or rather regeneration.
The Polish Jendžibaba, or Jedsi baba, is a woman who trots along on hen’s feet (pani na kurzej stopce), and she shares all the general characteristics of the Russian Baba Yaga.
The Lusatian Sorbs44 believe in the wurlawy (or worawy), women of the forest who emerge from the trees at precisely ten o’clock in the evening. They set about ploughing the fields, and as they plough, they make a great hubbub. Wjera or Wjerobaba is the Lusatian Sorb version of Baba Yaga.
An old woman with an iron nose (Zhaliznonosa baba) ambles through Ukrainian fairytales, legends and creeds. She is followed by thirty babas with iron tongues and an iron baba (Zhalizna baba) whose house stands on duck’s feet.
The Norwegian variant of Baba Yaga could have been assembled from three women who appear in Norwegian fairytales. One is an old woman, the ‘old mother’ (gamlemor), whose long nose gets wedged into a tree stump and stays wedged there for a hundred years or so. The hero Espen Askeladd (a Norwegian version of the Russian Ivan the Fool or Ivan Popjalov) helps the old woman to free her nose, and in return he is given a magic flute. The second is the trollkjerring or haugkjerring, an old witch, while the third is the kjerringa mot strommen (roughly, ‘the woman who goes against the stream’), a stubborn woman, a contrary character, even a shrew.
Finno-Karelian folklore has the Syoyatar. Sparrows fly out of her eyes, crows fly out of her toes, vipers slither from under her fingernails, ravens flap out of her mouth and magpies out of her hair. The Syoyatar embodies evil and never helps anybody, but it is a comfort to know that she is no cannibal. Akka, another Finno-Karelian evil-doer, is much closer to Baba Yaga. She lives in the woods or near the seashore, she threatens to eat passing travellers, she has breasts the size of buckets and she can wrap her legs three times around the hut. Like Baba Yaga, Akka wants the hero or heroine to accomplish different tasks (heating the bath, feeding the animals, caring for the horses), and she rewards good service with useful advice.
Baba Yaga has numerous relatives in Western Europe. Let’s just mention that in France – the land of foie gras – there are legendary females with goose feet. Arie, or Aunt Arie (Tante Arie, Tantarie) has iron teeth and goose feet. Tantarie punishes lazy weavers and rewards hard-working ones. During the Christmas holiday, she appears on a donkey and hands out presents. Tantarie lives in the cave where she guards her chest with its jewels, and she only takes off her golden crown, studded with diamonds, when she bathes. In Germany, Perchta is an old woman with big goose feet, who carries her broom around with her, as well as a needle and scissors. She cuts open the stomachs of lazy girls and sloppy housewives with her scissors and fills them up with rubbish. The famous Frau Holle – a tall, grey-haired woman with long teeth, who frightens little children and tests the kindness and patience of young maidens – has features in common with Baba Yaga.
* * *
Turks, Tartars, Bashkirs, Uzbeks, Chuvash, Turkmen, Kirghiz, Azerbaijanis, Kumyks, Nogais and many other peoples believe in the Alabasti. The Alabasti is demonically evil, a hideous woman with dangling breasts, chaotic hair and a talent for metamorphosis. She has bird’s legs (or so they believe in Azerbaijan), or even hooves (according to the Kazakhs). The Tartars of Kazan believe that Alabasti has a single eye in the middle of her forehead, and a stone nose. She has no flesh or skin on her back, so her internal organs are exposed for all to see, and she has sharp talons instead of fingers and toes. In Kirghizia, they believe in two Alabastis: the very evil black one (kara) and the less dangerous blonde one (sari). Alabasti is never without her magic book, comb and money. In the picturesque legends of the Chuvash, Alabasti is a voluptuary who keeps company with hunters, brings them luck, gives them her own milk to drink and feeds them with her own flesh that she slices from her ribs. Alabasti can be tamed by stealing a hair from her head or her precious possessions: the comb, book and money. The Turks believed that Alabasti becomes good and docile if you pass a needle through her clothes. Alabasti brings illness and nightmares, she drinks her victims’ blood and she is especially dangerous to women in childbed and to newborn babes. Alabasti loves horses, and she rides them by night. Her origins are by no means clear. Some suppose that she is Turkish, and others, Iranian. Al may be the name of an ancient deity, close to ilu (among Semitic tribes), while the Indo-European basti means spirit or deity. Alabasti’s k66ith and kin are scattered among many peop
les, and their names are al pab, ali, ol, ala zhen, hal, alk, ali, almazi, almas, kara-kura, shurale, su anasi, vutash. Baba Yaga is her Slavic sister.
All in all, it is not hard to conclude from this quick survey that Baba Yaga straddles the globe: the ‘baba genus’ is international, and Baba Yaga’s kinsfolk can be found in Asia, South America and Africa; ‘Baba Yaga’s International’ is making trouble here, there and everywhere, as it has always done.45
* * *
This impressive, grandiose mythic transmission has been going on for centuries. The ‘old crones’ International’ – all those monstrosities, malefactors, frights, freaks and demons, those ‘scum of the earth’, those ‘prisoners of want’ – is united by the fact of female gender. Ancient (and other) myths diffused around the world, getting contaminated by Christianity and Christian myths, as well as local pre-Christian, folkloric and mythico-ritual creeds. And all that long-lived, labyrinthine, fertile, profoundly misogynistic but also cathartic work of the imagination gave birth to Baba Yaga.
Baba Yaga Laid an Egg (Myths S.) Page 27