Baba Yaga
Baba Yaga (Baba Jaga) (old woman) In Russian folklore, cannibalistic ogress who kidnaps children, then cooks and eats them. She is the best known of all Slavic legendary characters. She is mostly malevolent, but sometimes she is a benefactress. She is never portrayed as a goddess, but in her earliest form she shows similarity to the Great Goddess, the patron goddess to women.
Since the Christian era she has been downgraded to witch status. Baba Yaga usually lives in a hut that stands on hens’ legs. Sometimes it faces the forest, sometimes the path, and sometimes it moves about from place to place. In some Russian folktales Baba Yaga’s hut is surrounded by a railing made of sticks surmounted by human skulls, which glow at night from candles placed inside them.
One Russian folktale, simply titled “Baba Yaga,” tells of an evil stepmother who attempted to have her daughter eaten by Baba Yaga. The girl was saved when a magic comb thrown in Baba Yaga’s path made it impossible for the ogress to catch the girl as she escaped. In a variant tale, however, the girl was broken into little pieces and placed in a basket.
Anatol Liadov’s short symphonic poem Baba Yaga deals with the ogress, as does one section of Modest Moussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, also titled “Baba Yaga,” originally written for piano and transcribed for orchestra by Maurice Ravel in 1923.
SOURCE:
Encyclopedia of World Mythology and Legend, Third Edition – Written by Anthony S. Mercatante & James R. Dow – Copyright © 2009 by Anthony S. Mercatante