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Baba Yaga the Kind

Like I said in this post, in Russian fairy tales Baba Yaga can range from helpful to occasionally murderous to actual cannibal, but @the-importance-of-being-wilde wanted to know about stories where she is friendly. So here are the ones I know:

The Three Kingdoms

The hero Ivashko Lie-on-the-Stove is sent to Baba Yaga for help after a quest gets him stranded far away from home. He calls her “little grandmother” and she lends him her giant eagle to fly back to Russia. However, this is Baba Yaga’s eagle, so she instructs him to take enough meat with him to feed it every time it got hungry, or it might start snacking on Ivashko himself… (Don’t worry, he only loses a bit of his shoulder before he gets home and even that gets magically healed.)

The Maiden Tsar

I know this is about Baba Yaga, but the Maiden Tsar sails around with a fleet of ships accompanied by her thirty foster sisters just to court an extremely beautiful merchant’s son named Ivan. It’s awesome. Of course the lovers get divided and the Maiden Tsar lets Ivan know that he can find her in the thrice tenth kingdom. Ivan cannot find it, but he does find Baba Yaga’s hut and asks her for help. She says she does not know, but perhaps her younger sister does. Her sister is described as “another Baba Yaga”, but she does not know either. She tells him to go to their youngest sister and warns him that she might get angry and want to eat him, but that if he quickly begs her for three horns and asks her permission to blow upon them everything will be alright. Sure enough, this happens and when he does blow the horns a large firebird comes to fly him to the trice tenth kingdom. (Where Ivan makes amends to the Maiden Tsar and manages to win her love again.)

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I really love the idea of Baba Yaga: an old witch who lives in a house with chicken legs. Are there any Baba Yaga stories you know of where Baba Yaga isn't evil? If not, what are your ideas on a friendly Baba Yaga

Oh I agree, Baba Yaga is a great character! She features in broader Slavic folklore, but I know her mostly from Russian fairy tales. There she mainly shows up in three forms: helpful Baba Yaga, cannibal Baba Yaga and… let’s call her maybe-murderous Baba Yaga:

The helpful type gives heroes good advice and useful gifts. (E.g. The Three Kingdoms, The Maiden Tsar, King Bear, The Sea King and Vasila the Wise, Go I Know Not Wither, Bring Back I Know Not What, Ilya Muromets and the Dragon.)

The cannibal type wants to trap people to cook in her stove and eat. (E.g. “Baba Yaga”, Baba Yaga and the Brave Youth, The Prince Danila Govorila.)

The maybe-murderous type is only helpful when the hero performs the right kind of behaviour. (E.g. “Baba Yaga”, Maria Morevna, Vasilisa the Beautiful, and Ilya Muromets and the Dragon, again.)

In some stories there is more than one Baba Yaga, in which case they are sisters.

She is sometimes called “Baba Yaga the Bone-Legged”, in whatever form she takes. The dangerous Baba Yaga’s often fly around in a mortar, wielding the pestle as a magic rudder. The cannibal and maybe-murderous types often have a fence around their house made from human bones or decorated with skulls.

The iconic little hut on chicken feet is usually the first thing a hero ever sees of Baba Yaga and multiple stories state you must greet the house thus: “Little hut, little hut, turn your back to the forest and your front to me.” That way you can go in.

I will make a separate post to tell you some more about specific stories where Baba Yaga is friendly!

If you play computer games, I recommend you to try the game “Black Book” by Russian game studio “Morteshka”. The game was released a couple of days ago. It’s based on real Russian folklore of Perm region (and not just on tales about poor old Baba Yaga who for some reason always is evil in western interpretations :).

The game is about a Russian peasant girl who becomes a witch for the sake of saving her lover. In the game you will meet various Slavic spirits, talk with them, fight them and/or take them into service. The genre is a RPG/visual novel/card game (fights in the form of a card game).

Flaws:

1. The developers did not have a big budget. So that is why graphics don’t exist (models are funny). Still far landscapes are pleasant and atmospheric.

2. Some of the English-speaking gamers in Steam are talking that it’s difficult to understand and follow all the lore in the game. But still they like it so just be ready for tons of text about folklore, believes, terminology, religion stuff and etc.

Merits:

1. There are English subs and dubs (but I recommend Russian voices).

2. The game is based on the Russian folklore and a bit of Finno-Ugric (since Perm Region is also a home for Finno-Ugric people). There is a lot of information. If you interested in Russian folklore you MUST play it :)

3. It’s interesting and atmospheric. And that’s not just my opinion :)

4. You can meet demons who possess samovars, speaking demon-cats, depressed demons who is sad because their masters forgot them, demons who want to bring progress to common people, demons who torture sinners… and  you can play with all of them in the card game (well most of them). You can help common people or curse them. You can befriend a soldier with pyrophobia, a cat-domovoi, a speaking head… Why yall still don’t play it?

There is a free demo version, try it if you are not sure: Black Book: Prologue

More screenshots:

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Doctor Who × Russian Folk

Krásna Dе́vitsa — The girl is red — A popular Russian expression means a beautiful, elegant girl. Red is a synonym for the word beautiful here.

Dо́bryi Mо́lodets — Clever young man — A young man, a daredevil, a brave and dexterous man of strong body in a song or a fairy tale.