Baba Yaga

A witch of Slavic, and above all Russian, folk tales who lives in a hut on fowl's legs on a forest's edge. Her first known written mention dates from 1755.

David Barnett wrote for BBC Culture in 2022 that Baba Yaga features in many Slavic tales, above all Russian ones. Her first known written appearance is in Mikhail Lomonosov's Russian Grammar of 1755, in a passage on Slavic folk figures. Barnett says she had appeared in woodcuts since at least the 17th century, and later became a regular in collections of Russian fairy tales. Wikipedia notes that Lomonosov names her twice. The second time is in a list that pairs Slavic gods with Roman ones, such as Perun with Jupiter, but Baba Yaga sits in a separate section with no Roman match.

W. R. S. Ralston, in his 1873 collection of Russian tales, calls her a she-fiend whose name had prompted long and inconclusive debate among philologists. He describes a tall, bony hag with wild hair, sometimes lying across her wretched hut from corner to corner, with her long iron nose poking through the ceiling. The hut rests on fowl's legs where a forest begins, with its door turned toward the trees. In Afanas'ev's tale Vasilísa the Fair, translated by Leonard Magnus in 1915, the hut's fence is made of human bones with skeletons staring from the stakes. Feet serve as doorways, hands as bolts and a mouth full of sharp teeth as the lock, and the sight leaves Vasilísa frozen with fear.

The tale still travels. In 2016 The Guardian reviewed The Vanquishing of the Witch Baba Yaga, a film essay by the New York documentary maker Jessica Oreck. The film pairs reflections on Slavic forests and on the line between nature and culture, narrated in Polish, with animated passages from the Baba Yaga story.