Vaselisa's War (and Baba Yaga)
A Tale of Woe, War and Witches
She might have lived in something like this. The real Baba Yaga’s house, however, swivelled and turned on chicken legs, walked about by itself ‘and sometimes twirled around and around like an ecstatic dancer. The bolts of the doors and shutters were made of human fingers and toes and the lock on the front door wasa snout with many pointed teeth.’ (version of Vaselisa recounted to Clarissa Pinkola Estés in Women who Run with the Wolves) You can listen to my recording of it here:
It’s story time. I first encountered Baba Yaga in Poland in the early nineties, but even then their faery tales were being conquered by Disney, so you couldn’t find a real raw Baba Yaga anywhere. In Slavic folklore, Baba Yaga, (Baba Jaga), is a supernatural being who appears as a deformed or ferocious-looking woman-crone. In fairy tales Baba Yaga flies around in a mortar, wields a pestle, and dwells deep in the forest in a hut usually described as standing on chicken legs. But she is nowhere to be found in our faery tales, except as a more sanitised old witch in a gingerbread house, in Hansel and Gretel. She gets her comeuppance, in the end, by being shoved into the oven, as punishment for doing exactly what Baba Yaga does: eating children.
She is also known to be a guardian of the fountains of the water of life. She has sisters, as does the character based on Baba Yaga in Hiyayo Miyazaki’s ‘Spirited Away’, in which Ubaba has a sister called Zeniba who is a kindly grandmother figure who helps Sen and No-face navigate Ubaba’s dictatorial House of Spirits.
At first Zeniba seems as unscrupulous as her sister, but Zeniba is basically more benign. She says herself that she and Yubaba are complete opposites even though they are identical twins, but their differences aren’t always so black and white. While Zeniba threatens to kill Haku for stealing her seal, she later forgives him. She criticizes greed and gluttony, which Yubaba is clearly guilty of. Zeniba is still no saint, but her wisdom is evident. By the end of the film, Sen addresses both Zeniba and Yubaba as “Granny,” which suggests not only that both twins are wise in their own way, but that they are merely two sides of the same coin.
Baba Yaga, in the original Russian folk tale, feeds on children and lives with two or three sisters (all known as Baba Yaga) in a forest hut that spins continually on birds’ legs. Her fence is topped with human skulls. Baba Yaga can ride through the air—in an iron kettle or in a mortar that she drives with a pestle—creating tempests as she goes. She often accompanies Death on his travels, devouring newly released souls.
In Kalyazin, near Moscow, when you are next on holiday in Russia, you can visit a ‘reconstruction’ of Baba Yaga’s house.
I imagine we all have our versions of the Baba Yaga crone, in Ireland, for example, as ‘the Cailleach’:
(Irish: [ˈkal̠ʲəx, kəˈl̠ʲax], Scottish Gaelic: [ˈkʰaʎəx]) the Cailleach is our divine hag and ancestor, associated with the creation of the landscape and with the weather, especially storms and winter. She ushers us into winter at the time the Irish call Samhain, when the veils between the world are thin, and we slip into the darkness of winter, which is a long haul in Ireland.
If you listen, you will receive her wisdom, but most do not in the clamour of fakery and superficiality that is our modern culture.
Well, there was a time until not so long ago and for a very, very long time, that I could not put pen to paper, nor fingers to a keyboard, without being haunted by World War Two. So when I sat down to write this version of the Baba Yaga tale, it came out like this… I hope you enjoy it.
Vaselisa’s War
My mother died of fright the night the first bomb dropped. Under a starry sky, a storm of dust fell through the broken window. But before her last breath, she handed me a doll with two button eyes and a ripped cheek, a thing she said belonged to my Granma, and her Granma, and to her Granma, all the way back.
My father had only one leg: he set out on his crutches to replace her. On the first day, he came back with a chicken, on the second, with a donkey from the paddocks and on the third, with Mrs. Ravisham the Widow and her three daughters, the youngest of whom could cook Goulash. I, on the other hand, could not cook an egg.
Sirens whined, clouds of dust and mortar made the city grow more and more lean. Mother’s gold and pearls were ferreted into the dark streets and taken away by fiendish goblins that make fortunes on peoples misfortunes. Mother’s wedding ring was sacrificed for three stale loaves of bread of which I was given the heels. Our brownstone still stood between clouds of dust and rubble. Refugees huddled in the basements hiding from the steely eyes of the Dictator, who had taken over our perishing city. Maggie and the eldest stepsister grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and said:
“Go to the forest. There is one who keeps a garden kitchen that would feed ten families. You go to her, and bring us back her pumpkins, and the eggs of her chickens, or we will throw you over to the Dictator.”
“That one? She is Baba Yaga. Everyone knows she devours children. Do not make me go!”
“Go then, to the Dictator’s Camp.” they smirked and threw each other wicked looks.
Father lay on the sofa in a delirium, his phantom leg itching wildly. All he had left of Mama was a secret, crumpled photo of their wedding which he kept in his vest. His new wife grew vicious with the rations: she sold herself to a man in a tank for the price of a chicken and roasted it one dark afternoon, while I was locked in the attic staring at the bomber planes in the inky sky, imagining feasts with my doll: venison, Soufflé, pea mint soup, poppyseed cakes and meringues and trifle.
When they asked me to leave and beg food from the Yaga, my heart froze with the fear. What would become of my father and his phantom leg? What of me, in the clutches of a evil crone?
I left, in the middle of the night. They watched me as I trailed down the lane after curfew, clambering over rubble and cracked pipes and broken glass. I walked for many miles until I reached the forest. Clutching my doll, I went in to the darkness of it, not knowing would I ever come out. Wolves howled over the hill, owls hooted and stared at me. Three deer led me to a little hut with a plume of smoke sailing through the dark old trees. I walked up the path, and a breeze tickled the air, and the jars hanging from the eves clinked and made a song. The door swung open, and Baba Yaga stood there with her hand on her hip, with a pipe in her mouth, her chin as long as it and her nose bent over to meet its point.
“Now” she said. “Get in. We have work to do, Vaselisa.”
The jars grew louder and louder and I wondered, what could that be, that song, because I hear my doll sing it too.
“Oh, Thank you.” I said.
“That is good. You are polite. Now, sit on my floor and sort the chaff from the wheat. Do it by sunrise.”
She whisked up her skirts and jumped into her cauldron and sailed up into the air, scooping it with her ladle, which was the oar for her vessel. Up jumped my doll, and swept through the floors, clearing the chaff from the wheat with a smooth, sure hand, and all the time the song of the clinking jars went on. At sunrise, she came sailing back through the skies.
“Now. That is good. You work fast. It is time to spin the cobwebs into curtains. Do this by sunset, so that I may close my windows to the night owls.”
Baba Yaga wheezed around her garden, pulling and polishing her pumpkins. Now the song of the clinking jars grew louder and louder as we worked, and my little doll and I spun the thick cobwebs into silken curtains for her little hut.
“That is good. “ She said. “And only three o’clock. Very good. Now, you must dust the moon and bring its silver light to my berries, for they are weak and hard this year. It will be the work of the night, and when the moon is pale against the blue morning sky, you will be done. If not, you will never leave my hut again.”
I did not know how to fly in a cauldron, nor did my doll. We sang together to the jars and as the song grew louder, we rose up and flew over the dark forest and up to the moon, where we swept the whole night, and cleaned all of its crevices, and carried ladles of its silver light back over the forest. As the first glimpse of dawn came and I saw a knight coming over the hill on a white horse and in silver armour.
He put us on his back and we rode back to the hut and offered our ladles of silver moonlight to the Yaga, who grew younger as the light poured over the bushes and gardens. She was so beautiful and radiant and the jars became the most exquisite symphony of music we had ever heard.
“It is good.” said the Yaga, walking towards the Knight. The berries in the bushes shone. Every leaf on the forest trees gleamed.
“Listen,” she said, “to the sound of your Grandmothers. We are all refugees.”
The knight nodded. The song grew stronger and stronger. 13 birds brought their mosses and their grasses and wove a crown on my head, as the moon became a silver hook in the morning skies. I never went back to the war, but we brought my father to the dell and made him a leg of oak and he worked in the gardens with us, to the sound of the Grandmothers’ song. Far, far behind us lay the city of dust and rubble.
© Siofra O’Donovan, 2017
Wonderful tale, just enchanting !!
Love this Siofra! The mixing of the rations of war and the desperation of families combined with the traditional Baba Yaga story really is original and works well. I especially like the happier ending of the father being sent for, an oak leg present and the gleaming moonlight cleansing everything, even the Baba Yaga!