Who Is Baba Yaga, the Mysterious Witch of Slavic Folklore?

A common figure in Slavic folklore is an old woman named Baba Yaga who lives in the woods. Baba Yaga isn’t just an ordinary witch: She lives in a hut on chicken legs that can turn around to face anyone who approaches it. She also travels magically through the woods by sitting in a large mortar while holding a pestle and broom.

In most of the stories, she is a danger to those who wander into the woods, threatening to eat children and young adults who stumble across her hut. Yet Baba Yaga can also be a catalyst for something good happening to the story’s hero. In one of the most famous Baba Yaga stories, “Vasilisa the Fair” (also known as “Vasilisa the Beautiful”), Baba Yaga gives Vasilisa a magical skull that kills her oppressive stepmother and stepsisters, freeing Vasilisa from their control.

Of course, like many of Baba Yaga’s favors, this gift doesn’t come easily. Baba Yaga only gives Vasilisa the skull after assigning her a series of seemingly impossible tasks. If Vasilisa can’t complete the tasks, Baba Yaga says she will eat her. To Baba Yaga’s surprise, Vasilisa is able to complete the tasks with the help of a magic doll that her mother gave her before she died. Thus, even when Baba Yaga helps the hero, she remains an ambiguous—and mysterious—figure.

“We have never been able to find out exactly when Baba Yaga made her appearance and why,” says Jack Zipes, professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota, where he taught in the Department of German, Nordic, Slavic and Dutch.

One of the earliest written mentions of Baba Yaga appeared in a Russian grammar book published in 1755. By then, the character was likely already part of an oral folklore tradition in what are now Belarus, Ukraine and Russia. In the mid-19th century, Russian folklorist Alexander Afanasyev published a collection of folktales, similar to how the Brothers Grimm had collected and published German fairy tales. Afanasyev’s collection included several stories featuring Baba Yaga, while other folklorists, including Ivan Khudiakov, recorded even more stories about her.

But who was Baba Yaga supposed to be? The first part of her name, “Baba,” means “grandmother” or “old woman,” says Irina McLaughlin, who has taught Slavic folklore at Utah State University. This word is still used today—though McLaughlin, who was born in eastern Ukraine, notes that it is not considered a polite term.

“As for the word ‘Yaga,’ the scholars have very different opinions,” she says. “No one knows for sure what ‘Yaga’ means.”

Sibelan Forrester, a professor of modern and classical languages at Swarthmore College who has written about Baba Yaga, agrees. “Whatever it means,” she says, “we’ve lost the meaning.”

In the folktales published in the 19th century, Baba Yaga is frequently a trickster who tests the hero in some way. Often, this hero is a young person “moving from childhood into adulthood,” Forrester says.

“There wasn’t really a concept of adolescence, but the adolescence would often be what happened in the folktale,” she says. “The character goes off on an adventure, things happen, and then at the end, they find their spouse or rescue their spouse, and then there’s a wedding or else a celebration. And the wedding is that step into adulthood.”

After Vasilisa gets rid of her stepmother and stepsisters with the help of Baba Yaga’s gift, she meets and marries a tsar. In “By Command of the Prince Daniel,” two maidens (one of whom is Baba Yaga’s daughter) both find husbands after leading the witch to her death. And in “Marya Moryevna,” a young man rescues his wife after surviving Baba Yaga’s tests.

One thing to note about Baba Yaga’s tests is that she doesn’t play fair. In “Marya Moryevna,” she promises to give the hero, Ivan, a horse if he guards her mares for three days. If he fails, Baba Yaga says she’ll cut off his head and stick it on a pole outside of her house. Unbeknownst to Ivan, Baba Yaga instructs her mares to flee from him each day to prevent him from succeeding. However, wild animals undermine her plan by driving the mares back to her hut each day.

One of the key ways to survive Baba Yaga’s tricks is by tricking her in return. In “Chufil-Filyushka,” the Baba Yaga character (called “Yaga-Bura” in this story) kidnaps a boy and asks her daughter to cook him while she is away so she can eat him when she gets home. When Baba Yaga returns, she eats the meal prepared for her—only to realize afterward that the boy is alive and has tricked her into eating her own daughter.

Gruesome? Yes. But in that respect, Baba Yaga stories were on par with other fairy tales of the era.