Still that night, when the little rag doll urged her not to feel despair, she knew in her heart that something wonderful might happen to help her — and it did. For as she stood by the stream holding the sieve in her hand, the red horseman rode by, took it from her and swept over to the hut where he hurled it through the open window. When Vasilisa returned she found that the tank was filled with fresh water.
That evening Baba Yaga dipped her bony finger in the tank and tasted a drop of the fresh water. Tonight you can stay up and count the number of stars in the sky. If you tell me the right number in the morning, you can take your light and go free, but if your answer is wrong, even if you tell me one star too many or too few, then I shall have you for my breakfast.
That night Vasilisa gazed out of the window at the sky and tried to count the stars — 1,2,3, 5… But by the time she reached stars she was no longer sure whether or not she was counting the same ones again, and she had to start all over again. It did not help that the hut kept moving around so that the view kept on changing.
Eventually, Vasilisa began to sob quietly. I cannot guess the number of stars in the sky, and in the morning the witch shall surely eat me. Have courage and keep faith, and all will be well. But you had better not be wrong — for if you are, I shall eat you.
Baba Yaga picked up a plate and threw it across the room so that it smashed against the wall. Then she picked up a knife and Vasilisa was sure she meant to kill her. I suppose it was morning and day that helped you with the other tasks I set you? I will do you no harm. Wait here while I go on my business.
I have no tasks for you today. Tonight you shall return home with a light. That evening, after Baba Yaga flew home on her mortar, she took Vasilisa out into the courtyard and gave her one of the skulls with blazing eyes. Vasilisa took the skull and returned back down the path to her village.
She expected that her stepmother would have found a light by now, but in fact the house was not lit. Instead her relatives were sitting in complete darkness.
But she received no reply, for as soon as the light fell on her stepmother and sisters, they turned to dust. Vasilisa went to live with a kindly old lady in the village until her father returned from his business.
When he came back, he thought that his wife and stepdaughters must have run away. In this way, the seemingly monstrous Baba Yaga has led to the creation of a new world. This duality reflects Russian culture's overall perception of women, as figures of both maternal love and mercurial, seductive duplicity, and especially a fear of a woman who operates outside the bounds of a male-dominated society. The Baba Yaga is both a mother and a trickster because these are the modes in which many men see all women.
Arguably the most famous fairy tale featuring the Baba Yaga, and maybe even the most famous Russian fairy tale period, is "Vasilisa the Beautiful," which tells of a pretty young girl who—stop us if you've heard this one—lives with her wicked stepmother and two ugly stepsisters.
The stepmother runs Vasilisa ragged with increasingly difficult chores, which the girl is always able to accomplish through the agency of a magical doll given to her by her late mother.
When Vasilisa becomes old enough to marry, her stepmother decides to get rid of her so her beauty will stop distracting suitors from her own daughters. To this end, she sends Vasilisa on her hardest errand yet: to fetch fire from the Baba Yaga. The girl makes her way to the chicken leg hut, where the Baba Yaga immediately puts her to work to pay for the fire.
The witch sets before the girl a series of impossible tasks, which she is able to finish thanks to her magic doll. Despite being surrounded by eerie sights like disembodied pairs of hands and the Baba Yaga eating inhuman amounts of food, Vasilisa keeps her cool and is polite to her witchy benefactor.
In the end, the witch gives Vasilisa fire held within a skull, which, when Vasilisa brings it home, burns the stepmother and stepsisters to ashes. Vasilisa survives and marries the Tsar, of course. One of the most notable details from the story "Vasilisa the Beautiful" is not the strange and menacing happenings inside the Baba Yaga's hut, like the invisible servants or the constant looming threat of cannibalism, but rather what the title heroine spies through the window happening just outside the chicken leg house.
When the Baba Yaga tasks the girl with separating a pile of grains, Vasilisa's magic doll tells her to rest and let the doll take care of it. When Vasilisa wakes in the morning and sees the firelit dim inside the skull-topped fence posts, she spies a rider dressed all in white galloping upon a milk-white horse around the house. The rider then jumps a wall and vanishes. Soon she spies a rider in red on a blood-red horse who does the same. In the evening, when the Baba Yaga returns to check on Vasilisa's work, the girl sees a rider in black on a coal-black horse galloping around the hut before vanishing like the others.
After Vasilisa has done all of the witch's tasks to her liking, the girl works up the courage to ask the Baba Yaga who these riders were. The Baba Yaga reveals that the white, red, and black riders were the day, the sun, and the night, respectively, all of whom she refers to as her faithful servants. Wisely, Vasilisa asks no more questions of the witch. Some stories attribute unusual behavior to the Baba Yaga that is not ever mentioned again in other stories, but which nevertheless stick in your head just from pure strangeness.
One such story is "Baba Yaga and the Brave Youth," in which a, well, brave youth lives together with, obviously, a cat and a sparrow. The cat and sparrow repeatedly go into the woods to cut wood despite being the two without thumbs, leaving the brave youth behind with one warning: if the Baba Yaga comes to count the spoons, hide and don't say anything.
Three times the Baba Yaga comes to the house to count the spoons, and three times the boy can't hold his tongue when he sees the witch touching his spoon. The first two times the cat and sparrow chase the witch off, but the third time she snatches him off to her hut to eat him. Although she is mostly portrayed as a terrifying old witch, Baba Yaga can also play the role of helper and wise woman. In this guise, she sometimes gives advice and magical gifts to heroes and the pure of heart.
She is all-knowing, all-seeing and all-revealing to those who dare to ask. She is also said to be a guardian spirit of the fountain of the Waters of Life and Death. Baba Yaga is a favourite subject of Russian films and cartoons. Georgy Milliar, a male actor, portrayed Baba Yaga in numerous movies from the s to the s. Baba Yaga is usually shown as an ugly old woman and quite unclean.
Baba Yaga is often represented as little, ugly, with a huge and distorted nose and long teeth. This can be explained by the lady's place of residence.
Far from the civilized world, her hut doesn't have any modern facilities like hot running water or shower. And she has been enduring these unbearable conditions for an untold number of years, as nobody else knows the age of this lady. However, Baba Yaga knows something that women of all times and ages have been desperately trying to learn: the secret of turning from old into young in a blink of an eye. Baba Yaga knows a recipe of a special potion that helps her when needed to turn young.
Unfortunately she has been known to use this her skill not to arrange her single private life, but to misguide and deceit strangers. She is also rumoured to have only one leg, which is sometimes explained by her relation to a snake. In Russian tales, Baba Yaga is portrayed as a hag who flies through the air in a mortar, using the pestle as a rudder and sweeping away the tracks behind her with a broom made out of silver birch.
Baba Yaga usually uses the chimney to fly in and out on her mortar. It has long been rumored that she likes to eat children, however she would not strain at a grown up stranger in her forest. She is a very controversial character. Baba Yaga is not good, but is not entirely evil.
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