Baba Yaga

The Slavic crone, known for living in a house built on chicken legs and feasting on children, is a complex character. In fairy tales, women of a certain age usually take one of two roles: the wicked witch or the evil stepmother, and sometimes both. Baba Yaga is all that and a house on chicken legs.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:31):
Hey, Hey, welcome back to Autumn Zodities. I am Autumn
and it is officially Halloween's season, so I am bringing
you one of the og witches responsible for many a
tall tale. She's a personal hero of mine, and she
is slightly lesser known here in the States than other
fairy tale witches. I'm talking about Baba Yaga, and it's

(00:56):
not John Wick. If you are familiar with the films,
Baba Yaga is a character in fairy tales from the
East Slavic countries Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus. She occasionally appears
in other forms of folklore as well, like charms to
get children to stop crying and go to sleep, riddles,
children's rhymes, and the occasional incantation and or spell. She

(01:22):
has inspired writers, artists, and composers alike, as well as
Keanu Reeves. You know, if you haven't seen the John
Wick movies, you're missing out. They're just good, like clean fun.
I say clean. It's like NonStop action and violence, but
it's really fun. And his nickname is Baba Yaga, which
doesn't make a ton of sense to me, for reasons
that you're gonna find out soon. So Baba Yaga lives

(01:45):
in a hut that stands and like kind of moves
around on chicken legs. That's the most common thing that
her house is on. Occasionally it's on rams horns. Sometimes
it's a spindle. When the protagonist of the fairy tale
arrives at the hut, they tell the hut to turn
around and face them. Inside her hut, Baba Yaga takes

(02:09):
up much of the space, and her large nose protrudes
into the ceiling. In Russian, it translates to it has
grown into the ceiling. And I'm not going to say
the Russian phrase. There's no way I'm gonna say it correctly.
I'm sure I will absolutely butcher it. She rakes coals
with her nose and has big old knockers that hang

(02:30):
over a rod. I don't know why that details important,
but it's in the fairy tale. And wouldn't we all
like to just put our boobs over a rod? Sometimes,
you know, we get tired when encountered elsewhere, such as
when she chases after someone. Baba Yaga rides in a mortar,
so you know, like the bowl that you crush herbs

(02:52):
in various other things, and she pushes herself along with
a pestle, so she kind of uses that as something
of an or and pushes herself where she's going in
her giant mortar with this pestle, and she wipes away
any trail of her mortar with a broom so as to,
you know, make it look like no one's been there.

(03:14):
And if somebody says, hey, I saw this lady chasing
me in a giant mortar, pushing herself with a friggin pestle,
one people will think they're crazy, and two there will
be absolutely no evidence. In Russian tales, this is sometimes
stated in a rhyming phrase. And again, I can't say
it because I don't speak Russian, and Bobby Yaga sometimes

(03:35):
speaks in a low voice. She has somewhat of a
baritone or a bass voice, and it's said to be
pretty gruff. She's often referred to as Bobbi yaga bony leg,
which is a rhyming epithet. And again I can't. I'll
try Bobbi Yaga costia naya noga. I fuck that up royally,

(03:56):
I apologize. The leg can also be made of clay, iron,
or other material, so not just bone. She's most often
called Baba Yaga, Yaga, baba, or simply Yaga, but there
are many variations on the name Yaga, including Yagaya, Yaga, Boba,
Yego Boba, Yegabika, Yegegizza, ye gi Ishnaya, Yoga, Yazia, and Gigybika.

(04:23):
Oh there's more, yagabika and ebika. Yeah, I didn't say
that right. But the related witch in Slovak and Czech
folklore is named Jezibaba, which I assume is like something
like Jezebel, you know, that old that old chestnut. Her children,
she does have children sometimes have a matrionic name, meaning

(04:47):
you know, they take part of their mother's name, such
as yagishna for daughters, or a gish or yagish for
a son meaning daughter or son of Yaga. There are
a few other instances of you know, matrionic names and
Islavic folk tales, such as and this is just a
fun fact, Ivan the maid's son, Ivan the cow's son,

(05:12):
or Ivan the cat's son. And I think I need
to look a little more into the cat's son and
what that's all about. If that's a human, if that's
a witch, I'm not sure, but it's interesting and it seems.
In this patriarchal culture, and of course same kind of
culture in the region that this myth originates from, I

(05:35):
would say that naming a child after a mother is
usually something that only occurs in a fantasy situation like
a fairy tale, certainly not in this culture. A curious
episode often takes place when the fairy tale protagonist derives
at the hut on chicken legs. Like I said, the
protagonist has the gall the gumption to tell the hut

(05:59):
to turn around. Bobby Yaga notices the Russian scent of
her visitor or sometimes says that the Russian bone has come.
I don't know what that means. I guess she means
she's gonna eat them, and then states or implies that
she will indeed eat the visitor. The protagonist reproaches her
and demands hospitality, and she immediately complies, which is very

(06:23):
surprising to me, because I'd be like, get fucked, don't
talk to my house on chicken legs like that, you
respect it? You said up a bitch. In all Slavic languages,
the basic meaning of baba is grandmother or old woman,
so you're like, oh, kindly, sweet lady, linguists have provided
many suggestions about the origin or meaning of the word yaga.

(06:45):
There are Russian dialect words yagat, which means yell, make
a noise, rage, cursed, squabble, and yeegot, which means burn, fiercely,
be angry and rage. In Croatian and Serbian, jes means horror,
chill shudder. In Slovene it means anger. A Polish word

(07:07):
for a witch is jedza, and a female forest spirit
in Czech is called jazinka. I like that beautiful name
for a child. Bulgarian dialect terms for sickness, illness or
its personification are iza inza, indza, and yanza. Four linguists
have pointed out similarities between yoga and Lithuanian words meaning

(07:31):
to do something slowly or lazily and to torture, Anglo saxon, doubt, worry, pain,
and of course Old Norse, where it means pain and worry.
There are also suggestions that the name is not Slavic
or Indo European in origin, but rather borrowed from Mongolian,
Turkic or indigenous Siberian languages, and that's because there are

(07:56):
kinship terms meaning mother eldest sister or aunt. The search
for Bobby Yaga's origin and history has led many people
to speculate. Writers in the eighteenth century suggested that she
was a Slavic pagan goddess of the underworld before becoming
a character in Five fairy Tales. The ethnographer and folk

(08:19):
tale publisher editor Alexander Afansev interpreted Bobby Yaga as a
personification of the storm Cloud. And I don't know how
he made that connection, but I'm not an ethnographer. So.
Folklorist and linguist Vladimir Prop believed that the fairy tales
were derived from initiation rituals, in which young people undergo

(08:43):
a symbolic death and rebirth. And I feel like they
might be reading into these little too heavily. Fairy Tale
protagonists tried a similar path to and from the other world,
where they undergo tests, must accomplish difficult tasks, retrieve object,
fight ogres and dragons, et cetera, et cetera. So in

(09:04):
this context, Prop believes that Bobba Yaga is more of
a guardian of the gateway to the land of the dead. Yeah, sure,
So why don't you speak to her? Chicken legged hut
with respect, Maybe think about that initiation might have been
conceived as being swallowed by an animal, and the hut
where initiation takes place might have had the form of

(09:28):
an animal, and in the fairy tale, the hut of
Bobby Yaga has only retained a partially animal form, you know,
the chicken legs. The Russian scent that Bobba Yaga notices
is the smell of the living, which is offensive to
the dead. Bobba Yaga is associated with the dead and

(09:48):
appears to have power over animals, most notably and hopefully
her chicken legged house. Prop concludes that she was a
female totemic ancestor, and with the rise of patriarchy and
agricultural society, an older divinity was reinterpreted as an evil spirit.
Happens every single time, and Baba Yaga was demoted to

(10:13):
being a witch in folk narratives, So she potentially went
from being some sort of deity, some sort of divine
ancient being to an evil spirit because it doesn't suit,
you know, the more modern times. Prop's work has influenced
many other scholars who look to ancient ritual that is,

(10:34):
initiation rituals and burial rituals to explain Bobby Yaga. Others
have suggested a snake or bird origin, e g. That
Baba Yaga was originally a snake and passed through a
stage of being one legged before becoming the character she
is now. That's that one feels like a stretch to me.

(10:55):
She also has been interpreted as a great mother goddess
or earth goddess, and I'm like, yeah, that thatund's plausible.
Other scholars have suggested that the hut on chicken legs
is an echo or a remembrance of the nomadic life
of the past or of ancient Slavic burial practices. Du Kova,

(11:16):
a scholar of Bulgarian language in folklore, suggests that there
was a proto Slavic term for a quote female demon
of illness or simply just illness, and that in the
West and East Slavic countries this being left the world
of living folk belief and became a character in folk tales,
while in the South Slavic region the term was still

(11:40):
used in curses, which reflects the dangerous nature of illness, which,
of course before science and medicine and all of those
discoveries came along or thought of as a demon or
an evil spirit from the point of view of the
fairy tale protagonist. Bobby Yaga is an ambiguity character. The

(12:01):
protagonist may encounter and interact with three Baba Yaga sisters.
In some tales, one sister helps the protagonist, while another
sister harms or tries to harm him or her. In
different versions of the same story, Babba Yaga is helpful
in one version but tries to harm the protagonist in another.

(12:22):
Entails with a male protagonist, Baba Yaga is always a villain,
Wouldn't you know it? In the most popular tale in
this category, Babbiyaga kidnaps a boy and tries to cook
him in her oven. You can also see Hansel and
Gretel reflected in this She and her daughters are tricked
and cooked instead. Sometimes she chases after the boy, but

(12:46):
he always manages to escape. Entails with a female protagonist.
Baba Yaga is ambiguous. She's sometimes a wicked stepmother, sometimes
a malevolent kidnapper, sometimes just like an ambiguous tester. Like
It's solved my riddles, Three kind of Galp. The most
popular tale in this category, referred to by folkloris as

(13:08):
the Tale of the kind and the unkind girls opposes
a heroine and her stepsister. The wicked stepmother, who sometimes
is played by Bob Yaga, sends the heroin away or
has her father abandoned her in the forest. The protagonist
is tested by a supernatural figure, which is sometimes Baba

(13:30):
Yaga herself. Bob Yaga assigns her very difficult tasks, but
the heroine is kind to animals, and those animals help
her accomplish the tasks. The heroine is rewarded and returns home.
The stepmother always wants, you know, her daughter to receive
the same rewards and sends her out as well. But

(13:51):
the stepmother's daughter is rude to the animals, does not
accomplish the tasks, and is punished and or killed. Entails
with adult or young adult protagonists. Bobby Yaga again is ambiguous.
She's neither good nor bad. She's both most of the time,
sometimes a helper, but more often a villain. As a

(14:12):
helper or donor, she gives the hero advice, maybe a
horse or some magical objects to obtain the apples of youth.
Sometimes helps him deal with the Tsar Maiden, a very
powerful female figure who was initially threatening but ultimately ends
up marrying the hero. They help the hero find his

(14:32):
way to three underground kingdoms of Copper, silver, and gold,
and also to find his way home. How sweet. She
guides three brothers who search for their kidnapped sister. When
she plays a positive role, she helps the protagonist female
or male on a quest to recover an extraordinary or
supernatural spouse. In some cases, it's finished the bright Falcon,

(14:55):
the frog Princess, or the tsar Maiden. As a villain
in these tales, she tries to keep the two apart,
or keeps the spouse under enchantment or asleep. So we
can see a lot of fairy tales blending here, sleeping beauty,
snow white, so on and so fourth. So she tries

(15:18):
to keep them asleep and pursues the couple as they flee.
As a villain, Bobby Yaga's image and activities are varied
and very colorful. She turns people into stone. She sometimes
has one eye or has a son with seven throats.
I don't know what the hell that is about or
why that's necessary, but it's in there. She or her

(15:39):
daughters are usurpers who try to take the heroine's rightful
place as a bride, wife or mother, So we're seeing
Cinderella in here. Also, Bobby Yaga forges a letter making
a false report that the heroine has given birth to
monstrous children who are half human half animal. She is
a wicked midwife who steals the heroine's children and replace

(16:00):
them with animals. She sucks milk or drat or blood
excuse me, from a young woman's breasts. Bobby Yaga is
the mother of three dragons, slain by the hero. And
the reason I'm not telling you a story like outright
is because there isn't just one like. There's not just
one folk tale about Baba Yaga. I am just telling
you the many faces of the Baba. So she's, you know,

(16:24):
sometimes a mother of three dragons and is slain by
the hero. Sometimes she pursues the hero and the form
of a giant pig with its mouth gaping open from
heaven to earth. Bobby Yaga is a warrior at the
head of an army. Sometimes also and the hero pursues
her underground, where smiths and seamstresses produce soldiers for her.

(16:47):
The hero engages in hand to hand combat with her.
Her daughter tells him to switch the places of vessels
that hold strong and weak water and buy wheat strong
and weak water. They mean beer or wine, not actual water.
In a break from fighting, Bobbiyaga drinks the weak water
or the beer, and the hero can defeat her because

(17:08):
I guess she's bloated from the beer. The hero combats
bobby Yaga and forces her to restore an old man's
eyes or sight with healing water, or forces her to
revive men that she has turned to stone. And we've
even got a little Medusa in there. Bobby Yaga is
a very unwilling or hostile donor in a group of

(17:29):
tails in which the hero's wife has been kidnapped by
the ogre Koshki. He first tries and fails to rescue her,
but finds out that Bobby Yaga has a horse that's
faster than Koshki's. There are steaks with human heads on
them around her hut or home, with just one empty,

(17:50):
so we got a little Draculia Drakulia in there as well.
She says that he may have any horse he wants,
but he must guard her herd of mares for three
days and not let them run away. The mayors, in
fact are Bobby Yoga's daughter. But guess what, they run away,
but the heroes animal helpers are able to rescue them

(18:13):
and drive them back. Two. So now let's get into
two more Bobby Yaga tales. The first entitled Bobby Yaga,
recorded in the Rakitsa district breast region in western Belarus,
probably in the early nineteen fifties. Yeah, that's the first,

(18:33):
and then the second is the devil Witch carries the
hero home in a sack, and I feel like they
gave the whole thing away there. And that one there
was an old man and a woman. They had a son.
His name is Hirshka. Once Hirshka went into the garden,
he climbed up an apple tree and started picking apples.

(18:55):
And we can kind of see some biblical biblical aspects
in there as well. Bobby Aga rode along the road
in her mortar. Of course, you know, she drove the
mortar with a pestle and swept away her tracks with
a broom. She saw Hirshka stopped and said to him, Here'shka,
why are you picking up sour apples? Here? Come have
a sweet red apple. And as we all know, you

(19:18):
don't take apples from people. Again, this is in the Bible,
this is in fairy tales. This is they all kind
of overlapped to me anyway, what's the poison apple? One?
Is that snow white? I think so. So Here'sha stretched
out his hand to take an apple, and Bobbyaga grabbed
him and carried him off to her hut. The old

(19:40):
man and woman came out of their hut and called
for Hirshka, but he was gone, and they wept. Bobbyaga
had a daughter, Donka Holyanka. Yeah, that's the name, Donka Holyanka.
Bobby Yaga told her to heat up the oven and
cook Hirshka. Donka Holyanka heat it up the oven, took
the baker's peel and said to Hirshka, lie down on

(20:03):
the peel. No matter how he lied down, it was
always wrong. Then he told Donka Holyanka to show him
how to lie down properly. You see where this is going.
And when she laid down on the peel, which I
would assume is some sort of a baking sheet, Heresha
shoved her into the oven. When Donka was cooked, he
took her out, put her on the table, and took

(20:25):
the iron pestle and climbed up on the oven. Bobby
Yaga came and ate. When she had eaten her fill,
she threw the bones on the ground and jumped up
and down on them, jumping. She said, I'm jumping, jumping,
jumping on Hirshka's bones. And Hereshka said to her from
the oven, jump, jump, jump on your daughter's bones. That's

(20:48):
fucked up, holy crap. So bobby Aga looked up at
the oven, saw Hirshka and ran at him. Hereshka struck
her with the iron pestle and killed her and went
outside and climbed up a tall tree. Geese flew by,
and he asked them, geese, my doves, throw me each
a feather and I'll fly with you to my father's place.

(21:10):
The geese threw him feathers, and he covered himself with
them and flew out of the hut and back to
his own home. The old man and woman were very happy.
They summoned guests and had a celebration. They drank and
they made mary for a long time. That's a really
messed up story. The Stepdaughter, which was recorded in Kerensk

(21:31):
in Siberia in nineteen seventy five by one L. V
Bolova goes a little something like this, and also the
kind and the unkind girls, which I mentioned to you earlier.
An old man lived with an old woman. Well, they
had a daughter and no other children. Suddenly the old

(21:52):
woman fell ill and died. What then they went on
with their life, and the child was still small. He
found himself another old woman, and she had a daughter
as well, and that daughter became a stepdaughter. The older
woman loved her own daughter very much, but plagued the
poor girl in all sorts of ways. She plagued her

(22:13):
and once said to the old man, old man, that's
what they go by, gus. Old man, here's a task
for you. Get your daughter, put her on a horse,
take her to the forest so no one sees her.
Otherwise I won't live with you. Cool reasonable. There was
nothing the old man could do. He didn't want to
live alone, so he went. He harnessed the horse, and

(22:35):
he took his daughter to the forest. He drove her
and cried, and the girl didn't know what was going on.
She was something like fifteen years old. He brought her
and put her down in the taiga or a ravine.
She got up and followed her eyes literally went where
her eyes looked, which is the Russian equivalent of following

(22:58):
one's nose. The girl walked and walked and saw a
hut on chicken legs. She said to the hut, hut, hut,
turn your front to me. You're back to the forest.
And again, if I was the chicken legs, I'd be like,
piss off, little girl. I will squash you with my
chicken feets. The hut did turn, though, and the girl
went in. The girl saw Bobby Yaga lying there, her

(23:20):
feet on the ceiling, and again, her breasts on a rod.
I don't know what kind of rod. They mean, like
a curtain rod, a shower rod. We don't know. Her
boobs are a flopped over and she said, hello, girl,
how did you get here? She said, grandmother she sent
me here. Well, all right, and the girl flied, I
don't have a mother. Well, dear, I'll give you two

(23:43):
tasks now. One task is to heat up the bath
from me, and the second task is to spin a
bag of wool in one night. She gave her a
sieve to carry water in. She piled up the girl
piled up wood. She heated the bath and brought water
in in the seve. The girl set and she cried
and cried. She dipped the seve and it held no water.

(24:08):
She sat there and a swallow flew by, and the
swallow asked, why are you crying? Girl, My dear bird,
why do you ask? Help me? Rubed clay on the sieve,
and I'll bring water. So I guess this water carrying
bucket or bag has some sort of a hole. She's
gonna patch it up with clay. The swallow rubbed clay

(24:30):
on the sea very quickly. She dried it and brought
enough water for the bath. Before Bobby Aga went off
to sleep, she dragged over a bag of wool for
the girl. Here. You have to spin this overnight, otherwise
i'll eat you no pressure. So the girl sat there

(24:50):
with a spindle and she spun and spun and spun,
and she hadn't even spun half the sack yet, and
the night would soon be over. But she was hungry.
She wanted something to eat, so she decided to make
some porridge. She cooked the porridge and was going to eat.
She looked and saw a mouse that ran up to
her and said, girl, girl, give me some porridge on

(25:12):
a spoon. I'll help you with the spinning. So again
we've got some Cinderella business going on. The animals are
talking to her, they're helping her. She put some porridge
on the spoon for the mouse, and again ten mice
came running, and she fed them all porridge. And they sat.
They all sat together, and they spun, and they spun
and they spun. They spun all the wool and they
wound it into balls. By morning, and the girl lay

(25:36):
down and slept. She slept, and the wool was all spun,
and Bobby Yaga was happy, and she rewarded her. She
dressed her in beautiful clothes and harnessed a horse to
a beautiful sleigh and took her home. The old woman
was making pancakes, preparing a funeral feast for her. That's cool,
the dog for her, I mean, the heroin in this story,

(25:59):
the girl that this woman made her husband, you know,
abandon in a forest. The dog was sitting there and said, bow, wow, wow,
they're bringing the old man's daughter in gold and silver.
They're bringing the old man's daughter in gold and silver.
So what did the old woman do? Well? She decided
to beat the dog and kept on making pancakes and

(26:21):
preparing for the funeral feast anyway, And suddenly the old
man's daughter arrived, looking splendid, well dressed and beautiful, and
how many coins she brought. She looked all over, Oh lord,
what a daughter has returned, And I'd be like, nah, famn,
this daughter has not returned for good reasons. Then a week,

(26:43):
perhaps two weeks went by, and she told the old man,
take my daughter where you took yours. So she's like, oh,
you know, you took your daughter out in the woods
and abandoned her. And she came back with all this
money and fine clothes and a carriage. So you go
ahead and you take mine as well, and you know,
same thing's gonna happen, right Well, he got her together,
loaded her things, and took her off to the forest,

(27:05):
and the same thing happened again. He took her to
the same ravine, and he dropped her off. She walked
and walked down the same path and came upon the
same old woman. Bobby Yaga gave her the same task
to fetch water in a sieve. She didn't heed the
bath for her, she didn't spin the wool, and she

(27:25):
beat all the mice. How do you beat a mouse.
I don't even know. I would never do that. And
Bobby Yaga ate the girl. She just said her. She
gathered up the bare bones into the sleigh and took
them away. The old woman was preparing, you know, for
her daughter to come back. And the dog said, bow wow, wow,
they're bringing the bare bones of the old woman's daughter.

(27:48):
And that was exactly what the dog said. And again
the woman beat the dog and she cursed at it
because she didn't understand. The dog repeated, bow wow, they're
bringing bare bones. And the eight opened and Bobby Yaga
threw out the sack of bones, and the old woman fainted,
and then Bobby Yaga was gone. And that's the end

(28:12):
of the tail and a cucumber for Marfushka And the
last phrase rhymes in Russian apparently, and it serves as
a kind of signal to end the tail and return
the listeners to the present and the real world. And
I really really like that. And in my favorite tale

(28:32):
with Bobby Yaga, it's it's it's pretty much the story
of Cinderella, except like Bobby Yaga is the fairy godmother,
an evil stepmother, you know, ditches this girl out in
the woods. She was married to the girl's father. She's
the obviously, this is the the Cinderella character is the stepdaughter.

(28:53):
She gets sent out into the woods and comes across
Bobby Yaga's hut on chicken legs. Bobby Yaga gives her
some tasks, and this girl has with her though a doll,
and it's a magical doll, and it manages always to
get whatever tasks, you know, her stepmother, whatever crazy tasks
she throws the girl's way. This doll helps her complete

(29:16):
these crazy tasks, and the stepmother gets pissed. She's like,
I don't know how you're doing all this. So she
sends her out to find Bobby Yaga and she makes
it to Bobby Yaga's hut on chicken legs. Bobby Yoga
gives her some crazy task. I think it's picking up
like every single stick in the surrounding area or something
like that, in a big area in the dense woods.

(29:37):
And you know, Bobby Agga goes away. She comes back,
it's done. The doll has helped the girl complete it.
She gives her several more tasks. The doll helps her
complete them all and in the end, the step mother
and the children and her stepdaughters come back because she
meets with good fortune the girl they sent out the
Cinderella character, and they do not meet a pleasant end.

(30:02):
So all of that to say, moral of the story like,
just be cool, don't abuse animals, respect nature. I feel
like that's what the message of the Bobby Yoga tales is,
respect wise, women in the woods, be kind to animals,
don't be greedy, listen to your elders, those kinds of things.

(30:24):
I do believe that that's what, you know, the whole
moral of the story is. That's it. That's the tale
of Bobby y Aga and the many, many different variations
of her character. What she may look like, what her
house may look like. The moral is pretty much always
the same though, as in many different folk stories. You know,

(30:49):
you go in the woods, be careful, something out there
might hurt you. If you come across an old lady,
she could probably be a witch. And again that's I'm
not going to get off on that topic because I've
said about ten thousand times that women mind in their
business in the woods, doing things on their own, were
often villainized because of course men didn't like it in

(31:11):
those times and still probably wouldn't not all men don't
start everybody. But if it doesn't apply to you, move on. Okay,
you know you know how I feel about all that.
Either way, that's the moral of the story. Like if
you see an old woman out there, she's probably a witch.
Avoid her. If you see a house on chicken legs,

(31:34):
apparently you're supposed to demand that it pay you respect
and look you in the eyes when you're talking. Do it.
And also that Bobby Yaka has a world class set
of knockers and a big old mortar and pestle, and
she will not hesitate to use it. But again you
can see in every version of the story you can

(31:56):
see a reflection of what ends up. In German folklore,
which is where most Disney movies come from. Is German
fairy tales. I actually took a class in college on
German fairy tales, not on Russian. This one's good. The
German fairy tales are pretty like the Cinderella tale. Hansel
and Gretel, those are very similar. Not sure which came first.

(32:20):
I think Bobby Yoga perhaps came first. Let me see,
I know I put in there the years of some
of these. Well, those are the translations. Oh, yeah, some
of them come from like three twenty seven. Whoa the
year three hundred and twenty seven? Wow? For real? I
don't know if that's right. No, I don't think it is.
I'm misreading anyway. They're old. Needless to say, they're some

(32:44):
older tales, and there is some overlap. Some of these
were written in the eighteen hundreds, some of them in
the nineteen hundreds. And it's the same with German folklore
as well, Hansel and Gretel. What else do we see
in there? Cinderella, sleeping beauty, snow white really all of it?
Like the animals help or an enchanted doll. Typically the

(33:10):
boy like outsmarts the witch and might get away like
the one who cooked her daughter. And then I mean,
I guess it's self defense, but still not cool to
be like you're jumping on the bones of your daughter.
A lot of bone bone talk in the Bobbyaga tales,
I guess, because again that would indicate witchcraft, right if

(33:32):
she's carrying around like bags of bones, those are stereotypically
used in dark magic or rituals. I don't know. Bobby
Yaga is most certainly a full character. I don't think
she's real I don't want to disrespect her though. If
you're real, Bobb Yaga, I'm not gonna scream at your

(33:53):
chicken's house. I will get you an extra stir. I'll
get you a titanium rod to hold those fun bags up,
because Lord knows you need it. You're very powerful, You're
very busy. You got a lot of people messing around
in your woods, screaming at your chicken house, telling it
to turn around and look them in the eyes, and

(34:15):
you gotta like have them perform your tasks three and
sometimes you get to eat them and sometimes you don't.
And that's showbiz, baby, and that's it. That's all I
got on Bobby Yaga, one of the og Witches, one
of the most fascinating like folk tales, fairy tales, and
really I just enjoy seeing the overlap with you know,

(34:39):
modern day movies, tales, so on and so forth. Well,
I hope you enjoyed this episode, and if you like
what you hear, you can hear more episodes I attempt
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(35:01):
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(35:22):
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(35:44):
love having to pay for it, but you know, again,
that's showbiz, babe. Not to say that I'm in showbiz,
but I am, you know, recording audio, so sort of
showbiz babe. Anyway, As always, I appreciate you listening, and remember,
if it's creepy and weird, you'll find it here.