Baba Yaga is the scary crone of Slavic folklore
She variously hurts, hinders, helps or eats those she encounters. Like other monstrous characters in myths from around the world–think the Gorgons, or King Midas–she is larger than life. No one else lives in a hut that runs around on the legs of a giant chicken. No one else has a “picket” fence made of bones of travelers’ feet or sends coals off to a neighbor in an empty skull. No one could encounter Baba Yaga and confuse her for anyone else.
Recent myths, such as North American tall tales
are also all about the larger-than-life. Paul Bunyan and his huge Babe the Blue Ox, have similarity to Baba Yaga in their over-the-top nature. Babe weighs either a thousand pounds or ten thousand. It is either thirty yards from the tip of one horn to the other, or it takes all day to walk form one side to the other. Paul hiked his way around Minnesota in a wet Spring and created the ten thousand lakes where his boots stuck in the mud. And he needed to drain off some water to do some logging, so he dug a drainage pond we call Lake Superior. These are some of the many and conflicting stories told about Paul and Babe.
Baba Yaga stories reflect conflicting imagery, unreality, and transformation
She lives in a hut on chicken legs. Or she flies around in the night in a giant mortar and pestle. She eats children, or the hut does. She gives strange advice that turns out to be useful, even imperative, and is a force for change and transformation.
Bunyon and Babe are also figures for change, but they mostly bumble their way around. Change happens as a side effect of what they do. Baba Yaga purposely creates change, though her intentions are typically neither gentle nor altruistic.
We seem a long way from a world where everything is larger than life,
where Baba Yaga can fly through the sky with a huge flock of birds hunting for children to eat, Babe the Blue Ox is practically as large as the state of Maine, King Midas turns people and objects to gold, and Gorgons freeze people with the gaze of their snake hair. But what if we weren’t? How would they manage in today’s world? Everything Paul and Babe needed would have to be bespoke, created just for them. Midas would probably be on stage somewhere, carefully not touching anyone but turning objects to gold. The Gorgons might have a famous sculpture studio. And Baba Yaga would have had to give up cannibalism and get her teeth cleaned, like the rest of us. Today’s poem considers her need for dental work.
Baba Yaga’s Teeth Need Work
Who fills the teeth of Baba Yaga? What dentist,
what iron monger, what fearless blacksmith practices
such a sideline craft? Perhaps it’s he who hammers
yokes for blue ox Babe. Or maybe it’s Midas’ metalsmith
who forges flashy rings from once so fleshy figures.
Someone launders the Gorgons’ robes, patches
Bunyan’s trousers. And someone dares to sneak
the forest path with drill and pick. Perhaps it’s he
who needs the work enough to stand before
the chicken-footed shack, to insist it’s time to pull
the broken and polish the rest to pointy gleam.
Does Baba Yaga use but one intrepid craftsman?
Or snarf each new Doc before the numb wears off?
Crunch bones, gnaw tendons, maybe use old yarn to floss,
neither feeling nor digesting exactly what she has done?
If you are interested in further reading, here are a few references to get you started:
An article from the online World History Encyclopedia about Baba Yaga
And from the Legends of America site, Paul Bunyon–Hero Lumberjack
A Britannica.com article on Medusa, the most famous of the Gorgons
And, also from Britannica.com, a post on King Midas
Be First to Comment