Why does Baba Yaga have a bone leg, while her hut has chicken legs and a turning device? A fairy tale about a hut on chicken legs and its children.

Fairy taleabout a hut on chicken legs, Baba Yaga and Tsarevich Ivan.

"A fairy tale is a lie, but there is a hint in it,

Good fellows lesson!"

Folk wisdom.

It happened in ancient times, far away in a distant kingdom. The forests at that time were dense, the swamps were impenetrable, there were many different animals: wolves, hares, bears, foxes and other animals. And the king-sovereign on the estate of Berezen the Great ruled that country. And that king had a dark darkness of children. The king himself sometimes did not remember which of them and who was called. The king somehow heard a rumor that a Baba named Yaga had settled in their forests. They said that she does no harm to anyone, but it is not fitting for people to live next to evil spirits. And then he called one of his sons to him and said: - So, Ivan ... - I'm not Ivan. - the son corrected, but the king only brushed it aside and continued - So, son. Go through the dense forest and find Baba Yaga, who does not give people peace, but save the honest people from such an unseen one. The son bowed to his father. - Go with God, Ivanushka. - blessed the sovereign. - Yes, I'm not Ivan. - again corrected the prince. But the sovereign did not listen to him, only waved his hand in farewell. The prince began to get ready for the road, and think about how he could defeat Yaga. He saddled his faithful horse, fitted his sword, and set off. How long, how short he rode, but the road led him to the river. And that river has no end in sight: not to ford, not to swim across. Even a thin bridge, and you will not find that. The prince thought. Suddenly he hears a voice behind him and asks: "What are you thinking about, Ivan Tsarevich?" - I'm not Ivan. - out of habit he answered, and only then turned around. He sees a beautiful girl standing: her eyes are black, her lips are scarlet, her eyebrows are even, her cheeks are burning. On the shoulder, the scythe lies two fists thick. - And where did you come from? - asked the prince. - Yes, I was walking, collecting medicinal herbs. - answered the girl. - How did you cross the river? - A river? she asked. - So that's what saddened you, well, I'll help you. - assured the girl. She pulled a comb out of the scythe, and how she would throw it. And the crest became a good bridge across the river. -- Well well! - the prince was amazed. - Ask what you want for help. - When the time comes, I'll ask. Now get up. - answered the girl. -- Well then. So goodbye. -- Goodbye! she waved her blue handkerchief. And the guy went on his way. How long, how short, did he ride, but the road led him to a more often deaf - a dense forest. The prince dismounted, sat down on a large stone by the road and thought about how he could get through the forest. He hears a voice behind him again and asks: - What are you thinking about, Ivan Tsarevich? - I'm not Ivan. - Again, out of habit, he answered, and again only then turned around. He sees the same beautiful girl, but smiles at him. - So the prince met with you again. - Here are those! - the guy was surprised. - What a miracle, you again? How did the beauty get here faster than me? - And the Leshy father brought me with fast paths. she answered. - Goblin? The prince scratched the back of his head. - Can you get through the forest? -- Through the forest? Let's ask him. Father Leshy, show yourself! she called. “Did you call me, beautiful fair-haired plait girl?” - a short, wrinkled old man grew out of the ground, covered in leaves, and three small grebes grew on his nose. - Father Leshy, lead Ivan Tsarevich through your forest, and I won’t remain in debt! - asked the girl. - Yes, I'm not Ivan. - for the umpteenth time the guy said - Spend. Well, it's possible. - in a low chest voice, like a bear growled, Leshy answered. - Follow me prince. And the owner of the forest led the prince through his patrimony. The guy came out. He led the horse by the bridle. He sees a clearing in front of him. And in that clearing there is a hut on chicken legs, then not even a hut, but white-stone mansions. The prince marveled, but there was nothing to do, they clearly told him that Yaga must be expelled. He came closer to the "hut", but as he shouted in all his valiant voice: - Hut, hut, turn your front to me, and back to the forest. The mansions creaked, turned, and began to turn. - Come out Yaga, we will fight. the prince shouted again. The door opened, and the guy sees, and that very beautiful girl is standing on the threshold. - Well, hello Ivan Tsarevich. - I'm not Ivan. So you are Yaga? - I. - confirmed the girl. Now it's my turn to ask you. The prince looked at the horse, then at the sword, spat at his feet and said: - Ask. - Take me as your wife, Ivanushka, I will become your faithful wife. Famously I did not create, I treated people, why fight with me? - Ugh, what a wonder, but I'm not Ivan! Basil! - said the prince in syllables. - Well, Yaga, I will take you as a wife with great joy, I liked you for your beauty, but your good heart. The moral of this tale is that not all that evil is called Yaga!

The image of Baba Yaga is rooted in the ancient times of matriarchy. This prophetic old woman, mistress of the forest, mistress of animals and birds, guarded the borders of the "other kingdom" - the kingdom of the dead. In fairy tales, Baba Yaga lives on the edge of the forest (“Hut, stand in front of me, back to the forest”), and the ancient people associated the forest with death. Baba Yaga not only guarded the border between the worlds of the living and the dead, but was also the guide of the souls of the dead to the next world, so she has one bone leg - the one that stood in the world of the dead.

Echoes of ancient legends have been preserved in fairy tales. So, Baba Yaga helps the hero to get to the distant kingdom - the underworld - with the help of certain rituals. She drowns the bath for the hero. Then he feeds and waters him. All this corresponded to the rituals performed on the deceased: the washing of the deceased, the “mortuary” treat. The food of the dead was not suitable for the living, therefore, by demanding food, the hero thereby showed that he was not afraid of this food, that he was a "real" deceased. The hero temporarily dies for the world of the living in order to get to the other world, to the Far Far Away kingdom.

A hut on chicken legs

In Slavic mythology, the traditional habitat of the fabulous Baba Yaga is a kind of customs, a point of transition from the world of the living to the kingdom of the dead. Turning to the hero in front, to the forest back, and then vice versa, the hut opened the entrance to the world of the living, then to the world of the dead.

The mythological and fabulous image of an unusual hut is taken from reality. In ancient times, the dead were buried in cramped houses - domovina (in Ukrainian, the coffin is still called "domovina"). In fairy tales, the tightness of the hut-coffin is emphasized: “Baba Yaga lies, a bone leg, from corner to corner, his nose has grown into the ceiling.” Domovin coffins were placed on very high stumps with roots peeking out from under the ground - it seemed that such a “hut” really stood on chicken legs. Domovins were placed with a hole facing the opposite direction from the settlement, towards the forest, so the hero asks the hut on chicken legs to turn to him in front, to the forest back.

Smorodina river and Kalinov bridge

The Smorodina River is literally a watershed between reality and Navi (the world of the living and the world of the dead), the Slavic analogue of the ancient Greek Styx. The name of the river has nothing to do with the currant plant, it has the same root as the word "stench". Currant is a serious obstacle for a fairy-tale or epic hero, it is difficult to cross the river, how difficult it is for a living person to get into the world of the dead.

A crossing is thrown across the Smorodina River - the Kalinov Bridge. The name of the bridge has nothing to do with viburnum, here the root is common with the word “hot”: since the Smorodina River is often called fiery, the bridge across it seemed red-hot. It is on the Kalinov Bridge that souls pass into the realm of the dead. Among the ancient Slavs, the phrase "to cross the Kalinov bridge" meant "to die." If on “our” side of the bridge the world of the living was guarded by the heroes, then on the other, afterlife side, the bridge was guarded by a three-headed monster - the Serpent Gorynych.

Dragon

In Christianity, the snake is a symbol of evil, cunning, the fall of man. The snake is one of the forms of the incarnation of the devil. Accordingly, for the Christianized Slavs, the Serpent Gorynych is a symbol of absolute evil. But in pagan times, the snake was worshiped as a god.

Most likely, the middle name of Zmey Gorynych is not connected with the mountains. In Slavic mythology, Gorynya is one of the three heroes, who in even earlier times were chthonic deities, personifying the destructive forces of the elements. Gorynya "managed" the fire ("burn"). Then everything becomes more logical: the Serpent Gorynych is always associated with fire and much less often with mountains.

After the victory of Christianity in the Slavic lands, and especially as a result of the nomadic raids on Rus', the Serpent Gorynych turned into a sharply negative character with features characteristic of the nomads (Pechenegs, Polovtsy): he burned pastures and villages, took him into a crowd of people, he was paid tribute. Gorynych's lair was located in the "Sorochinsky (Saratsin) mountains" - Muslims were called Saracens in the Middle Ages.

Koschei the Immortal

Kashchei (or Koschei) is one of the most mysterious characters in Russian fairy tales. Even the etymology of his name is debatable: either from the word “bone” (bonyness is an indispensable sign of Kashchei), or from “blasphemer” (“sorcerer”; with the advent of Christianity, the word acquired a negative connotation - “blasphemy”), or from the Turkic “ koshchi "("slave"; in fairy tales, Koschey is often a prisoner of sorceresses or heroes).

Kashchei belongs to the world of the dead. Like the ancient Greek god of the underworld Hades, who kidnapped Persephone, Kashchei kidnaps the main character's bride. By the way, like Hades, Kashchei is the owner of countless treasures. Blindness and insatiability attributed to Kashchei in some tales are characteristics of death.

Kashchei is immortal only conditionally: as you know, his death is in the egg. Here the fairy tale also conveyed to us the echoes of the most ancient universal myth about the world egg. This plot is found in the myths of the Greeks, Egyptians, Indians, Chinese, Finns and many other peoples of Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia. In most myths, an egg, often golden (a symbol of the Sun), floats in the waters of the World Ocean, later a progenitor, the main god, the Universe, or something like that appears from it. That is, the beginning of life, creation in the myths of different peoples is associated with the fact that the world egg is split, destroyed. Kashchei is in many ways identical to the Serpent Gorynych: he kidnaps girls, guards treasures, and opposes a positive hero. These two characters are interchangeable: in different versions of the same tale, Kashchei appears in one case, and the Serpent Gorynych in the other.

It is interesting that the word "koshchei" is mentioned three times in the "Tale of Igor's Campaign": in captivity among the Polovtsians, Prince Igor sits "in Koshcheev's saddle"; "koschey" - a captive nomad; the Polovtsian Khan Konchak himself is called "a filthy koshchei."

Once upon a time there lived a hut on chicken legs. Of course, she did not live on her own, but with Baba Yaga. They lived in a dense thicket, so deaf that even planes did not fly over it. Baba Yaga was about six hundred years old, and the hut was a match for her, both were not young and not beautiful.
By bad weather, both old bones ached, their legs ached, in front of the anticyclone, Yaga's pressure rose, and the roof went down at the hut.
Baba Yaga has long been thinking of moving to the city, closer to civilization.
She dreamed of an insulated bathroom and coniferous bathtubs with a contrast shower. She was tired of keeping the fire in the stove for three hundred years, since matches could only be purchased in the regional center two hundred kilometers away.
Tired of sitting by a torch, in winter, along with the hut, trampling snow on the path to the nearest spring and carrying heavy buckets of water. I'm tired of feeding furious taiga mosquitoes in the summer. And in general, how long can you live in the wilderness?
Having turned over in her memory the addresses of the familiar evil spirits, Baba Yaga settled on the barabashka Mitroshka, who had a wonderful two-room apartment in the regional center. In addition, a hundred years ago, he invited Yaga to stay, and, from the bottom of his heart. Baba Yaga sorted out her well-deserved broom, tied it tighter, swept the cobwebs from the mortar and flew away at dawn. She did not even wave her hand to her hut, which, in the middle of the clearing, half-asleep, shifted from foot to foot: again her knees ached.
Waking up in the morning from the rays of the bright April sun, the hut realized that she was left alone. There was no smell of unclean spirit in the glade. Small forest birds sang, buds swelled on hundred-year-old oaks, a stream murmured in a ravine. The hut warmed one side in the sun, groaned, turned its other side to the sun and suddenly felt the vitality awakening in it.
She was free, independent, she enjoyed life. Some kind of melody sounded in her soul, and the hut clucked softly to the beat of her inner voice. Opening the door and all the windows, the hut jumped on one leg, then on the other. Cast-iron pots, tongs, panicles, dried frog legs, snake skins, and roots fell down. The spring breeze blew dust, cobwebs and the last spirit of Baba Yaga out of all the cracks.
Raking its feet along the chicken hut, the hut shoved all the rubbish into a deep ravine, where the darkened snow was still hiding, and thought. Some sixth sense told her what to do next. She began to rake last year's dry grass to a small hillock in the middle of the clearing, trample it down with her feet, then sat down on this nest, thought, and suddenly ... laid an egg. Ordinary, slightly greenish, similar to chicken, only larger.
The hut already wanted to cackle joyfully to the whole forest, but in time she remembered her advanced age and became silent in embarrassment: not everyone can understand her correctly.
…More than a month have passed. Five pretty eggs lay on a hillock in the middle of a clearing. The hut patiently sat on the eggs, condemning the birds that sometimes flew from their nests to peck at something and stretch themselves. "They'll catch a cold," she thought, forgetting that she herself does not need food or water.
And then one day, having dozed off in the morning, she woke up from a dull squeaking and fuss. Five little huts tickled her chicken legs, trying to get out of the nest.
“Ko-ko-ko!” the hut called and led her children to the spring to wash. She clucked proudly and caringly, swaying as she walked, and behind her minced as yet clumsy, but mischievous and so glorious, in her opinion, huts.
The whole summer was busy. What an ailment there, what an ache in the bones!
The huts scattered in different directions, climbed into the very thicket, teased the merman in the neighboring swamp, throwing acorns at him, chasing the goblin throughout the forest.
And the hut waddling ran after them, hiding them in a moment of danger behind oak doors. She told them stories about Baba Yaga and the good fellow Ivan Tsarevich, clucked lullabies at night.
The huts quickly grew up. They got wings. The mother hut vaguely recalled that in her early youth she seemed to have wings, but that was so long ago!
Toddlers began to learn to fly, running up from the hillock, bouncing clumsily
and briefly hovering in the air. Then they kept above the ground longer and longer, and finally began to flutter from tree to tree. The mother hut anxiously followed their every flight, but there was nothing she could do to help them.
And the huts flew farther and farther away and returned less and less often, and one day they flew away. Irrevocably.
“Ungrateful,” thought the hut on chicken legs. “But still, I didn’t live my three hundred years in vain!”
She sighed sadly, creaked and crumbled. Only a pile of wood dust remained in a clearing in a dense dense thicket, so deaf that even planes did not fly over it.
And the cold and angry autumn wind blew all this dust into the neighboring ravine.

In the Museum of the History of Moscow, in addition to all sorts of spoons, there is an exposition, which presents a reconstruction of the so-called "house of the dead" of Dyakovo culture.

It is known that a long time ago in the territories of the upper Volga, the Ob and the Moskva River lived the tribes of the Finno-Ugric peoples - the ancestors of the annalistic Meri and Vesi. Their culture is named after the settlement near the village. Dyakovo, located near Kolomenskoye (estate in Moscow), which was investigated in 1864 by D.Ya. Samokvasov and in 1889-90. IN AND. Sizov.

For a long time, the funeral rite of the Dyakovites remained unknown. Scientists studied dozens of monuments, but there was not a single burial ground among them. Funeral rites are known to science, after which practically nothing remains of the ashes, or burials have no external signs. The chances of finding traces of such burials are almost zero or largely dependent on chance.

In 1934, in the Yaroslavl Volga region, during excavations at the Dyakovo settlement of Bereznyaki, an unusual structure was found. Once it was a small log house, which contained the cremated remains of 5-6 people, men, women and children. For a long time this monument remained the only one of its kind. More than thirty years passed, and in 1966 another “house of the dead” was found, and not on the Upper Volga, but in the Moscow region, near Zvenigorod, during excavations of the settlement near the Savvino-Storozhevsky monastery.

According to the researchers, once it was a rectangular log building about 2 m high with a gable roof. An entrance was arranged on the south side, inside at the entrance there was a hearth. In the "house of the dead" were found the remains of at least 24 cremations and, as in the ancient settlement of Bereznyaki, fragments of vessels, jewelry and weights of the "diakova type". In several cases, the ashes were placed in urns. Some of the urns were badly burned on one side; it is possible that during the funeral ceremony they were near the fire.

The custom of building log grave structures is not unique. It is widely known from numerous archaeological and ethnographic data in the north of Eastern Europe and Asia, and in some areas this tradition existed until the 18th century. and even later. The funeral rite most likely looked like this: the body of the deceased was burned on a fire somewhere outside the settlement. Archaeologists call this ritual cremation on the side. After the ceremony, the cremated remains were placed in the "house of the dead", a kind of family tomb, usually located in a place remote from housing.

As in the previous case, the "house of the dead" was discovered right on the territory of the settlement, which is quite strange for a funerary structure. However, according to the researchers, the collective tomb could have been built there when the settlement was no longer used as a settlement.

But the most interesting thing is that Russians have been familiar with these "houses of the dead" since childhood...

BABA YAGA'S HUT

"House of the Dead" - this is the very hut of Baba Yaga, on those same chicken legs! True, they are actually CHICKEN. An ancient funeral rite included smoking the legs of a “hut” without windows and doors, in which a corpse or what was left of it was placed.

The hut on chicken legs in the folk fantasy of the Muscovites was modeled after the image of the pre-Slavic (Finnish) churchyard - a small "house of the dead". The house was placed on pillars. Muscovites put the incinerated ashes of the deceased into the “house of the dead” (just like the mistress of the hut, Baba Yaga always wants to put Ivan in the oven and roast him there). The coffin itself, a domina or graveyard-cemetery of such houses was presented as a window, a hole into the world of the dead, a means of passage to the underworld. That is why the fairy-tale hero of the Muscovites constantly comes to the hut on chicken legs in order to get into a different dimension of time and into the reality of no longer living people, but wizards. There is no other way to get there.

Chicken legs are just a "translation error". “Chicken (chicken) legs” Muscovites (Slavicized Finno-Ugric peoples) called stumps, on which the hut was placed, that is, Baba Yaga’s house initially stood only on sooty stumps. Most likely, these stumps were smoked so that insects and rodents would not penetrate through them into the “house of the dead”.

In one of the two surviving stories "On the Beginning of Moscow" it is told that one of the princes, fleeing in the forest from the sons of the boyar Kuchka, took refuge in a "log" where "some dead man" was buried.

The description of how the old woman is placed in the hut is also significant: “The teeth are on the shelf, and the nose has grown into the ceiling”, “Baba Yaga’s bone leg lies on the stove, from corner to corner, she put her teeth on the shelf”, “Ahead is the head, in the corner leg, another in the other. All descriptions and behavior of the evil old woman are canonical. This cannot but suggest that the mythological character is somehow inspired by reality.

Is this not similar to the impressions of a person who looked through a crack into the small “house of the dead” described above, where the remains of the buried lie? But why then is Baba Yaga a female image? This becomes clear if we assume that the funeral rituals were performed by Dyakovo female priestesses.

RUSSIANS ARE NOT SLAVES

Russian scientists with enviable stubbornness defend fantasies about the allegedly “Slavic” origin of Russians, and therefore they call “Slavic” both the tales of Baba Yaga and the rite of the “house of the dead”. For example, a well-known specialist in the field of mythology A. Barkova writes in the encyclopedia "Slavic mythology and epic" (Art. "Beliefs of the ancient Slavs"):

“Her hut “on chicken legs” is depicted as standing either in the thicket of the forest (the center of the other world), or at the edge, but then the entrance to it is from the side of the forest, that is, from the world of death. The name "chicken legs" most likely came from "chicken", that is, fumigated with smoke, pillars on which the Slavs put a "hut of death" - a small log house with the ashes of the deceased inside (such a funeral rite existed among the ancient Slavs as early as the 6th-9th centuries BC). ). Baba Yaga inside such a hut seemed to be like a living dead - she lay motionless and did not see a person who came from the world of the living (the living do not see the dead, the dead do not see the living).

She learned about his arrival by smell - "it smells of the Russian spirit" (the smell of the living is unpleasant for the dead). A person who meets Baba Yaga's hut on the border of the world of life and death, as a rule, goes to another world in order to free the captive princess. To do this, he must join the world of the dead. He usually asks Yaga to feed him, and she gives him the food of the dead.

There is another option - to be eaten by Yaga and thus end up in the world of the dead. Having passed the tests in the hut of Baba Yaga, a person turns out to belong to both worlds at the same time, is endowed with many magical qualities, subjugates various inhabitants of the world of the dead, overcomes the terrible monsters inhabiting it, wins back the magical beauty from them and becomes the king.

These are inventions, the Slavs have nothing to do with Baba Yaga and her "house of the dead".

I.P. Shaskolsky wrote in the essay “On the study of the primitive beliefs of the Karelians (funeral cult) (Yearbook of the Museum of the History of Religion and Atheism, 1957. M.-L.):

“For the study of primitive beliefs, the Karelian ideas about the burial structure as a “house for the dead” are most interesting. Many peoples had such ideas in antiquity, but they can be traced especially clearly on the Karelian material.

As already mentioned, in the Karelian burial grounds, a frame of one or more crowns was usually placed in each grave pit; the frame was usually about 2 m long and (if the grave was intended for one deceased) 0.6 m wide. In some cases, a wooden roof was arranged over the log house. At the same time, the entire structure, together with the roof, remained below the surface of the earth. In open V.I. Ravdonikas burial grounds of the XI-XIII centuries. on the rivers Vidlitsa and Tuloksa (near the northeastern shore of Lake Ladoga), which apparently belonged to the Karelians-Livviks, there was also a rite of burial in a log house, with the only difference that the log house with the burial did not fall into the grave pit, but was placed on surface of the earth, and a low mound was piled above it (V.I. Ravdonikas. Monuments of the era of the emergence of feudalism in Karelia and the southeastern Ladoga region, L., 1934, p. 5.)

In its most developed form (found in several graves), this structure had not only a roof, but also a floor made of boards; instead of a floor, an animal skin was sometimes spread out at the bottom of the log house, or a layer of clay was laid (imitation of an adobe floor). This building was a direct likeness of an ordinary peasant house; in such a "house" the afterlife of the deceased was obviously supposed to take place.

Similar ideas can be traced in Karelia and according to ethnographic data.

In the remote areas of northern Karelia at the end of the XIX century. one could see in the old cemeteries small log "houses for the dead" brought to the surface of the earth; these houses were a deaf frame of several crowns and were equipped with a gable roof. A carved wooden post was often attached to the ridge of the roof, which in turn had a small gable roof. In some cases, this structure was located over the graves of two or more relatives; then the number of ridge columns indicated the number of burials.

Sometimes this column was placed next to the log house. Over time, the ceremony seems to have become somewhat simpler. Instead of a log house with a column over the grave, they began to erect only one column, which became the symbol of the "house of the dead."

Similar grave pillars with gable roofs and rich ornamentation were widespread in Karelia as early as the 19th century. In many places, under pressure from the Orthodox clergy, the pillars were replaced by a new form of tombstones - crosses with gable roofs.

Another line of development of the same rite can be traced. Already in the XII-XIII centuries, instead of constructing a whole “house for the dead”, for the most part they limited themselves to the symbolic image of this house in the form of a log cabin from one crown. The custom of lowering a log cabin from one crown into the grave was preserved in certain regions of Karelia until the end of the 19th century. The only difference was that the frame surrounded not one burial, but all the burials of one family. In other areas, instead of a grave frame, the grave was surrounded by a crown of logs lying on the surface of the earth. The grave of the legendary Karelian hero Rokach, located at the Tiksky cemetery, is surrounded on the surface of the earth by a fence of nine logs, that is, a real log house.

As you can see, these are not the traditions of the "ancient Slavs", but of the Karelians and other Finns. The ancestors of the Russians - the Finno-Ugrians of Muscovy - buried their dead in the "houses of the dead", which seemed wild for the Kyiv princes who captured Zalesye. The Bulgarian priests, who came with the princes of Kyiv, fought against this rite, but all the same, the Russians still put funeral crosses with gable roofs to this day. This Russian tradition clearly reflects the Finnish origin of the Russian ethnic group.

Last summer we visited the Gorno-Altai Botanical Garden. It was nice to walk along its paths, examining outlandish plants. But, suddenly, around the bend of the path, the hut of Baba Yaga appeared on chicken legs.

Hut hut turn your back to the forest

It made me want to say: “Hut, hut, turn your back to the forest, and front to me.” But he did not say, because she was already standing in front of me. And here is the mistress not far from her broom. And along the path leading to the hut of Baba Yaga, amazing plants grew, planted by garden workers. We looked at this building, marveled at the invention of the staff of the botanical garden, took a picture against this background and moved on.

But, now at home, looking through the photo, I thought: “Oh, what does Baba Yaga mean with her hut?” Having rummaged through the literature, having looked through many pages of the Internet, I came to the conclusion that this matter is dark, or rather hidden in the twilight of past centuries. And scientists have a lot of different opinions on this.

Baba Yaga bone leg

Well, first of all, what do we know about the main character? I'm talking about Baba Yaga, the bone leg. This character, according to one version, was not called Baba Yaga at all, but Baba Yoga. Quite possible. Type the word yoga and translate it into transliteration, and then back into Russian. What happened? That's right, we got grandmothers hedgehogs. Baba Yoga then transformed into Baba Yaga. It's easier to say that way. Try it yourself and see for yourself.

And why translate into transliteration? And then, that foreigners helped us in this. After all, we accept many foreign words into our language. And with Yoga - Yaga it happened the same way. But first things first.

In Slavic culture, Baba Yoga or Mother Yogini is the patron goddess of children. Or maybe it's not quite a mythological character. So, this goddess, and if not considered as mythology, a witch woman or an old witch wandered the earth and collected all the homeless orphans.

So what is next? And then I roasted them in the oven and ate them for lunch. So we know from a fairy tale. But in the same tale, at first it was required that the person who came to Baba Yaga be washed in a bathhouse, fed, and allowed to rest. But when he falls asleep, then you can use a shovel and into the oven ... So the kids were washed, fed, dressed in everything clean, put to bed ...

What a bloodthirsty! This is exactly what foreigners thought when they observed this ritual. In fact, no one was going to fry and eat children for lunch. They left them for dinner! I'm kidding, of course. So the rite of purification by fire took place. After all, these children were later raised to be priests and priestesses!

But thanks to foreigners, at the time of the baptism of Rus', Baba Yoga turned into a bloodthirsty Baba Yaga. And instead of a beautiful goddess, a thin, bony, old woman with matted hair appeared before us.

A hut on chicken legs

Now about the structure that appeared before me at the next turn of the path in the botanical garden. Baba Yaga's hut on chicken legs in the photo, look and admire below. By the way, there are no chicken legs here, unlike illustrations for fairy tales. And this is true.

Because these legs at the hut have nothing to do with chickens. After all, the hut did not stand on chicken legs, but on chicken legs! Unclear? Here, to make it clear, they came up with chicken legs, instead of chicken ones. After all, there is no more interesting, fabulous and incomprehensible word. So what do chicken feet mean?

Everything is much more prosaic and practical than one might think. The prototype for the hut on chicken legs was the huts that were found in the wilderness. Such huts were not placed on the foundation. Well, what is the foundation in those ancient times? They were placed on tree stumps.

The tree was cut down at a certain height. The roots were cut off at some distance so that the stump would not grow back. Then the stump was burned or stoned to make it slightly charred. Wood treated in this way is not subject to rotting for a long time. And also insects and all sorts of pests do not want to climb on such stumps. Hence the word " chicken”.

And the stumps really look like chicken paws. The shin of a chicken leg is the stump itself, and the roots sticking out of the stump, which were left for the stability of the structure, are the fingers - the claws from the paw.

Description of the hut of Baba Yaga

Everyone watched fairy tales and cartoons about Baba Yaga. How many windows does Baba Yaga have in her hut? So, Yagulechka had no windows in the hut. And there could be no oven. After all, the dwelling of a terrible and evil old woman should be no less terrible her dwelling.

So she was settled in those small huts on chicken legs, which were found in the deaf and gloomy forest thickets. And to make it even scarier, scientists found out that these very huts served as burial houses for dead people. After death, either his ashes from burning at the stake, or the body itself, were placed there.