Witches, it was believed, went unbelted.

[kleenexwoman]

Lookin' up Russian folklore and fairy tales, particularly death folklore. I love Baba Yaga stories, but I realized I haven't read that many, and I conflate Baba Yaga with the fairytale function of witches in general, which naturally has been highly informed by Grimm's fairytales. Russian folklore is amazing. I wish I still had Gail around so I could ask her stuff.

This is proving to be very useful.

Comments

[pphi.livejournal.com]

I was always fascinated by the dichotomy between Baba-Jaga as the witch in Hansel und Gretel, and as a kind of Frau Holle.
I've been reading Vladimir Propp on this subject: the books "The Russian Fairytale" and "Historical Origins of Fairytales" were very interesting.
Unfortunately, I only have them in Italian translation (and in Russian, but that's not very helpful either).
If you wish I can look up some quotes.

[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

Frau Holle? Not familiar with the character, unfortunately...I definitely need to do more research! I'm familiar with Hansel and Gretel, but hadn't heard a version with Baba-Jaga specifically as the witch; she was always just "the witch." I suppose it's a regional variation.

I just found out that my library has an English translation of Propp's "The Morphology of Fairytales." I would definitely appreciate any English quotes you could dig up or translate, though; everything I can find online for him is in Russian, too.

[pphi.livejournal.com]

On gutenberg.org: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/11027/11027.txt

MOTHER HOLLE


There was once a widow who had two daughters--one of whom was pretty and
industrious, while the other was ugly and idle.
[...]
At last she came to a little house, out of which an old woman peeped;
but she had such large teeth that the girl was frightened, and was about
to run away.

But the old woman called out to her, "What are you afraid of, dear
child? Stay with me; if you will do all the work in the house properly,
you shall be the better for it. Only you must take care to make my bed
well, and to shake it thoroughly till the feathers fly--for then there
is snow on the earth. I am Mother Holle."
[etc.]

Mother Holle apparently is closely related with nature. The good girl is rewarded, the lazy girl punished.

In "Vassilisa Prekrasnaja", Baba-Jaga receives as visitors a number of knights, these are identified with the red sun, the black night and so on. She helps her visitor to defeat the evil stepmother.

But in "Baba-Jaga and the brave youth" she steals a child and tries to have it baked in the oven. It's not exactly Hansel und Gretel, but the similarities are striking.

Propp tries to reconcile these differences in the chapter "The little hut in the Forest" of "Historical Origins of Fairytales" by considering the hut as a place of initiation, Baba-Jaga as a priestess/shamaness and the children as the initiands who are submitted to severe trials before they are considered members of the tribe.

[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

Oh, I do remember that particular story. Thank you. And yeah, the Vassilisa story is really the one Baba-Jaga story I'm familiar with--the "good witch/evil witch" dichotomy and the idea of the hut as a place of initiation is a really interesting one, and something I definitely haven't seen as much in Western fairy tales.

[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

And I can't find either of the books you mentioned here anywhere. Have those even been translated into English at all, do you know? :(

[pphi.livejournal.com]

To the best of my knowledge, No. Google and various antiquarian sites all deny their existence in English (I sought for them for quite a while).
According to amazon.fr there is such a thing as "Les racines historiques du conte merveilleux" (1983) but this appears to be out of print. Pity, since my French is somewhat better than my Italian, reading the latter mostly mostly consists of guessing from similarities with French/Latin/English/musical terms. In some cases I had to lookt at the Russian text to understand the Italian...