Baba Yaga and Vasilisa the Beautiful

Origins and setting

This is one of the best-loved Russian wonder tales, recorded in the nineteenth century and told across the Slavic world. It sets the gentle steadfastness of Vasilisa against the fearsome wisdom of Baba Yaga, the witch who rides in a mortar, fences her yard with bones, and lives in a hut that stands on chicken legs. The tale mingles two classic motifs: the persecuted stepdaughter aided by a blessed doll from her dead mother, and the perilous errand to fetch fire from the Otherworld. Its most memorable lines include the formula to turn the witch’s hut—“Little hut, little hut, turn your back to the forest, your front to me!”—Baba Yaga’s sniffing cry—“Fie, fie, I smell the Russian smell!”—and the warning that not every question brings good.

The tale

The mother’s gift

There was once a merchant whose wife, dying, called their little daughter to her bed. She placed in the child’s hands a small wooden doll, neat and bright-cheeked.

“My little Vasilisa,” she whispered, “keep this doll by you always; feed it and give it drink when you are in need; it will help you, for it carries my blessing.” Then she kissed Vasilisa, blessed her again, and died.

Time passed. The merchant took another wife, a sharp-tongued widow with two daughters harsh as winter geese. They pinched and scolded and set Vasilisa to all the work of the house and field. Yet she grew fairer every year, for her mother’s blessing could not be hidden, and the more the others scratched at her, the more she shone.

The errand for fire

One autumn the merchant travelled far on business. The stepmother, who had long envied Vasilisa’s brightness, put out the hearth so that the house stood cold and black.

“We have no fire,” she said slyly. “Go to Baba Yaga and fetch us a light. Since you are so lucky and beloved of all, you will not lose your way.”

The stepsisters smirked; they had sent her to her death. Vasilisa put the doll in her pocket, gave it a crumb of bread and a drop of kvass, and whispered, “Dolly dear, eat and drink and hear my need. Show me the way and keep me safe.” The doll’s eyes brightened; it nodded once. “Do not fear, Vasilisa.”

The hut on chicken legs

They came to the black forest. Soon a fence of human bones gleamed white among the trees, and on each post a skull burned with cold fire in its eye-sockets. Behind the fence stood a hut on chicken legs, turning slowly about. Vasilisa said the old words:

“Little hut, little hut,
Turn your back to the forest,
Your front to me!”

At once the hut swung round and stood still. The door screeched; the threshold grinned; a lock clicked its teeth. Then the forest shook to the sound of a pestle thumping, a broom hissing, and a long nose sniff-sniffing the wind. Baba Yaga came flying in a mortar, steering with the pestle, sweeping away her tracks with the broom.

She peered at Vasilisa and sniffed. “Fie, fie! I smell the Russian smell. Who’s there? What do you want?”

“I am Vasilisa,” said the girl, as steady as she could. “My stepmother sent me for a light.”

“Hmm,” said Baba Yaga. “Not of your own head, I think. Never mind. A light you shall have—if you serve me well. Fail, and I will eat you with salt.”

The three riders and the first night’s task

Baba Yaga clapped her hands. Out trotted three horsemen along the forest path—one on a milk-white horse, one on a crimson, one on a coal-black. The white horseman galloped by, and the dawn broke; the red passed, and the sun stood high; the black thundered past, and night fell. “My bright day, my red sun, my dark night,” crooned Baba Yaga, counting them like beads.

“Now listen,” she said to Vasilisa. “Sweep the yard, clean the house, cook my supper, sort this heap of grain—millet from earth, seed from chaff—by morning. If you do, you shall have your light. If you do not—salt for the pot!”

Baba Yaga snored on the stove like a bellows. Vasilisa sat down, near to tears at the mountain of grain mixed with dirt, then drew out her doll. “Dolly dear, eat and drink and hear my need.”

The doll ate a crumb, sipped a drop, and said, “Sleep, Vasilisa; morning is wiser than evening.” While the girl slept, the doll and a rustle of unseen hands sorted every grain till the heap lay clean as a prayer.

At cockcrow the white rider flashed by. Baba Yaga woke, sniffed, and blinked. The yard was swept, the oven heated, the broth seasoned just so; the grain lay in tidy sacks. “Good,” she said shortly. “You are a tidy worker. Fetch from the bin to the bin.” She set a new impossible task before nightfall, and again the doll did all while Vasilisa slept.

What may be asked—and what may not

At table Baba Yaga gnawed bones and slurped broth; Vasilisa sat silent, for she had been told not to waste words.

“Ask me something,” said Baba Yaga suddenly. “It is dull eating when no one speaks.”

“I would ask,” said Vasilisa, “who are the three horsemen?”

Baba Yaga grinned, pleased. “That is a wise question. The white is my Bright Day, the red my Red Sun, the black my Dark Night. Ask more.”

“And—may I not ask more of them?”

“You may not.” The witch’s eyes narrowed. “Not every question brings good. Too much knowledge can make a man old before his time. And tell me—how did you, a slip of a girl, finish all I set you?”

Vasilisa crossed herself lightly (so lightly the witch would not see) and said, “By my mother’s blessing.”

At that Baba Yaga gave a screech like a hinge. “Blessed ones we need not here! Be off!” Then, remembering the bargain, she laughed and spat. “You came for a light and a light you shall have.”

The skull-lantern

Baba Yaga plucked a skull with burning eyes from her bone-fence, set it on a stick, and thrust it into Vasilisa’s hands. “There—take your fire. See you do not throw it away; you may need it.” The skull’s eyes glowed like coals; its teeth clicked softly, as if with cold.

Vasilisa hurried through the forest. The skull’s light never went out and never burned her hand. At the edge of town she thought to cast it aside—its stare was fearsome—but the skull spoke in a dry little voice: “Do not throw me away. Take me to your stepmother’s house.”

She went in. The house was dark; the stepmother cried, “Where have you been, wretch? We’ve had no fire; our candles die at a touch.” The stepsisters crowded round, hissing with envy, and the skull’s eyes turned to look at them.

“Here is light,” said Vasilisa, setting the skull upon the stove-bench. The eyes flared; a heat went through the room like a wind. The stepmother and her daughters burned to cinders where they stood—not a spark touched Vasilisa—and in the morning only three little heaps of ash lay on the floor. Vasilisa carried the skull to the field and buried it, thanking it for its guidance.

The spindle and the Tsar

Now that she was free, Vasilisa went into the city and took service with an old woman. The doll counselled her, “Buy fine flax.” Vasilisa bought the best flax in all Russia, and when the old woman slept the doll spun it till it was fine as a hair and even as dawn. Vasilisa wove linen from the thread so smooth and light that it could pass through a ring.

“Such cloth befits a Tsar,” said the old woman, and she carried it to the palace. The Tsar admired it and sent back rich gifts—and a request: who had spun and woven such marvel? “No one but a maiden’s hands can hem this linen,” said the steward; “bid the craftswoman come.”

The old woman brought Vasilisa to court. She bowed low; the Tsar looked on her and forgot to breathe. “Are you the mistress of this cloth?”

“I am,” said Vasilisa softly.

“Then be mistress of my house, and of my heart,” said the Tsar, for such is the swiftness of fairy tales.

They were wed with bells and bright banners. Vasilisa kept her doll in her pocket, and sometimes she fed it a crumb and a drop for old times’ sake. As for the merchant father, he returned to find his second household gone to dust and his firstborn set among queens; he blessed her and grew content in her kindness.

If ever Vasilisa told her children of the forest, she taught them this: help given in secret keeps you from harm; not every door should be opened; and not every question brings good. Yet when need presses, say the words, and even a wild hut will turn its face to you: