This study considers Baba Yaga’s cannibalism as one of her functional characteristics and focuses on the representations of Baba Yaga as a kidnapping cannibal. This article seeks to reveal the specific features of Yaga’s cannibalism that distinguish her from fairy tale witches. The analysis is based on tales from different historical times and geographical locations. The texts examined by the author are variants and combinations of several subtypes of the tale type ATU 327, mainly “The Devill/Witch Carries the Hero Home in a Sack” (ATU 327С), “The Witch and the Fisher Boy” (ATU 327F), and “The Children with the Witch” (ATU 327A). In order to determine the time and genesis of the image of Yaga as a cannibal, the author selected texts that are found in the earliest available anthologies of fairy tales, including those contained in popular printed books with pictures (lubki) or without them, and in manuscripts. Among the distinctive traits of cannibalism featured by both Yaga and the witch, the feeding/eating motif is especially interesting. This study confirms that the cannibalistic subtype of Baba Yaga likely emerged from translated and thoroughly reworked Western European tales, which were actively developed in the literature and related arts of the early nineteenth century.
Александра Валерьевна Никитина (Wed,) studied this question.