Baba Yaga and the Schoolhouse

29 June 2003 Baba Yaga and the Schoolhouse
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/fairytales_myths_fables_&legends/101755

Stories to grow by: Baba Yaga
http://hazel.forest.net/whootie/stories/baba_yaga_russia.html
illustrated by children

In the deep forest Baba Yaga lives in a hut standing on a single chicken-leg amongst the silver birches. Spinning in circles, it stops to confront the visitor The little yard is encircled with a rickety picket-fence of bones. Skulls serve as lamp-posts .Light dismally gleams through the vacant eye-sockets. She lives there alone with a scrawny black cat and a mangy mongrel whose ribs stick out worse than Ribsey in Beverly Cleary's Beezus and Henry books.

Baba Yaga eats children for breakfast, tossing the fingerbones to the starving cat because they might choke her. The ribs go to the dog. Isn't much food, 'cause no sensible kid ever ventures near there, unless sent by an evil stepmother. There's no shortage of them, unfortunately.

Parents blame Maurice Sendak for giving their kids nightmares with the book, Where the Wild Things Are--a favorite book of mine, mind you. They never consider the torture they inflict on kids themselves. Take a look at these same book-bashing parents—they send their kids off to school each day to face the Land of the Wild Things, meeting up with Baba Yaga in her one-legged chicken hut school. Baba Yaga sits atop her giant desk at the front of the class demanding the impossible from the kids below her. The room spins with information that they can never quite grasp as the school turns on its solitary chicken-leg. Kids get woozey and dizzy from it all. We like to put the Fairy tales out there somewhere in NeverNever Land with Peter Pan. We rarely consider that FairyLand isn't such a cool place in there inside.

Baba Yaga appeared twice in school in two different guises. The first year teacher spooked me out of my wits. I was left tongueless before the end of the year. Like Natasha, I tried to appease her in every way I could. Teachers like parents are generally arcane when it comes to personal demands and expectations. The rules don't usually make sense, but you ar supposed to understand them fully after punishment is inflicted. Kids try rather hard to receive acceptance-- trying to do the right thing at the right time; but often their worlds are just plain irrational and far more dangerous environments than Baba Yaga's hut or the land Where the Wild Things are. There's no lack of evidence on the internet regarding children being chained or locked in closets and forced to eat their feces because they failed to flush a toilet or being given the Chinese water torture drowning them by forcing water down their throats.

Yet these same children get sent to school where Baba Yaga lives atop her desk in the front of the room. Dominated by the Ogres and Giants at home, they may be intimidated easily by a teacher's bullying ways. So the hand or behind isn't smacked any more, but teachers have other ways of tormenting students. Like God, they know everything and they can be merciless in deprecation. Words cut like a whip, tearing at the soul of a person. They might ignore the hard work and struggle of the student who lives in the twilight world of personal fear, or may be brutally unkind in comparison to siblings.

"Your ister was so smart..." with the insinuation that you aren't. A comparison is a denial of a person't individuality. So we're different. I never quacked like a cracked bassoon reed, nor did I receive the National Scholarship or do a zillion things my sisters excelled at. I excelled at shrinking into nothing and wetting my knickers. I was too petrified to raise my hand, terrified to use the school restroom. It wasn't that I didn't try, but that my bladder simply didn't cooperate. Anxiety ate me from the toe up.

Suffering from a bad reputation, I endured endless torment from my fellow students about wet clothes and puddles on the floor. Teachers disapprovingly shake their heads, "Why doesn't she just raise her hand?" without looking in the mirror to see Baba Yaga standing there. Trauma and anxiety grows inside a child like a forest filled with monsters. With just a slight abuse, anger or disapproval, the child shrinks back inside the invisible forest to hide from the danger outside. Between home and school, there's not so many safe places to escape and not so many friends to share secrets with. Although we laugh about little birds warning Little Red Riding Hood, so many have only a cat or dog as a companion. How many times have you seen old Mr. Jones walking his dog in the morning? Did you ever stop by to see if he needed something? Friendly voices are always welcome. Children too, associate their sorrows with their animals. They may sit for hours with a pet, talking to them as an intimate friend-- someone who shows compassion in a compassionless world.

I wanted to be like Natasha, dropping the ribbon from my hair to create a rushing river-- a barricade to stop the evil from pursuing me. Yet I could always hear the shrieking of the witch and the swish of her broom in the air as her mortar sailed after me or drop the comb, transforming into a tall wood to encircle and protect me from the hardships of my life; or be transformed into a deer to leap about in the wood like the boy in Brother and Sister.

Magic? Fantasy? Who am I to tell you? Look deep within yourself to understand the things you fear and the Baba Yaga's of your life. For me, it was the spinning school and the physiology teacher who always made me stand up to recite, cutting me into shreds with his deprecating remarks. There were others, but he was the most skeletal. In times of stress and anxiety, seek a friendly environment. Don't forget to feed the cat or pet the dog and definitely, put a yellow ribbon on a tree.

Old Russia:Baba Yaga
http://www.oldrussia.net/baba.html
with artist Bilibin

Russian Crafts- Baba Yaga
http://russian-crafts.com/tales/babyaga.html

Ashliman: Folklore and Mythology Electronic Texts: Baba Yaga
http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0510a.html#babayaga

cinderella stories
http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0510a.html#contents

SurLaLune: Baba Yaga
http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/cinderella/stories/baba.html

brother and sister
http://www.russian-crafts.com/tales/alionushka.html
Sister Alyonushka and Brother Vanushka