Our Russian people is a fairy tale character - Baba Yaga. It's very much scientific and non-scientific articles)). Opinions are contradictory, for example:
She's a bad. It's a dirty, ragged old woman, a wicked witch living in the woods in a house on chicken legs. She bakes people into the oven;
She's a good. It is a goddess, kind, helping people, collecting orphans under his wing after the brutal wars.
In the popular mind Baba Yaga - the centennial evil old woman. In the image of the fairy tale of Baba Yaga is endowed with sustainable attributes. One of them is a crutch or stick with magical properties. With the help of her stick she can turn to stone all around, including the good heroes fairy tales.
The main attribute of this character is unusual house with athe special location in a fabulous space. It is "very far", somewhere "far away, over the fiery river", a dark, dense, impassable forest. This "hut on chicken legs". Hut not just stands, she turns.
What I think of Baba Yaga?
I think that it was a woman, which is popularly called goddess for the salvation of people after great catastrophes on Earth, whose image is gradually turned into fabulous.
Probably all peoples of different nationalities, each forest had its own Baba Yaga. She understands the language of the forest, the language of animals and birds, talking with the wind and water.Her serve are forest spirits, animals and birds. Baba Yaga owns the magic, cure herbs, able to move through the air.
When people have forgotten how to understand the forest and nature, ceased to live with them in harmony – they are to Baba Yaga were treated differently. But the old tales remained kind and wise way Grandma Yaga – a witch guarding the forest and the boundaries between worlds..
Photos taken with Canon a1300