A hut on chicken legs. Why does Baba Yaga have a bone leg, and her hut has chicken legs and a turning device

The forest as a separate isolated element does not prove anything yet. But that this forest is not entirely ordinary, one can see from its inhabitants, one can see from the hut, which the hero suddenly sees in front of him. Walking "where the eyes are looking" and casually raising his gaze, he sees an extraordinary sight - a hut on chicken legs. This hut seems to have been familiar to Ivan for a long time: "We have to climb into you, eat bread and salt." He is not at all surprised by her and knows how to behave.

Some fairy tales report that this hut is "spinning", that is.

rotates around its axis. "A hut stands in front of her on chicken legs and turns incessantly" (Af. 235). "There is also a whirligig" (K. 7). This view stems from a misunderstanding of the word "turns". Some fairy tales specify: when necessary, it turns. It turns, however, not by itself. The hero must make her turn, and for this you need to know and pronounce the word. Again we see that the hero is not at all surprised. He does not go into his pocket for a word and knows what to say. "According to the old saying, according to the mother's saying:" Hut, hut, "Ivan said, blowing on her," stand with your back to the forest, in front of me. " . 560). "Hut, hut, turn your eyes to the forest, and gates to me: I will not live forever, but wear one butt. Let the passer-by" (K. 7).

What's going on here? Why do you need to turn the hut? Why can't you just enter? Often in front of Ivan there is a smooth wall - "no windows without doors" - an entrance from the opposite side. "This hut has neither windows nor doors - nothing" (17). But why not go around the huts and enter from the other side? Obviously, this is not possible. Obviously, the hut stands on some kind of visible or invisible edge, over which Ivan cannot step over in any way. You can get to this edge only through, through the hut, and the hut must be turned "so that I can go in and out" (See 1).

It will be interesting to cite here one detail from the American myth. The hero wants to walk past the tree. But it sways and does not let it go. "Then he tried to get around him. It was impossible. He had to go through the tree." The hero tries to go under the tree, but it goes down. Then the hero starts running straight onto the tree, and it breaks, and the hero himself at the same moment turns into a light feather flying through the air (Kroeber 1907, I, 1984). We will see that our hero does not leave the hut, but flies out either on a horse, or on an eagle, or turning into an eagle. The open side of the hut faces the thirtieth kingdom, the closed side faces the kingdom accessible to Ivan. That is why Ivan cannot go around the hut, but turns it around. This hut is a sentry post. He will not go beyond the line until he is interrogated and tested, whether he can follow on. Actually, the first test has already been passed. Ivan knew the spell and managed to blow on the hut and turn it around. "The hut turned in front of them, the doors opened themselves, the windows opened" (Aph. 14; Kroeber I, 84). "The hut has become, the doors have opened" (Af. 114). This borderline position of the hut is sometimes emphasized: "Beyond that steppe - dense forest, and near the forest itself there is a hut "(140)."

bushka - and there is no further move - one pitch darkness; nothing to see. "(272) Sometimes she stands on the seashore, sometimes - at a ditch, over which one must jump. From the further development of the tale it is clear that the yaga is sometimes set to guard the border by the masters standing over her, who scold her for the fact that she missed Ivan. “How dare you let the villain go to my kingdom?” (172) or: “Why are you assigned?” (176) To the Tsar Maiden's question “Has anyone come here?” she replies: “What you, we don't miss a fly. "

In this example, it is already clear that the donor of the magic remedy is guarding the entrance to the realm of death. Early materials show this more clearly: “When he wandered for a while, he saw smoke in the distance, and when he came closer, he saw a house on the prairie. A pelican lived there. He asked him:“ Where are you going? ”He replied:“ I am. looking for my dead wife. "-" This is a difficult task, my grandson, "said the pelican. “Only the dead can find this path with ease. The living can only reach the land of the dead with great danger. "He gave him a magical remedy to help him in his undertaking and taught him how to use it" (Boas 1895, 4).

Here we also have a questioning. Note that the donor here has an animal appearance. This observation will still be useful to us. Such, for example, cases belong to the same category. In a Dolgan tale we read: "In one place they (the shamans-geese) had to fly through a hole in the sky. An old woman was sitting near this hole, waiting for the flying geese." This old woman turns out to be the mistress of the universe. - "Let not a single shaman fly in this direction. The mistress of the universe is not pleased with this" (Dolgan folklore).

We also note that in all cases the hero is not a dead man, but a living person or a shaman who wants to penetrate the realm of the dead.

There is, however, no revolving hut here. In explaining the image of a rotating hut, it can be recalled that in ancient Scandinavia the doors were never made to the north. This side was considered the "unfortunate" side. On the contrary, the abode of death in Edda (Nastrand) has a door on the north side. With this unusual location of the doors, our hut pretends to be an entrance to another kingdom. The dwelling of death has an entrance from the side of death.

The hut in women's fairy tales has some features. The girl, before going to the yaga, comes to her aunt, and she warns her about what she will see in the hut and how to behave. This auntie is clearly an introduced character. We saw above that the hero himself always knows how to behave and what to do in the hut. Outwardly, such knowledge is not motivated by anything, it is motivated, as we will see, internally.

An artistic instinct compels the narrator to motivate this knowledge and introduce an aunt-counselor. This aunt says the following: "There, nephew, there will be a birch tree lashing in your eyes - you tie it with a ribbon; there the gates will creak and clap - you put butter under their heels; there the dogs will tear you - you throw them a loaf of bread. ; there the cat will tear your eyes - you give him the ham "(Af. 103 b).

Consider first the actions of the girl. When she pours oil under the gate, here we see traces of sprinkling. In another text it is clearer: "The door was sprinkled with water" (Hood 59). We have already seen that the hero is blowing into the hut. If she gives the animals guarding the entrance to the hut, meat, bread and butter, then the very products that are given here indicate the later agricultural origin of this detail. The atoning sacrifices to the animals guarding the entrance to Hades (such as Cerberus and others) are discussed in another chapter. Finally, if the tree is tied with a ribbon, then here too it is easy to see the remnants of widespread cult activities. And if a girl performs her actions when returning, and not when entering the hut, then here you can also see signs of late conversion.

To find an explanation for all these phenomena, we will have to turn to the myths and rituals of peoples that are stage by stage at an earlier stage. There we will find no sprinkling, no bread, no butter, no ribbons on the trees. But here we see something different, explaining much in the image of a hut: a hut, standing on the verge of two worlds, in the ritual has the shape of an animal, in myth there is often no hut at all, but only an animal, or the hut has pronounced zoomorphic features. This will explain to us the "chicken legs" and many other details.

In American hunting myths, you can see that in order to get into the hut, you need to know the names of its parts. In the same place, the hut retained clearer traces of zoomorphism, and sometimes an animal appears instead of the hut. This is how the construction of a house is described in the North American legend. The hero descends to earth from the sun. He is the son of the sun. He marries an earthly woman and builds a house. The front and back pillars in his house are men. In the text, their rather intricate names are given (speaker, braggart, etc.). The two front pillars directly support the longitudinal beams that represent the snake, while the rear pillars are covered with a crossbeam that represents the snake or wolf. The door of this house hangs on its hinges from above, and whoever does not run out fast enough, she kills him. "When he finished the house, he made a big party and all the pillars and beams became alive. The snakes began

move their tongues, and the people standing in the back of the house (i.e., the pillars) told him when the evil man entered. The snakes killed him at once "(Boas 1895, 166).

Why is this material important, what does it reveal in the history of the building of our hut? Two things are important here: first, that the parts of the house represent animals, and second, that the parts of the house have their own names.

Let us first dwell on the names. To get into the hut, the hero must know the word. There are materials that show that he must know the name. Let us recall at least the tale of Ali Baba and 40 robbers, where you also need to know the name in order for the doors to open.

This magic of the word turns out to be more ancient than the magic of sacrifice. Therefore, the formula "turn your back to the forest", the formula that opens the door to the newcomer, must be recognized as older than "the butter gave the cat." This magic of words or names was preserved with particular clarity in the Egyptian funeral cult. "Magic was a means on the path of the deceased, which opened the doors of otherworldly abodes for him and ensured his afterlife," says Turaev (Turaev 1920, 56). In the 127th chapter of the "Book of the Dead" it is said: "We will not let you in," say the locks of this door, "until you tell us our name." "I will not let you pass me," says the left abutment of the door, "until you tell me my name." The right abutment says the same. The deceased mentions the names of each part of the door, and they are sometimes quite intricate. "I will not let you pass through me," says the threshold, "until you tell me my name." "I will not open for you," says the lock of the door, "until you tell me my name." The hinges, jambs and floor say the same. And at the end: "You know me, come in." We see in what detail all parts of the door are listed, so as not to miss a single one. Obviously, special significance was attributed to this rite, the rite of naming, that is, opening doors.

It is known that along with this, sacrifice and sprinkling are already widely featured in agricultural Egypt.

All these materials show that the hut in the earlier stages guards the entrance to the realm of the dead, and that the hero either utters a magic word that opens him the entrance to another realm, or makes sacrifices.

The second side of the matter is the animal nature of the hut. To understand it, you need to take a closer look at the rite. A hut, a hut or a hut is the same constant feature of the ceremony, like a forest. This hut was in the depths of the forest, in a remote and secret place. Sometimes it was specially lined up for this purpose, often the neophytes themselves did it. In addition to being located in

forest, there are a few more typical features her: she often has the appearance of an animal. Doors especially often have an animal appearance. Further, it is surrounded by a fence. Skulls are sometimes displayed on these fences. And, finally, the path leading to this hut is sometimes mentioned. Here are some sayings: “Here the youth, during the initiation ceremony, go to the hut in the forest, where they are believed to communicate with the spirits” (Loeb 256). "The place where the hut is located is surrounded by a high and dense hedge, inside which only certain people are allowed to visit" (Parkinson 72). "In the Quat cult on Bank Island, a kind of enclosure is made in a secluded place by means of a reed fence, the two ends of which overhang and form an entrance. This is called the mouth of a shark. On Seram, the neophyte is said to be swallowed by the mouth." There the entrance is called "the mouth of a crocodile, and the initiates are said to have torn them open" (Loeb 257, 261). "To the side, in the forest, at a distance of 100 meters from the place of the dance, there was actually" pal na bata ". This is the only building that I saw ... it was surrounded by dense thickets on all sides, and a narrow path wound through them so narrow that one could only be bent over to get through "(Parldnson 606). The structure in question stood on carved pillars. Frobenius was especially concerned with the problem of turtles, and there is no need to write out his materials here. The cases presented here are not only a description of the house, but also show one of its functions. Here the hero has to be swallowed and eaten. We will not go into the interpretation of this rite here - it will be given elsewhere (see below, Chapter VII). But the yaga, both in its dwelling and in its words, seems to be a cannibal. "There was a dense forest near this house, and there was a hut in the forest in a clearing, and Baba Yaga lived in the hut; she did not let anyone near her, and ate people like chickens" (Af. 104). "The fence around the hut is made of human bones, human skulls with eyes stick out on the fence; instead of faith * at the gate - human feet, instead of locks - hands, instead of a lock - a mouth with sharp teeth" (104). That the door of the hut bites, that is, it represents a mouth or mouth, we have already seen above. Thus, we see that this type of hut corresponds to the hut in which the circumcision and consecration were performed. This hut-beast is gradually losing its animal appearance. Doors have the greatest resistance:

they retain their mouth-like appearance for the longest time. "The door to Koma-koa's room was closing and opening like a mouth." Or, an eagle stands in front of the house: "Beware! Whenever the eagle opens its

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* Vereya is a bolt.

beak, quickly jump one at a time! "Or:" First you have to go past the mass of rats, and then past the snakes. Rats will want to tear you apart, snakes will threaten to swallow you. If you happily walk past them, the door will bite you "(Boas 1895, 239, 253, 118). This strongly reminds us of the admonition of our aunt in our fairy tale. which once stood such structures. This also explains the animals guarding the entrance to it. We have here the same phenomenon that is observed in the process of anthropomorphization of the god-animals. What once played the role of God himself, later becomes his attribute (the eagle of Zeus and We have the same thing here: what was once the hut itself (animal) becomes an attribute of the hut and duplicates it, is carried out to the exit.

In presenting this motive, we went from new (i.e., fabulous) material to material of a transitional nature and ended with an indication of the rite. The conclusion can be made upside-down. It cannot be said that everything here was already clear and definitive and fully clarified. But some connections can still be felt. The most ancient substratum can be considered the structure of the animal-shaped hut during the initiation rite. In this rite, the initiate, as it were, descended into the area of ​​death through this hut. From here the hut has the character of a passage to another kingdom. In myths, the zoomorphic character of the hut is already lost, but the door, and in the Russian fairy tale the pillars, retain their zoomorphic appearance. This rite was created by the tribal system and reflects hunting interests and ideas. With the emergence of a state like Egypt, there are no more traces of initiation. There is a door - an entrance to another kingdom, and this door must be able to conjure the deceased. At this stage, sprinkling and sacrifice appear, also preserved by the tale. The forest - originally an indispensable condition of the ceremony - is also subsequently transferred to another world. The fairy tale is the last link in this development.

V. Ya. Propp in his work " Historical roots fairy tale"writes:

"Walking" where the eyes are looking "and casually raising his gaze, Ivan sees an extraordinary spectacle - a hut on chicken legs.

Some fairy tales report that this hut "revolves", that is, it revolves around its axis. "A hut stands in front of her on chicken legs and turns incessantly" (Af. 235). "There is also a whirligig" (K. 7). This view stems from a misunderstanding of the word "turns". Some fairy tales specify: when necessary, it turns. It turns, however, not by itself. The hero must make her turn, and for this you need to know and pronounce the word. "According to the old saying, according to the mother's saying:" Hut, hut, "Ivan said, blowing on her," stand with your back to the forest, in front of me. " . 560). "Hut, hut, turn to the forest with your eyes, and turn the gates to me: I will not live forever, but wear one butt. Let the passer-by" (K. 7).

What's going on here? Why do you need to turn the hut? Why can't you just enter? Often in front of Ivan there is a smooth wall - "no windows without doors" - the entrance is from the opposite side. "This hut has neither windows nor doors - nothing" (17). But why not go around the huts and enter from the other side? Obviously, this is not possible. Obviously, the hut stands on some kind of visible or invisible edge, over which Ivan cannot step over in any way. You can get to this edge only through, through the hut, and the hut must be turned. The open side of the hut faces the thirtieth kingdom, and the closed side faces the kingdom accessible to Ivan. That is why Ivan cannot go around the hut, but turns it around. This hut is a sentry post. This borderline position of the hut is sometimes emphasized: "Behind that steppe there is a dense forest, and near the forest itself there is a hut" (140). "There is a hut - and there is no further way - it is pitch darkness; nothing to be seen" (272). Sometimes she stands on the seashore, sometimes - at the ditch, over which you have to jump. From further development the tale shows that the yaga is sometimes set to guard the border by the masters standing over it, who scold her for letting Ivan pass. "How dare you let the villain go to my kingdom?" (172) or: "What are you assigned for?" (176). To the Tsar Maiden's question "Has anyone come here?"

In explaining the image of a revolving hut, one can recall that in ancient Scandinavia, doors were never made to the north. This side was considered the "unfortunate" side. On the contrary, the abode of death in Edda (Nastrand) has a door on the north side. With this unusual location of the doors, our hut pretends to be an entrance to another kingdom. The dwelling of death has an entrance from the side of death.

We will follow the actions of the hero further. The hut turned, and the hero enters it. He doesn't see anything yet. But he hears: "Phew, phew, phew! Before the Russian spirit had not heard by hearing, by sight it had not been seen; now the Russian spirit sits down on a spoon, it rolls into its mouth itself" (Aph. 137). "Russian spirit to my forest zashol!" (North 7). Or, in short: "Fu, the stink of a Russian bone" (Aph. 139). It is necessary to dwell on this detail. It is very essential.

Afanasyev was not mistaken in asserting that the smell of Ivan is the smell of a person, not a Russian. But his statement can be clarified. Ivan smells not just like a person, but like alive human. The dead, disembodied do not smell, the living smell, the dead recognize the living by their smell. This smell of living in the highest degree disgusted with the dead. Apparently, here the relations of the world of the living with the opposite sign were transferred to the world of the dead. The smell of the living is just as disgusting and terrible to the dead, as the smell of the dead is terrible and disgusting to the living. As Frazer says, the living insult dead topics that they are alive (Frazer 1933, 143). Accordingly, in Dolgan folklore: "They killed that person because he came to her with habits, with the words of his own world" (Dolgan folklore 169). Therefore, heroes who want to penetrate into another world are sometimes preliminarily cleansed of the smell. "The two brothers went to the forest and remained hidden there for a month. Every day they bathed in the lake and washed pine branches until they became completely clean and did not spread the smell of a person at all. Then they climbed Mount Kulenas and found there the home of the god of thunder "(Boas 1895, 96, cf41).

All this shows that the smell of Ivan is the smell of a living person trying to penetrate the realm of the dead. If this smell is disgusting to the yaga, then this is because the dead generally experience terror and fear of the living. Not a single living person should cross the cherished threshold. V American myth the dead are so frightened when they see a living person in their country that they shout: "Here he is, here he is" and hide under each other, forming a high pile (Dorsey 1904, 75). There is some evidence that in the rite of passage neophytes were subjected to ablution to free themselves from the "female scent" (attested in the former British New Guinea (Nevermann 1933, 66)).

When Ivan arrives, Yaga is in the hut. First of all, it lies. She lies either on the stove, or on a bench, or on the floor. Further, she occupies the entire hut. "Head in front, leg in one corner, another in the other." (Aph. 102). "On the stove lies a Baba Yaga, a bone leg, from corner to corner, his nose has grown into the ceiling" (137). But how to understand "the nose has grown into the ceiling"? And why does the yaga occupy the whole hut? After all, she is not described anywhere and is not referred to as a giant. And, therefore, it is not large, but the hut is small. Yaga resembles a corpse, a corpse in a cramped coffin or in a special cell where they are buried or left to die. She's a dead man.

If this observation is correct, then it will help us understand one constant feature of the yaga - bone-footedness. Bone-footedness is due to the fact that the yaga never walks. It either flies or lies, that is, it externally manifests itself as a dead man.

So, Yaga recognizes Ivan as alive by his smell. But there is another reason why the yaga perceives Ivan by smell. Although this is never said in the Russian fairy tale, it can still be established that it blind that she does not see Ivan, but recognizes him by smell. Likewise, in Gogol's "Viy" the devils do not see a Cossack. Devils who can see the living are like shamans among them, the same as living shamans who see the dead, which ordinary mortals do not see. They call such a shaman. This is Viy (cf. Aph. 137, 3B 100). "

Now let's summarize. Yaga is a shaman lying in a wooden coffin in the forest. This coffin is a tree trunk, sawn lengthwise into two halves, hollowed out with an ax inside. The body of the yaga was placed in one half, and the other half was closed on top. Then two or four were cut down in the forest. standing trees at a height of approximately three meters, made a platform on the cut trees and fixed the coffin on this platform. That, in principle, is the whole "hut on chicken legs." Hence, it is clear where Baba Yaga got the stupa: it is nothing more than a coffin in the form of a round deck.

Not everyone knows today, but distant ancestors European Slavs and their neighbors once, even before the funeral pyres, buried their dead In a similar way... This is where the Russians come from folk tales, for example, about a princess sleeping in a crystal coffin, suspended on chains. And if we recall from this angle the description of the "hut on chicken legs" and "Baba Yaga - a bone leg", in which "the nose is rested on the ceiling, the head is on the wall, the legs are on the door", then it becomes clear that we are talking about the air burial.

Our distant ancestors buried the dead in hollowed oak logs - stupas (from here the expression "give an oak" or "give an oak ahead of time", That is, to die). Coffins-stupas existed until early XVIII century. In 1703, Peter I issued a decree prohibiting on pain death penalty chop down oak wood. (Only the Old Believers stubbornly hammered the oak for their dead)

With the spread of Christianity, this ancient pagan tradition among the Slavs it stopped, and then burials in hollowed-out logs were replaced by funerals in coffins made of planks. But among the Siberian peoples, this tradition has been preserved for a very long time.

For the construction of the arangas, the Sakha (as well as the Evenks, Yukagirs, Evens) chose four adjacent trees, sawed off the tops and connected them with crossbeams at a height of about 2 meters. On these crossbeams, the coffin was installed, which was a hollowed-out deck of two halves of a solid and fairly thick trunk. Special clamps and wedges tightly pressed the upper part of the deck to the lower one and fixed the entire coffin motionlessly on the platform. Sometimes, to make the roots of trees rot less, they were exposed, removing the sod from above and really turning them into "chicken legs". Samples of such burials can be seen in the Friendship Museum under open air in with. Sottins of the Ust-Aldan ulus.

Powerful shamans, as noted by R.I. Bravina, were buried by the Yakuts three times. “Relatives, as the shaman's grave became dilapidated and destroyed, had to“ raise his bones ”three times, that is, repeat the funeral three times. According to legends, at the same time, arangas and clothing were renewed, horses of a certain color were sacrificed. The ceremony was carried out with the mediation of three, six and nine shamans. Such a rite was preserved among the Yakuts until the 20th century, even isolated cases of repeated burial of a shaman are known, committed in the 30s.

I. S. Gurvich notes that "until recently, in the upper reaches of the Omolon, along the Bytantai (Sakkyryr region of Yakutia), there were still arangases - burials on pillars." He, according to his informants, the Tyugasirs (Lamunkha group of Evens), writes that they were buried in storage sheds before the Evens were baptized, that is, before mid XIX v. “Shamans were later buried not in the ground, but in saibas - ground log cabins in the form of a small box with a roof; a coffin was placed inside the log house. A destroyed saiba has been preserved near the village of Tyugasirsky nasleg. The deceased had a spear, a bow, arrows, a staff. "

In the Russian North, the custom of burying the dead in domina, which is functionally the same Evenk sayyba, or Yakut arangas, or dolmen, or "a hut on chicken legs", has been preserved for a long time.

And the Old Believers still have this ancient tradition.

These are Karelian dominoes.

They are already on the ground.

And these "houses of the dead" in the Arkhangelsk region have already half-grown into the ground.

With the spread of Christianity, the dead began to be interred, but in the North, the custom of construction is still preserved. tombstones in the form of dominoes.

Hegumen cemetery on about. Balaam

It is known that a long time ago in the territories of the Upper Volga, Ob and Moscow - rivers lived the Finno - Ugric tribes - the ancestors of the annalistic Mary and Vesi. Their culture is named after the settlement near the village. Dyakovo, located near Kolomenskoye (a manor in Moscow), which was investigated in 1864 by D. i. samokvass and in 1889-90. v. and. Sizov.

For a long time remained unknown funeral rite Dyakovtsev. Scientists have studied dozens of monuments, but there was not a single burial ground among them. Funeral rites are known to science, after which practically nothing remains of the ashes, or the burials have no external signs. The chances of finding traces of such burials are almost zero or largely depend on chance.

In 1934 in the Yaroslavl Volga region during the excavations of the Dyakovsky settlement of birch forests, an unusual structure was found. Once it was a small log house, which contained the cremated remains of 5-6 people, men, women and children. For a long time this monument remained the only one of its kind. More than thirty years passed, and in 1966 another "House of the Dead" was found, and not on the upper Volga, but in the Moscow region, near Zvenigorod, during the excavation of a settlement near the Savvino-Storozhevsky monastery.

According to researchers, it was once a rectangular log building about 2 m high with a gable roof. An entrance was made on the south side, inside there was a hearth at the entrance. In the "House of the Dead" were found the remains of at least 24 cremations and, as in the settlement of birch forests, fragments of vessels, jewelry and weights of the "Dyakova type". In several cases, the ashes were placed in vessels - urns. Some of the urns were badly burned on one side, it is possible that during the funeral ceremony they were near the fire.

The custom of building log grave structures is not unique. It is widely known for numerous archaeological and ethnographic data in the north of eastern Europe and Asia, and in some areas this tradition existed until the Xviii century. and even later. The funeral rite most likely looked like this: the body of the deceased was burned at the stake somewhere outside the settlement. Such a rite is called cremation on the side by archaeologists. After the ceremony, the cremated remains were placed in the "House of the Dead", a kind of ancestral tomb, usually located in a place remote from housing.

As in the previous case, the "House of the Dead" was discovered right on the territory of the settlement, which is rather strange for a burial structure. However, according to the researchers, the collective tomb could have been built there when the settlement was no longer used as a settlement.

But the most interesting thing is that Russians have been familiar with these "Houses of the Dead" since childhood.

The hut on chicken legs in the folk fantasy of the Muscovites was modeled after the pre-Slavic (Finnish) churchyard - a small "House of the Dead". The house was placed on supports - pillars. In the "House of the Dead" Muscovites put the incinerated ashes of the deceased (like the owner of the hut Baba Yaga always wants to put Ivan in the oven and roast him there. world of the dead, a means of passage in underworld... That's why fairytale hero Muscovites constantly come to the hut on chicken legs in order to get into another dimension of time and into the reality of not living people, but wizards. There is no other way there.

Chicken feet are just a "Translation Error". "Chicken (Chicken) Legs" Muscovites (Slavic Finno - Ugrians) called hemp, on which the hut was placed, that is, the house of Baba Yaga originally stood only on smoked stumps. Most likely, these stumps were fumigated to prevent insects and rodents from penetrating into the "House of the Dead".

One of the two surviving novellas "On the Beginning of Moscow" tells that one of the princes, fleeing in the forest from the sons of a boyar of a handful, took refuge in a "log house" where "some dead man" was buried.

The description of how the old woman is placed in the hut is also significant: "The teeth are on the Shelf, and the nose is in the Ceiling Vros", "Baba Yaga is lying on the stove with a bone leg, from corner to corner, she put her teeth on the shelf", "in front of the head, in the corner leg, in the other another ". All descriptions and behavior of the wicked old woman differ in canonical predestination. This cannot but suggest that the mythological character is somehow inspired by reality.

Is this not similar to the impressions of a person who peeped through a crack into the small "House of the Dead" described above, where the remains of the deceased lie? But why then Baba Yaga - female image? This becomes clear if we assume that the funeral rituals were performed by clergy women - priestesses.

Russians are not Slavs.

Russian scientists with enviable stubbornness defend fantasies about the allegedly "Slavic" origin of the Russians, and therefore they call "Slavic" both the tales of Baba Yaga and the rite of the "house of the dead". For example, a well-known expert in the field of mythology A. Barkova writes in the encyclopedia "Slavic Mythology and Epic" (article "Beliefs of the Ancient Slavs":

"Her Hut" on chicken legs "is depicted standing either in the thicket of the forest (the center of another world), then at the edge, but then the entrance to it is from the side of the forest, that is, from the world of death. pillars ", that is, fumigated with smoke, pillars on which the Slavs put a" hut of death "- a small log house with the ashes of the deceased inside (such a funeral rite existed among the ancient Slavs back in the 6th-9th centuries. Baba Yaga inside such a hut seemed to be alive dead - she lay motionless and did not see a person who came from the world of the living (the living do not see the dead, the dead do not see the living.

She learned about his arrival by the smell - "Smells of the Russian Spirit" (the smell of the living is unpleasant for the dead. A person who meets Baba Yaga's hut on the border of the world of life and death, as a rule, goes to another world to free the captive princess. to join the world of the dead. ”Usually he asks the yaga to feed him, and she gives him the food of the dead.

There is another option - to be eaten by the yaga and thus find yourself in the world of the dead. Having passed the tests in Baba Yaga's hut, a person turns out to belong simultaneously to both worlds, is endowed with many magical qualities, subjugates various inhabitants of the world of the dead, overcomes the terrible monsters inhabiting it, wins a magical beauty from them and becomes a king. "

These are fictions, the Slavs have nothing to do with Baba Yaga and her "House of the Dead".

I. P. Shaskolsky wrote in the essay "to study primitive beliefs Karel (funeral cult) (yearbook of the Museum of the History of Religion and Atheism, 1957. M. - L .:

“For the Study of Primitive Beliefs, the most interesting are Karelian ideas about the Burial Building as a“ house for the dead. ”Such ideas were present in antiquity among many peoples, but on the Karelian material they can be traced especially clearly.

As already mentioned, in the Karelian burial grounds, a frame of one or several crowns was usually placed in each burial pit; the log house was usually about 2 m long and (if the grave was intended for one deceased) 0.6 m wide. In some cases, a plank roof was installed over the log house. At the same time, the entire structure, together with the roof, remained below the surface of the earth. In open v. and. ravdonikas burial grounds of the 11th - 13th centuries. On the rivers Vidlitsa and Tuloksa (near the northeastern shore of Lake Ladoga), which apparently belonged to the Karelians - Livviks, there was also a burial ceremony in a log house, with the only difference that the log house with burial was not lowered into the burial pit, but was placed on surface of the earth, and a low mound was poured over it (v. I. ravdonikas. Monuments of the era of the emergence of feudalism in Karelia and the southeastern Ladoga area of ​​Leningrad, 1934, p. 5.).

In its most developed form (found in several graves), this structure had not only a roof, but also a floor of planks, instead of a floor at the bottom of a log house, sometimes an animal skin was spread or a layer of clay was laid (imitation of an adobe floor. peasant house; in such a "House" should, obviously, flow afterlife deceased.

Similar ideas can be traced in Karelia according to ethnographic data.

In remote areas of northern Karelia at the end of the 19th century. one could see in the old cemeteries small log cabins "Houses for the Dead", brought to the surface of the earth; these houses were a blank frame of several crowns and were equipped with a gable roof. A carved wooden post was often attached to the ridge of the roof, which in turn had a small gable roof. In some cases, this structure was located over the graves of two or more relatives; then the number of ridge posts indicated the number of burials.

Sometimes this post was placed next to the log house. With the passage of time, the ceremony, apparently, became somewhat simpler. Instead of a log house with a post, only one post was erected over the grave, which became the symbol of the "House of the Dead".

Such grave pillars with gable roofs and rich ornamentation were widespread in Karelia back in the 19th century. in many places, under pressure from the Orthodox clergy, the pillars were replaced new form gravestone monuments - crosses with gable roofs (V.I.

Another line of development of the same rite can be traced. Already in the XII - Xiii centuries, instead of arranging the whole "House for the Dead", for the most part were limited to a symbolic image of this house in the form of a log house from one crown. The custom of lowering a log house from one crown into the grave was preserved in certain regions of Karelia until late XIX v. with the only difference that the frame was not surrounded by one burial, but all the burials of one family. In other areas, instead of a grave frame, they began to surround the grave with a crown of logs lying on the surface of the earth. The grave of the legendary Karelian hero rockach, located at the Tik cemetery, is surrounded on the surface of the earth by a fence of nine logs, that is, a real log house. "

Karelian old cemetery.

As we can see, these are the traditions not of the "Ancient Slavs", but of the Karelians and other Finns. The ancestors of the Russians - the Finno - Ugrians of Muscovy - buried their dead in the "Houses of the Dead", which seemed wild for the Kiev princes who seized the forest. Bulgarian priests who came from Kiev princes, fought with this rite, but still the Russians put up funeral crosses with gable roofs to this day. This Russian tradition clearly reflects the Finnish origin of the Russian ethnos.

You are mistaken if you think that a hut on chicken legs is primordial Russian concept from fairy tales. Imagine my surprise when in the mountains above Montreux I met a real fairytale hut. On legs. Look at what a Swiss copy looks like and I ask you to express your versions of the purpose of such a structure.

Please note that the hut has no windows. Rather, they are, but boarded up. It turns out it is not for housing? Or is it for housing, but now they just removed the windows? Was this separate building used as a barn? Considering that the hut stands in the mountains at an altitude of 1,500 meters, then we can assume that the piles are in order to prevent snow from blocking the entrance. But the rest of the houses are not on stilts.

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My way lay in the town of Leisen, and in the town of amazing huts there was a whole street, though already three-story. They are different from traditional alpine houses big amount carved elements and light color wood. The price of these old houses is not at all like huts. Such a house, judging by the ads in the local real estate office, costs from 1 million Swiss francs for the smallest and twice as much for the large ones. There are restaurants on the ground floor of such huts, and people live higher up.

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A little more from the Internet:

What versions of the building on chicken legs?

published on

In the Museum of the History of Moscow, in addition to all spoon-scraps, there is an exposition, which presents the reconstruction of the so-called "house of the dead" of Dyakov's culture.

It is known that a long time ago in the territories of the upper Volga, Ob and Moskva rivers, there lived the Finno-Ugric tribes - the ancestors of the annalistic Mary and Vesi. Their culture is named after the settlement near the village. Dyakovo, located near Kolomenskoye (a manor in Moscow), which was investigated in 1864 by D.Ya. Samokvasov and in 1889-90. IN AND. Sizov.

For a long time, the funeral rite of the Dyakovites remained unknown. Scientists have studied dozens of monuments, but among them there was not a single burial ground. Funeral rites are known to science, after which practically nothing remains of the ashes, or the burials have no external signs. The chances of finding traces of such burials are almost zero or largely depend on chance.

In 1934 in the Yaroslavl Volga region during the excavations of the Dyakovsky settlement of Bereznyaki, an unusual structure was found. Once it was a small log house, which contained the cremated remains of 5-6 people, men, women and children. For a long time this monument remained one of a kind. More than thirty years passed, and in 1966 another "house of the dead" was found, and not on the Upper Volga, but in the Moscow region, near Zvenigorod, during the excavation of a settlement near the Savvino-Storozhevsky monastery.

According to researchers, it was once a rectangular log building about 2 m high with a gable roof. An entrance was made on the south side, inside there was a hearth at the entrance. In the "house of the dead" were found the remains of at least 24 cremations and, as in the settlement of Bereznyaki, fragments of vessels, jewelry and weights of the "clerk's type". In several cases, the ashes were placed in urn vessels. Some of the urns were badly burned on one side, it is possible that during the funeral ceremony they were near the fire.

The custom of building log grave structures is not unique. It is widely known for numerous archaeological and ethnographic data in the north. of Eastern Europe and Asia, and in some areas this tradition existed until the 18th century. and even later. The funeral rite most likely looked like this: the body of the deceased was burned at the stake somewhere outside the settlement. This rite is called by archaeologists cremation on the side. After the ceremony, the cremated remains were placed in the "house of the dead", a kind of ancestral tomb, usually located in a place remote from housing.

As in the previous case, the “house of the dead” was discovered right on the territory of the settlement, which is rather strange for a burial structure. However, according to the researchers, the collective tomb could have been built there when the settlement was no longer used as a settlement.

But the most interesting thing is that Russians have been familiar with these "houses of the dead" since childhood ...

BABA YAGA SUPPLY

"House of the Dead" - this is the very hut of Baba Yaga, on those very chicken legs! True, they are actually TICK. The ancient funeral rite included the smoking of the legs of a "hut" without windows and doors, into which a corpse or what was left of it was placed.

The hut on chicken legs in the folk fantasy of the Muscovites was modeled after the pre-Slavic (Finnish) churchyard - a small “house of the dead”. The house was placed on pillars. The Muscovites put the incinerated ashes of the deceased in the "house of the dead" (just like the owner of the hut, Baba Yaga, always wants to put Ivan in the oven and roast him there). The coffin itself, the domina or the graveyard-cemetery from such houses were presented as a window, an opening into the world of the dead, a means of passage to the underworld. That is why the fabulous hero of the Muscovites constantly comes to the hut on chicken legs in order to get into another dimension of time and into the reality of not living people, but wizards. There is no other way there.

Chicken legs are just a "translation mistake". The Muscovites (Slavicized Finno-Ugric) called the hemp on which the hut was placed, that is, the house of Baba Yaga originally stood only on smoked stumps. Most likely, these stumps were fumigated to prevent insects and rodents from penetrating into the "house of the dead".

One of the two surviving novellas "On the Beginning of Moscow" tells that one of the princes, fleeing in the forest from the sons of the boyar Kuchka, took refuge in a "log house" where "some dead man" was buried.

The description of how the old woman is placed in the hut is also significant: "Teeth are on the shelf, and her nose has grown into the ceiling", "Baba Yaga is lying on the stove with a bone leg, from corner to corner, put her teeth on the shelf", "Head in front, in the corner leg, in the other another. " All descriptions and behavior of the evil old woman are canonically given. This cannot but suggest that the mythological character is somehow inspired by reality.

Is this not similar to the impressions of a person who looked through a crack into the small "house of the dead" described above, where the remains of the deceased lie? But why, then, is Baba Yaga a female image? This becomes clear if we assume that the funeral rituals were performed by the clergy's women priestesses.

RUSSIANS ARE NOT SLAVS

Russian scientists with enviable stubbornness defend fantasies about the allegedly "Slavic" origin of the Russians, and therefore call "Slavic" both the tales of Baba Yaga and the rite of the "house of the dead". For example, a well-known expert in the field of mythology A. Barkova writes in the encyclopedia “ Slavic mythology and epic "(article" Beliefs of the ancient Slavs "):

“Her hut“ on chicken legs ”is depicted standing either in the thicket of the forest (the center of another world), or at the edge, but then the entrance to it is from the side of the forest, that is, from the world of death. The name "chicken legs" most likely came from the "chicken legs", that is, fumigated with smoke, pillars on which the Slavs put the "hut of death" - a small log house with the ashes of the deceased inside (such a funeral rite existed among the ancient Slavs back in the 6th-9th centuries. ). Baba Yaga inside such a hut seemed like a living corpse - she lay motionless and did not see a person who came from the world of the living (the living do not see the dead, the dead do not see the living).

She learned about his arrival by the smell - "it smells of the Russian spirit" (the smell of the living is unpleasant for the dead). A person who meets Baba Yaga's hut on the border of the world of life and death, as a rule, goes to another world to free the captive princess. To do this, he must join the world of the dead. Usually he asks Yaga to feed him, and she gives him the food of the dead.

There is another option - to be eaten by Yaga and thus end up in the world of the dead. Having passed the tests in Baba Yaga's hut, a person turns out to belong simultaneously to both worlds, is endowed with many magical qualities, subjugates various inhabitants of the world of the dead, overcomes the terrible monsters inhabiting it, wins a magic beauty from them and becomes a king. "

These are fictions, the Slavs have nothing to do with Baba Yaga and her "house of the dead".

I.P. Shaskolsky wrote in the essay “Towards the Study of the Primitive Beliefs of the Karelians (Burial Cult) (Yearbook of the Museum of the History of Religion and Atheism, 1957. M.-L.):

“For the study of primitive beliefs, the most interesting are the Karelians' ideas about the burial structure as a“ house for the dead ”. Many peoples had such ideas in antiquity, but they can be traced especially clearly on the Karelian material.

As already mentioned, in the Karelian burial grounds, a frame of one or several crowns was usually placed in each burial pit; the frame was usually about 2 m long and (if the grave was intended for one deceased) 0.6 m wide. In some cases, a plank roof was installed over the log house. At the same time, the entire structure, together with the roof, remained below the surface of the earth. In the discovered V.I. Ravdonikas burial grounds of the XI-XIII centuries. on the rivers Vidlitsa and Tuloksa (near the northeastern shore of Lake Ladoga), which apparently belonged to the Livvik Karelians, there was also a burial rite in a log house, with the only difference that a log house with burial was not lowered into the burial pit, but was placed on surface of the earth, and a low mound was poured over it (V.I.

In its most developed form (found in several graves), this structure had not only a roof, but also a floor of planks; instead of a floor at the bottom of a log house, sometimes an animal skin was spread out or a layer of clay was laid (imitation of an adobe floor). This building was a direct resemblance to an ordinary peasant house; in such a "house" the afterlife of the deceased was supposed to have flowed.

Similar ideas can be traced in Karelia and ethnographic data.

In remote areas of northern Karelia at the end of the 19th century. one could see in the old cemeteries small log houses for the dead, brought to the surface of the earth; these houses were a blank frame of several crowns and were equipped with a gable roof. A carved wooden post was often attached to the ridge of the roof, which in turn had a small gable roof. In some cases, this structure was located over the graves of two or more relatives; then the number of ridge posts indicated the number of burials.

Sometimes this post was placed next to the log house. With the passage of time, the ceremony, apparently, became somewhat simpler. Instead of a log house with a post, only one post was erected over the grave, which became the symbol of the "house of the dead."

Such grave pillars with gable roofs and rich ornamentation were widespread in Karelia back in the 19th century. In many places, under pressure from the Orthodox clergy, the pillars were replaced by a new form of tombstones - crosses with gable roofs

Another line of development of the same rite can be traced. Already in the XII-XIII centuries, instead of constructing a whole "house for the dead", for the most part, they were limited to a symbolic image of this house in the form of a log house from one crown. The custom of lowering a single-crown frame into the grave remained in certain regions of Karelia until the end of the 19th century. The only difference is that the log house surrounded not one burial, but all the burials of one family. In other areas, instead of a grave frame, they began to surround the grave with a crown of logs lying on the surface of the earth. The grave of the legendary Karelian hero Rokach, located at the Tikskoye cemetery, is surrounded on the surface of the earth by a fence of nine logs, that is, a real log house ”.

As you can see, these are not the traditions of the "ancient Slavs", but the Karelians and other Finns. The ancestors of the Russians - the Finno-Ugrians of Muscovy - buried their dead in the "houses of the dead", which seemed wild to the Kiev princes who seized Zalesye. The Bulgarian priests, who came with the Kiev princes, fought with this rite, but all the same, the Russians still erect funeral crosses with gable roofs to this day. This Russian tradition clearly reflects the Finnish origin of the Russian ethnos.