Baba Yaga Laid an Egg

The comb is an important object in all mythologies. It occurs in Slavic mythologies as a deadly object, a female symbol, a means of healing and a magical means of liberation. Precisely because of the magical properties that have been given to it, the comb is associated with rules and taboos. For example, a comb must not be exposed to the gaze of the household, left out on the table or other such places, otherwise ‘the angel won’t come’ (angel ne sjadet). Combs have medicinal and protective effects: if somebody was losing his hair, people would comb his scalp with a comb for carding yarn. The comb (and bobbin) were kept in cradles so that the infants would sleep soundly. The South Slavs had a habit of wedging one comb into another, which – in an era without antibiotics! – served as a defence against sickness.

In ceremonies linked with childbirth, a comb served as a symbol of women’s destiny. A newborn boy’s umbilical cord was cut with an axe, but with girls, it was cut with a comb. At christenings, the midwife would hand a male infant to its godfather across the threshold, and a girl across a comb.

Combs were used for prophesying. Girls would place a comb under their pillow when they went to bed with the words ‘Destined one, come here and comb my hair!’ (Suzhenyi, ryazhenyi, prihodi golovu chesat!). If the maiden then dreamed of a young man, it was believed that he would be her chosen one. This is why young girls were given the gift of a comb at weddings.

A comb that was used to comb the hair of a deceased person was held to be ‘unclean’; it would be thrown away in a river, so that death disappeared from the house as soon as possible (chtoby, poskorej uplyla smert), or it would be put in the coffin with the deceased, along with whatever remained of his or her hair.

The towel, linen, kerchief, napkin, shirt, embroidery – all these things are of the highest importance. Vassilisa the Wise, for example, has three crucial possessions which make her strong: a napkin, a comb and a brush.

Sometimes we come across Baba Yaga in fairytales with a bobbin in her hand, and she often gives the heroine of the tale a weaver’s task to do.[43] What is more, if Baba Yaga is well disposed, she will give the heroines gifts beyond price: a golden ring, bobbin and embroidery frame.[44] The bobbins, the hanks of yarn and the yarn itself connect Baba Yaga with ancient Ananka, who rules the world and every single destiny in it. The yarn also connects Baba Yaga with the Moirai, who spin human destiny: black thread for black destinies and white or gold thread for the lucky ones. Baba Yaga’s balls of thread, which help the heroes to reach their goal, are like the ball that Ariadne gave to Theseus so that he could find his way out of the labyrinth when he had killed the Minotaur. Those weaver’s threads connect Baba Yaga with all those powerful old women who oversee the weaving work that women do.

The weaving, spinning, embroidering and sewing that women do have a ritual-magical significance in many cultures. A specially woven piece of linen has protective powers. During plague or cholera epidemics, old women and widows wove linen and sewed towels from the linen. The towels would be placed in the church, hung up on icons or laid in a ring around the house. The aim of these rituals was to protect the place from sickness.

In Serbia and Romania, old women – usually nine of them – would gather at midnight and weave linen in total silence. They would stitch the linen into a shirt, which the young men would take turns to wear before they went off to war. Donning the shirt was meant to protect them from death. There is a magic shirt in Russian fairytales that makes the hero invulnerable.

Weaving and embroidering are the most important skills in the heroine’s repertoire of accomplishments. Linen, embroidery and embroidered kerchiefs serve as a young girl’s fingerprint, her identity card. Vassilisa the Beautiful weaves linen so fine that it can pass through the eye of a needle. She turns it into shirts for the emperor, who is so delighted by her skill that he has the unknown seamstress brought to him. Then he falls in love with her and marries her.

Weaving is a metaphor for the human lifespan: each of us has as much thread and yarn as has been given to us. In the Russian fairytale called The Witch and the Sun’s Sister, Prince Ivan encounters two old seamstresses on his path, with two wooden chests, and they say: ‘Prince Ivan, we don’t have much time left in this world. When we break all the needles in this chest and use up all the yarn in that chest, death will come for us.’

Remarks