Every child knows about Baba Jaga z £ysej Góry and now you'll know too. :)
A fragment taken from the link below. I couldn't possibly describe any better the monster I was scared with as a kid. Especially living in or nearby of huge kieleckie forests and not too far from Lysa Gora. Speaking of a childhood trauma...hehehe :) Just kidding, being sniffed by a fox was much, much scarier!
"Perhaps the most well known figure appearing in Polish folk tales is
BabaYaga/Jedza/Wiedzma/Czarownica. She is an old witch with magical powers.
In the middle of the forest, she sits and spins in her hut supported by bird's feet. Her thread is made of bones and entrails of the dead and her hut is surrounded with a fence of human skulls and bones. The house itself seems to be made
out of parts of the human body. She rides in a mortar, pushing herself along with a pestle,
and sweeping with a birch broom. The mortar and the pestle are simultaneously
instruments of destruction and nurture, serving both to grind grain and prepare flax for
spinning cloth. They also symbolize human sexual organs. Riding the pestle or the broom
(in Polish folklore), Yaga rules over the masculine generative organ. BabaYaga cooks
and eats human flesh, her cannibalistic tendencies recalling memories of human sacrifice.
She is a birth and a death giver. In order to achieve whatever she
considers necessary for life on earth to continue, she may transform into a bird, a reptile,
or a fish. Just like Mother Earth, she feeds and devours life. Although Baba Yaga-the
old hag--has been demonized, in folk tales we can still perceive her positive qualities. In
fact, she is "good" and "bad,' young and old, concurrently. She devours children, but she
helps couples to reunite; she appears as a horrifying, bird of prey-like old woman, but she
is also the beautiful and wise princess, or the young maiden..."
If you want to read more (28 pages) of other interesitng stuff.
hichumanities.org/AHproceedings/Malgorzata%20Oleszkiewicz.pdf
czarownica.jpg
