Afanasyev and Propp: How Baba Yaga Was Made
The now-common claim that her hut on chicken legs marks an initiation threshold is not folk tradition. It comes from Vladimir Propp's historical theory, published in 1946, that wondertales preserve memories of ancient initiation rites, and it is now repeated in popular esoteric writing as though it were ancient folklore.
Alexander Afanasyev, Narodnye russkie skazki (1855–63); Vladimir Propp, Istoricheskie korni volshebnoi skazki (1946)
The two nineteenth- and twentieth-century Russian scholars whose collected tales and analysis fixed the modern image of the witch Baba Yaga.
