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    House that Stood on Chicken Feet: Magical Creatures, A Weiser Books Collection
    House that Stood on Chicken Feet: Magical Creatures, A Weiser Books Collection
    House that Stood on Chicken Feet: Magical Creatures, A Weiser Books Collection
    Ebook67 pages1 hour

    House that Stood on Chicken Feet: Magical Creatures, A Weiser Books Collection

    By Red Wheel Weiser

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    About this ebook

    Varla Ventura, fan favorite on Huffington Post’s Weird News, frequent guest on Coast to Coast, and bestselling author of The Book of the Bizarre and Beyond Bizarre, introduces a new Weiser Books Collection of forgotten crypto-classics. Magical Creatures is a hair-raising herd of affordable digital editions, curated with Varla’s affectionate and unerring eye for the fantastic.

    Baba Yaga, The Girl Without Hands, and some of the more widely known and perpetually-reimagined terrifying Russian fairy tales of Eastern European folkloric tradition.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRed Wheel Weiser
    Release dateJul 1, 2012
    ISBN9781619400948
    House that Stood on Chicken Feet: Magical Creatures, A Weiser Books Collection

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      Book preview

      House that Stood on Chicken Feet - Red Wheel Weiser

      Terrifying Russian Fairy Tales

      My niece Vivienne is the daughter of my lovely elder sister, Velma, and the result of a very interesting phase of my sister's life in which she fled our tiny foothill hometown of Nevada City, California, and landed in the arms of a vampire in New Orleans. Vivienne never knew her father, as he died before she was born. Though my sister was married in a hoodoo ceremony to mark the significance of their undying love (a ceremony at which I was present: a bit younger, purple-haired, and in head-to-toe funeral garb and heavy eyeliner), she never officially took his name, and she never told Viv what a vampire he truly was (psychic, emotional, and I dare say he dressed the part—in short, a bit of a macabre hunk!). Vivienne is a Ventura through and through—just with something of her father's enchantments about the eyes,. She came to me with the idea for this creepy story collection, and it didn't take much to convince me. One of the stories was an inspiration for a Halloween costume of mine a few years back: The Armless Maiden. Think cardboard wrapped in blood-soaked bandages and a very long straw to knock back the cocktails. (That's commitment!)

      Here is Viv's selection of witchy, twitchy tales from the caverns of Russian folklore. Enjoy!

      VARLA VENTURA

      SAN FRANCISCO,

      2012

      The House that Stood on Chicken Feet

      A few years ago, my Hungarian best friend fell in love with a Russian man, recommended I listen to the song Gloomy Sunday (also known as the Hungarian Suicide Song), and moved to Budapest for a few months, during which time she traveled through eastern Europe and blogged about it so I could live vicariously through her during the cultural experience. Somewhere along the line, sitting at home reading Catherynne M. Valente's Deathless and trying (and failing) to replicate a borscht recipe, I was enlightened as to how dark eastern Europe can be. So often we creepy-obsessed salivate over Ireland's Celts, England's Victorian-era London, and the U.S.'s Salem witches and New Orleans voodoo while we overlook the real ruling culture when it comes to being gothic: Mother Russia.

      In an effort to spread eerie-awareness to the non-Russian world, I've been researching some of the more widely known and perpetually reimagined Russian fairy tales of the eastern European folkloric tradition. Here you'll meet the terrifying Baba Yaga, a witch-hag who eats children, flies around on a mortar (paddling through the night with the pestle), and lives in a house made of human bones that stands on chicken feet. You'll encounter Koshchei the Deathless, whose soul is hidden in a needle, which is inside an egg, which is inside a duck, which is in a hare, which is locked in a chest, buried under a green oak tree that has its roots on the mythological island of Buyan (so good luck finding it). And of course, who could forget the armless maiden? A girl's arms are chopped off by her own father, and she is accused (purportedly) by her mother-in-law of giving birth to a changeling. That one's my Aunt Varla's personal favorite. These stories will have you eying the woods behind your grandmother's house nervously and investing in a nice, comforting nightlight.

      DAS VIDANIYA,

      VIVIENNE VENTURA

      The Baba Yaga

      Once upon a time there was an old couple. The husband lost his wife and married again. But he had a daughter by the first marriage, a young girl, and she found no favor in the eyes of her evil stepmother, who used to beat her, and consider how she could get her killed outright. One day the father went away somewhere or other, so the stepmother said to the girl, Go to your aunt, my sister, and ask her for a needle and thread to make you a shift.

      Now that aunt was a Baba Yaga. Well, the girl was no fool, so she went to a real aunt of hers first, and says she:

      Good morning, auntie!

      Good morning, my dear! what have you come for?

      Mother has sent me to her sister, to ask for a needle and thread to make me a shift.

      Then her aunt instructed her what to do. There is a birch-tree there, niece, which would hit you in the eye—you must tie a ribbon round it; there are doors which would creak and bang—you must pour oil on their hinges; there are dogs which would tear you in pieces—you must throw them these rolls; there is a cat which would scratch your eyes out—you must give it a piece of bacon.

      So the girl went away, and walked and walked, till she came to the place. There stood a hut, and in it sat weaving the Baba Yaga, the Bony-shanks.

      Good morning, auntie, says the girl.

      Good morning, my dear, replies the Baba Yaga.

      Mother has sent me to ask you for a needle and thread to make me a shift.

      Very well; sit down and weave a little in the meantime.

      So the girl sat down behind the loom, and the Baba

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