The Kitchen Witch and the Fairy Tale
Separating oral tradition from pop culture.
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Hello, wonderful witches!
Recently, I had a witch fail. I was doing a banishing spell, and needed to burn a piece of paper that I’d torn into a ton of tiny pieces. So I took a little bowl and a lighter outside, put the pieces in the bowl, and set the entire thing down on my deck for a second. And then the wind kicked up. It pulled almost every tiny bit of paper out of the bowl and blew them across my deck, down the stairs, into the neighbor’s yard. The paper was everywhere. I scrambled around to try and gather the pieces, stuffing as many as I could find back into the bowl so I could burn them. I was never able to get all of them back, but as I think about it later, I don’t feel like that’s a bad thing. In one way or another, nature was taking what I wanted to banish and getting it far away from me. What’s the biggest witch fail you’ve ever experienced? Is it possible to reframe it into an actual success?
(Oh, PS! If you follow the newsletter on Instagram, you’ll see… I GOT A NEW KITTEN! Her name is Fiona, she’s adorable, and she’s currently climbing up my back with her tiny talons.)
Today’s article is about the kitchen witches we find in fairy tales, and how pop culture has morphed the original oral tradition of these stories.
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Kitchen Witches in Fairy Tales
By Jeana Jorgensen
When you think of witches in fairy tales, do you think of a cackling hag stirring up a potion with which to poison someone? That image comes from popular culture takes more than from oral tradition, and here we will explore some witches in traditional folktales and fairy tales that display broader roles than the villainess of the story.
In Russian folklore, Baba Yaga is a well-known witch who is ambivalent towards many of the characters she encounters. Sometimes she will help protagonists, but sometimes she will threaten them with cannibalism. In a tale collected by Alexander Afanasyev titled “Baba Yaga,” a stepmother wanting to get rid of her stepdaughter has the father bring her to Baba Yaga’s house, a hut standing on chicken legs. The girl is such a hard worker that Baba Yaga rewards her with beautiful dresses. When the stepmother sends her own daughter to Baba Yaga, the girl is so lazy that the witch breaks her into pieces and puts her bones in a basket to send home. In another tale, “Baba Yaga and the Brave Youth,” a lad becomes annoyed every time Baba Yaga comes to his house to count his spoons. He eventually throws all of her daughters into the oven, outwitting the witches, so we do see some ambivalence about Baba Yaga (who apparently enjoys counting spoons).
Witches in Sicilian folktales are also sometimes predatory. In a tale collected by Laura Gonzenbach in the 1860s, “The Robber with a Witch’s Head,” a princess is given in marriage to a robber who solves a riddle. This robber has a witch’s head kept in a basket above a doorway, and it tattles on the princess, and then her sister, who speak ill of the robber. The robber then murders the sisters. The third sister is clever and does all the robber’s housework. She talks the witch’s head into coming down and into the kitchen, where she is baking bread. Then she throws the witch’s head into the oven, which also kills the robber. The sister then uses a magical ointment found in the basket where the witch’s head resided to revive her slaughtered sisters. Thus, we see that even in death, the figure of the witch is associated with life.
Finally, we’ll turn to Turkish folktales. The tale “Hüsnügüzel,” which translates roughly to “beautiful of soul” (collected by Warren S. Walker and Ahmet E. Uysal), relates how a prince of that name falls ill once he begins to dream of a beautiful woman. However, nobody knows what is wrong with him, so his father hires a witch to get to the root of the problem. She prepares food and coffee for the prince and his friends, and asks that they toast to their sweethearts. Once his obsession is revealed, he receives permission to search for the beautiful woman—who turned out to be his one-time wife. Another witch had stolen her away to become a giant’s wife, but then she helps Hüsnügüzel get his wife back.
In sum, witches in fairy tales are more than just villains. They are often connected to kitchens and food in ways that reveal kitchen witchery to be among the sources of their power (and sometimes, their downfall).
Jeana Jorgensen has a PhD in folklore and teaches college courses on related topics in the Midwest. She blogs, writes poetry and fiction, and publishes her academic research regularly. She enjoys various kitchen witchy endeavors such as nurturing a sourdough culture and canning all the things. You can find her on Twitter as @foxyfolklorist.
Coming Up Next Week…
Next week, we’ll dive into the folklore of strawberries.
See you then!