Baba Yaga's Mortar and Pestle
Iron mortar and pestle ridden by Baba Yaga, the witch of Russian fairy tales, who flies over the forest in her mortar, sweeping away her trail with a broom and driving the mortar onward with the pestle. In Afanasyev's tales she is called 'Baba Yaga the Bone Leg' and travels in this way; the mortar, pestle and broom are among the most iconic props of Russian folk narrative. Folklorists note that the mortar echoes the work of grain-pounding and the boundary between the farmstead and the wild, fitting the witch who lives at the edge of the forest. She is sometimes said to fly at great speed, usin