The Hut on Chicken Legs: Towards the Image Genesis

The hut on chicken legs belongs to the images of the Russian folktale which are best known and attract greatest attention, both among the scholars and the readers. However, this image still lacks an exhaustive conception that could help us to understand what its original significance was and in what way the latter was reflected in its distinctive qualities. The present study made it possible to deepen and clarify V.Ya. Propp’s idea according to which the hut on chicken legs has been interpreted as a house for the initiation ceremony, and to establish the origin and meaning of this mytheme in connection with the mythopoetic ideas about the winter solstice that were common among the Slavs. Accordingly, various types of fairy-tale plots in which the hut on chicken legs is mentioned obtain an interpretation as representations of the myth of the descent of the solar God (hero) into the underworld through the input opening during the days of the winter and/or summer solstice, that is common to many peoples of the world, or of the ideas of the return of the dead from the other world during the holy holidays, that are known among the Slavs. Consequently, the connection of these plots with the initiation rite can only be secondary. The complexity of the image of the hut on chicken legs which contaminates two archetypal features (the ornithomorphic appearance and the ability to turn around) on the basis of the mentioned mythopoetic concept is noteworthy, while each of the mythemes related to it (Kuuiriṇta ‘Crane palace’ of Aži Dahāka in the Avesta; the rotating houses in Dolgan, Vedic, and Irish epics; J. Chaucer’s literary interpretation) is based on one of them only. Keywords: Slavic folklore, Slavic mythology, fairy tale, hut on chicken legs, Baba Iaga, archetype, genesis, comparison.