What’s the best way to get your kids to be obedient? Lie to them, of course! Tell them frightening tales of monsters who will get them if they don’t do what they are told. So, when you read fairy tales or nursery rhymes to your children, be sure you are reading the REAL ones – not the updated happy-lovey versions. You know, the one where Rumpelstiltskin rips himself in half, or Hansel & Gretel cook the witch, or the evil scissor-guy cuts off the thumbs of the thumb-sucker.

Shortly after the Brothers Grimm published their collected stories (in German), a guy named Erben published similar set of fairy-tale poems in Czech. Antonín Dvořák, being a nationalistic composer of the Czech people, composed music after the poetry. “The Noonday Witch” is a tone poem in which the story is clearly laid out by the music:

A mother scolds her baby for making so much noise; she complains about what a nuisance he is. She threatens to call the “noon witch” to come and take him away if he doesn’t do as she asks. Whether or not the witch comes is up to interpretation – but either way, the mother becomes frightened that the witch has arrived and is about to steal her child. She clutches the child close to her breast, and faints. When the woman’s husband arrives home, he finds his wife passed out on the floor, and his child dead in her arms – suffocated by the mother’s hold.

It’s easy to be scared of large animals with sharp teeth or scary humanoid creatures with exaggerated features. It’s also easy to be scared of clowns.

But what about when everyday household objects go bad? Say, an umbrella, or shoes? Maybe a broom? What about a magical flying mortar & pestle, or a house with chicken legs?

Enter Baba Yaga, a your classic witch, except that she flies around in a mortar and lives in a house with chicken legs. I suppose that makes her more scary? Or is it a ruse to confuse children long enough for her to catch them?

It doesn’t really matter; more importantly, a painting of Baba Yaga’s house became the inspiration for part of Modest Mussorgsky‘s Pictures at an Exhibition:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tO5p-gNyVlo

There’s also an awesome metal version: