This is a short story found in Naomi Novik's recent anthology, called Buried Deep. And I was wondering if anyone knows the tale she's referring to?

Whenever I come across things like this, I love reading up about it. While reading The Winternight Trilogy by Katherine Arden, I spent a good few hours just reading about Domovoy, Morozko and the other creatures mentioned in the book.

Hopefully this post isn't breaking a rule because any help would really be appreciated!

(I tried using Google but came up with zilch)

by Cthulouw

5 comments

  1. Nope, does not ring a bell. Most likely the author just made it up counting on her audience not knowing Polish folklore.

  2. There’s lot’s of magical ladies (old and young ones) in polish folklore, legends, fairy tales and moderns stories. There’s high probability of some story with old lady and a mushroom hat. I believe that this sort of ‘fairy-fashion’ is relatively modern (so last 100 years). I definitely have seen illustrations with little magical people in hats like that. There’s enough of those stories (in books, cartoons etc) that no one here will give you a proper answer though.

    I will give you a list of some Polish magical women. You can read about them on Wikipedia first and just go down the rabbit hole from there:

    Baba Jaga 

    Rusałki (or Rusałka on singular)

    Świtezianka

    Południca

    Syrenka Warszawska 

    Dziwożony

    Czarownice z Łysej Góry (or just Łysa Góra legenda)

    Szeptucha (this is the real Polish czarownica, actual women who were healers, midwifes, diving your future etc, there’s movie Szarlatan by Agnieszka Holland and the main character works for Szeptucha as a kid – it’s in Czech and about Czech people but hedgewitches like that are still alive in some Slavic villages)

    Some authors:

    Oskar Kolberg

    Zygmunt Globerg

    Józef Ignacy Kraszewski 

    Maria Niklewiczowa

    Maria Konopnicka 

    Stanisław Wyspiański 

    Also check out Allegro’s Legendy Polskie (Polish Legends) on YouTube, they have one film about Baba Jaga but all of them are crazy good considering allegro is shopping site xD 

  3. Even if a story about old lady and a mushroom hat exist, it is an obscure one. There is no famous fairy tale like that.

  4. i’ve never heard of any old lady in a mushroom hat. It’s more „footstep in stone”, „toy windmill produced endless salt and that’s why the baltic sea is salty”, „wanda didn’t want a german guy and we love her for it” and stuff like this. Fairies aren’t really a thing here

  5. I think in this context what the author meant wasn’t that “this character is out of a specific fairy tale” but more of “this character has a Polish fairy tale vibe”.

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