1 «Домовничай да смотри: ежели придет яга-баба да станет считать ложки, ты ничего не говори, молчи!» The advice the cat and sparrow give to the youth (keep silent when Baba-Yaga comes) is termed a prohibition or interdiction. The hero typically violates a prohibition, which sets the action of the tale in motion. Baba-Yaga’s interest in counting spoons is not motivated in the tale, but dangerous supernatural creatures are sometimes obsessed by repetitive tasks, such as counting.
2 жихарь сел на печь за трубу The Russian peasant stove typically occupied as much as a quarter of the hut’s area, and it functioned more as an oven and radiator than as a modern cooktop range. It was often large enough for the whole family (or at least the very old and the very young, who were most susceptible to the cold) to sleep on top of it during the winter.
3 едет в ступе, пестомпонужат, а помелом следы заметат This is Baba-Yaga’s typical method of travel.
4 Жихарько не мог утерпеть Fairy-tale characters commonly learn nothing from their mistakes, and repeat them as soon as the same circumstances recur.
5 На третий день The numeral three is extremely common in folklore. Series of events almost always occur in threes, a type of repetition is called “trebling.”
6 в третий раз Another instance of trebling.
7 Я пойду в Русь The supernatural is not unusual or surprising in fairy tales, a phenomenon that Max Lüthi has termed “one-dimensionality.” Strangeness is instead conveyed by distant or foreign locations, so that, for example, a hero or heroine often must leave the village and enter the remote and mysterious forest for the story to unfold. Similarly, in the present case Baba-Yaga lives outside Russia, and must travel to get there.
8 изжарь к обеду мне жихарька Like the western wicked witch in the forest, Baba-Yaga is often (although not always) cannibalistic.
9 А как? The hero is in many ways a typical fairy-tale foolish child, as is evidenced by his failure to learn from his early mishaps. But he also demonstrates an instinctive cunning when he pretends not to know how to lie in a roasting pan as a way of tricking Baba-Yaga’s daughters (and ultimately Baba-Yaga herself).
10 «А, ты, мошенник, постой! Не увернешься!» As is typical in fairy tales, characters are alienated from normal human responses to trauma, a characteristic that Max Lüthi calls “depthlessness”. Baba-Yaga is angry and frustrated at having been thwarted by the hero, but she is not anguished or grief-stricken about the death of her daughter.
11 Приказыват середней дочери изжарить жихарька Like the young man, Baba Yaga does not learn from experience, and she sends her second and third daughters to repeat the fatal mistakes of the first.
12 Приказывает молодой дочери изжарить его. Baba-Yaga’s three daughters are another instance of trebling in the tale.