Thank you! Leaping/hopping in the mortar makes so much more sense! (Even if it isn't in the story.) My book is called "The Magic Ring: Russian Folk Tales from Alexander Afansiev's Collection" It was published in Moscow in 1985. It has great illustrations. In vasilisa the beautiful it shows Baba Yaga in the air in her mortar with pestle and broom. I am slowly reading through the stories in English, completely baffled that anyone would tell such horrible stories to children. I'm slowly finding each story по-русски and slowly reading through to see what the Russian says. I think these stories are more like "Scary Tales" than Fairy Tales, but then I suppose the same could be said of many nursery tales I grew up with. My mind is too small for people who get inside a horse's ear to eat drink, then step out the other side or for A husband to cast his wife away because she bore a normal son. Anyway, I am interested in any further explanations of these fairy tales. I don't see any moral to most of these stories.