For some time now, our children began to scare each other with monsters and aliens. And some parents, wanting to rein in their child, tell him that now, they say, a little monster with sharp teeth will come from the school of monsters of games for girls, and it will hurt him if he does not calm down.
But monsters and aliens are not at all the horror stories that are characteristic of our traditional society. The main horror story of all time in Russia (the Soviet Union, in Russia) was "Babai". At the same time, neither the parents who frightened their children with Babai, nor the children themselves, understood who he was. However, the fear of Babai in childhood was great, and therefore the mere mention of this strange creature made naughty children calm down and listen to their parents. So who is this invisible Babay, who made it possible to raise many domestic generations of children?
The most surprising thing is that there is no mention of the exact form of Babay (babayka). More precisely, they are available in various specific literature, but each time the descriptions are seriously different. Some believe that Babai is a certain bearded old man, others scare children with Babai with an inhuman appearance.
In fact, the word "babai" or "baba" is translated from the Turkic languages as grandfather. But why in our country they began to frighten children with precisely this Turkic word. Historians and linguists believe that the main reason is the Mongol-Tatar yoke, under which Russia was for almost 2.5 centuries. Russian cities and villages were attacked by the Mongol-Tatars, whose appearance was so specific enough that over time, the appearance of a slanting man with a beard began to terrify the inhabitants. And the use of the word "babai" in relation to the elders by the Mongol-Tatars themselves led to the fact that in Russia they began to associate with this word a certain terrible person who burns villages along with the population and takes women and children to the Horde. It was this ancient fear that walked across Russia for a century. The yoke is gone, but the horror stories about Babai existed for a very long time, and still exist. Parents use this ephemeral image to make their children obedient. Someone succeeds in this, and someone thinks that scaring Babai of their children is stale, out of date. In general, psychological issues come to the fore here. Well, Babay continues to live in folklore, coming to the aid of those parents who just cannot cope with their baby.
