Drude
A Drude (also Drud , Trut , male Drudner or Trutner ) is a being of popular belief that sits on the chest of sleepers at night and causes nightmares as well as anxiety and shortness of breath. In the entire German-speaking area and many parts of Europe there is the idea of printing spirits - depending on the region with different names and characteristics. As Druden they are common in southern Germany and Austria. Here it is people (mostly women) who are condemned to have to look for a victim to hide from every night: adults, children and pets are haunted, but also trees and stones. To do this, your soul detaches itself from the body, can penetrate a room as a spirit through the smallest gaps and keyholes and then appear in various forms (e.g. as a cat, straw or feather).
The regional names for Druden include Schrättele , Schratt in the Swabian and Alemannic regions and Walrider , Walriderske in the Oldenburg region.
A woman who has to practice this dude curse knows about it, but hides it from her fellow men. A woman burdened with the druden curse can only get rid of it if someone provides her with a very tame and important pet, which she can then own, so that it dies.
There are a number of means and methods for defending against and unmasking druids, some of which are only regionally widespread:
- The magic sign Drudenfuß , also called Drudenkreuz, is supposed to protect against them. According to legend, the origin of this sign lies in the bird-like footprint of a druid. The Drudenfoot was also used as a stonemason's mark in the Middle Ages .
- So- called Drudensteine (also called chicken god ), which are pebbles with a natural hole, the so-called eye , should also have a protective effect . These were hung up with a tape or string in the roof structure of the house as a defense. Drudensteine can be z. B. in rivers and in larger numbers z. B. on England's south coast. The eye is usually created by the washing out of calcareous veins in harder rock.
- The so-called Drudenmesser has nine crescent moons and crosses stamped on its blade. It is said that a hurricane could move to fall by tossing this knife at the suddenly emerging whirlwind.
- In order to expose the Drud, one should order her to come back the next morning to borrow something. She should then be forced to obey the order, and the next morning she is the first person to knock on the door and ask for the goods. Drud, unmasked in this way, then has to be 'convinced' to let go of the victim in the future.
In the past there was also the belief that there had to be a Drude for seven daughters, just as there was one for seven sons to be a werewolf .
The term Drude goes back to the Middle High German Trute or the Gothic Trudan , which means something like kick or push. In the Alpine region, the Trude became the Stampfe or Romanized Stampa . The Bavarian word Truderer for a magician also belongs here etymologically.
See also
literature
- Hugo Hepding : About the nightmare. In: Hessian sheets for folklore. 23/1924, p. 56.
- Maria Hornung: The orally transmitted folk tale in Austria of our time and in the old Austrian language islands. In: Rainer Wehse (Ed.): Märchenerzähler, storytelling community. (= Publications of the European Fairy Tale Society, Volume 4), Kassel 1983, ISBN 3-87680-331-4 , p. 36 ff.
- Otto Lauffer : Ghosts in the Tree. In: Harry Schewe (ed.): Folklore gifts: John Meier presented on his seventieth birthday. Berlin / Leipzig 1934, pp. 104–120.
- Leander Petzoldt : Small lexicon of demons and elementals. 3. Edition. Beck, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-406-49451-X , pp. 53-54.
- Kurt Ranke : Trude (Trute). In: Eduard Hoffmann-Krayer , Hanns Bächtold-Stäubli (ed.): Concise dictionary of German superstition . Volume 8. De Gruyter, Berlin (1937) 1987, Sp. 1173f.
- Franz Xaver Schönwerth : Sitten und Sagen 1 , Augsburg 1857, third book, § 11.
