Holzfräulein

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Holzfräulein are usually female, well-disposed spirits from the legendary world of Franconia . Other names for them are: wood or bush woman, forest woman or woman, rarely also moss woman or woman. Their occurrence is limited to parts of Upper Franconia , the Egerland , the Upper Palatinate and the Vogtland .

They are related to the wild hunt and in particular to the loggers, by whom they are hunted and from whom they now and then take refuge in houses and so involuntarily become house ghosts.

Their outward appearance is similar to humans, but they are much smaller, in which they resemble the dwarfs, to whom the folklorist Schönwerth also counted them - although their element is air. They live in families, can have children, and are mortal, and in most cases appear in the female guise. Their clothes are mostly simple, often white, rarely black, usually made of linen. Occasionally they are dressed entirely in clothes made of self-spun moss (tree beard). Often, however, they are hairy and unclothed.

Their normal abode is the deep forest, where they usually have shelters and moss beds under tree roots or in hollow trees. When they have left the forest and join the person, then they do work in the house and in the stable for him. In addition, they can foresee future events or prove healing. They are also considered to be a good luck charm, the expulsion of which usually also drives out luck.

As a reward, they receive certain foods from the people that varied from place to place: These included, for example, some flour and water that was poured into the oven before baking, the first donut from baking, the first piece of bread after cutting. Often there is also the idea that leftovers on the outer edge of bowls and plates are intended for the wooden maids. Also, certain foods such as dumplings, donuts or loaves of bread were not allowed to be counted during preparation, in order to give the wooden maid the opportunity to take some.

Your relationship to Christian symbols is ambivalent. In Wondreb, for example, they encourage people to make the sign of the cross before they eat, but for their part - as was believed in Bärnau - they feed on the loaves of bread that were not crossed when they were baked.

As a rule, the wood maids seem to like to be with the people and do the work. In individual cases it happens that their families call them back to the forest for urgent reasons and then leave the human dwellings. Occasionally, however, they are accidentally displaced by humans. One of the most common means of doing this is by giving new clothes or shoes, and another is by accidentally counting food. The driving away with new clothes is interpreted either as a reward and thus termination of the employment relationship or as a delay in the redemption period, since the wooden maids are interpreted as poor souls who have to serve until their clothes fall apart. The wooden girl also drives away swearing, scolding and dissolute speech. They also leave people who play tricks on them or mock them.

For the wood maids who did not live in the house but in the forest, a bundle of flax or grain from the harvest was usually left behind in the field. This custom supported the interpretation of the wooden maids as remnants of belief in a pre-Christian vegetation goddess that still existed in popular belief. In Schönwerth, the wooden girl is assigned to the Wanen , based on Jacob Grimm's interpretation of the myth , a classification that is considered obsolete in today's ethnology.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Fentsch (1863), p. 237
  2. ↑ Linhardt (1995), p. 376.
  3. ↑ Linhardt (1995), p. 391.
  4. ^ Panzer (1855), p. 160.
  5. ↑ Linhardt (1995), p. 378 f.
  6. ↑ Kinfardt (1995), p. 379.

Remarks

  1. ↑ “The wood hunters are an essential part of the wild hunt in the Upper Palatinate. (...) They get their name from the hunt they hunt on the poor wooden girls. " (Fentsch (1863), p. 237)
  2. ↑ "Two wooden maids at a farmer gave the advice to make a cross over all food when eating, so that the evil one could not take anything, and not to put the spoon on the table upside down to prevent the evil spirits from eating too." (Linhardt (1995), p. 392)
  3. ↑ "At the sight of the new clothes they wept heartbreaking and said," that they were now redeemed "But they would have to again suffer as long and whenever they'd given new clothes, their suffering again was going on." (From the Estate of Franz Schönwerth, cited in Linhardt (1995), p. 398)
  4. ↑ The myth researcher Wilhelm Mannhardt counts the wooden maids among the grain demons , i.e. the vegetation deities displaced by Christianization.

literature

  • Eduard Fentsch: The legends of the Upper Palatinate. In: Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl (Ed.): Bavaria. Regional and folklore of the Kingdom of Bavaria edited by a group of Bavarian scholars. 2nd volume. Upper Palatinate and Regensburg. Cotta, Munich 1863. (Legends about wood cutting: pp. 237–240)
  • Dagmar Linhart: House spirits in Franconia. On phenomenology, the history of tradition and the learned interpretation of certain helpful or harmful legendary figures. Röll, Dettelbach 1995. ISBN 3927522910
  • Wilhelm Mannhardt : The grain demons. Contribution to Germanic morality. Berlin 1868. Digitized
  • Friedrich Panzer: Contribution to German mythology. Volume 2. Christian Kaiser, Munich 1855 (Chapter 19: Holzfräulein , pp. 160–163)
  • Franz Xaver von Schönwerth : From the Upper Palatinate. Customs and sayings. 3 parts. Augsburg 1857-1859. Popular edition Augsburg 1869


See also: List of mythical creatures