The Wandering Jew
legends of Aarne-Thompson type 777
edited by
D. L. Ashliman
© 2001
legends of Aarne-Thompson type 777
edited by
D. L. Ashliman
© 2001
Return to D. L. Ashliman's folktexts, a library of folktales, folklore, fairy tales, and mythology.
You must know that Judas was the one who betrayed Jesus Christ.
Now when Judas betrayed him, his Master said: "Repent, Judas, for I pardon you."
But Judas, not at all! He departed with his bag of money, in despair and cursing heaven and earth. What did he do? While he was going along thus desperate he came across a tamarind tree. (You must know that the tamarind was formerly a large tree, like the olive and walnut.) When he saw this tamarind a wild thought entered his mind, remembering the treason he had committed. He made a noose in a rope and hung himself to the tamarind. And hence it is (because this traitor Judas was cursed by God) that the tamarind tree dried up, and from that time on it ceased growing up into a tree and became a short, twisted, and tangled bush; and its wood is good for nothing, neither to burn, nor to make anything out of, and all on account of Judas, who hanged himself on it.
Some say that the soul of Judas went to the lowest hell, to suffer the most painful torments; but I have heard, from older persons who can know, that Judas's soul has a severer sentence. They say that it is in the air, always wandering about the world, without being able to rise higher or fall lower; and every day, on all the tamarind shrubs that it meets, it sees its body hanging and torn by the dogs and birds of prey. They say that the pain he suffers cannot be told, and that it makes the flesh creep to think of it. And thus Jesus Christ condemned him for his great treason.
Malchus was the head of the Jews who killed our Lord. The Lord pardoned them all, and likewise the good thief, but he never pardoned Malchus, because it was he who gave the Madonna a blow.
He is confined under a mountain, and condemned to walk around a column, without resting, as long as the world lasts. Every time that he walks about the column he gives it a blow in memory of the blow he gave the mother of our Lord. He has walked around the column so long that he has sunk into the ground. He is now up to his neck. When he is under, head and all, the world will come to an end, and God will then send him to the place prepared for him. He asks all those who go to see him (for there are such) whether children are yet born; and when they say yes, he gives a deep sigh and resumes his walk, saying: "The time is not yet!" for before the world comes to an end there will be no children born for seven years.
It was in winter, and my good father was at Sacalone, in the warehouse, warming himself at the fire, when he saw a man enter, dressed differently from the people of that region, with breeches striped in yellow, red, and black, and his cap the same way. My good father was frightened. "Oh!" he said, "what is this person?"
"Do not be afraid," the man said. "I am called Buttadeu."
"Oh!" said my father, "I have heard you mentioned. Be pleased to sit down a while a tell me something."
"I cannot sit, for I am condemned by my God always to walk." And while he was speaking he was always walking up and down and had no rest. Then he said: "Listen. I am going away; I leave you, in memory of me, this, that you must say a credo at the right hand of our Lord, and five other credos at his left, and a salve regina to the Virgin, for the grief I suffer on account of her son. I salute you."
"Farewell."
"Farewell, my name is Buttadeu."
Eighty-one year old Frau Bandow from Fünfeichen narrated:
Once in my life I saw the lost Jew. One afternoon I was home alone when a youthful Jewish man entered my house. He wanted neither to buy nor to sell anything, but with his Jewish accent asked me for a bite of bread.
I said to him, "You won't like our coarse peasant bread," to which he replied, "I will like it, if the lady would just give me some."
I then asked him, "Have you come a long way?"
He answered, "My way is long! I must travel forever throughout the world!" With that he left, but a short time later he returned and asked again for a bite of bread.
I immediately said to myself, "Today you have seen the lost Jew," but to make sure I asked the preacher. He listened to my story and said that he could not prove it, but that the belief was there.
This answer only strengthened the woman's opinion, which was further verified through an innkeeper's wife from a neighboring village, where the Jew had stayed overnight. She reported that he had eaten nothing and that he had not slept. She had prepared a place for him to lie down, but he paced back and forth in the sitting room the entire night.
Even in her old age, the woman who told this story took great pleasure that she had had the good fortune to have seen the lost Jew.
Mount Matter beneath the Matterhorn in Valais is a high glacier from which the Vispa River flows. According to popular legend, an imposing city existed there ages ago. The Wandering Jew (as many Swiss call the Eternal Jew) came there once and said: "When I pass this way a second time there will be nothing but trees and rocks where you now see houses and streets. And when my path leads me here a third time, there will be nothing but snow and ice."
And now nothing can be seen there but snow and ice.
Revised April 8, 2001.