The Witch That Was Hurt
Migratory Legends of Type 3055
translated and/or edited by
D. L. Ashliman
© 1998-2001
© 1998-2001
Once a mill hand came to a miller and asked him for work, saying that he had been underway a long time and wanted to earn a few kreutzers once again. The miller liked the mill hand, for he was a quick and lively fellow. He would have given him work at once if it hadn't been for an unusual concern of his.
He scratched himself behind the ears for a while and then slowly expressed his opinion: "Yes, I need a mill hand, and I'm not likely to find a better one than you, but there is another problem."
"What sort of one? asked the miller boy hurriedly.
"Now you may not believe me, but what I'm going to say is the truth. Every time I have had a mill hand sleep in the mill, the next morning he was discovered dead. I've not been able to find out what is behind this, but that's the way it is."
It has never occurred to me that I should be afraid of someone," replied the mill hand, laughing. "Let me have a go at it. I am not by nature a fraidy-cat."
"It would be a shame to lose your young life," said the miller. "No one else has escaped alive. You won't be any different."
"The long and short of it is that I am not afraid. Give me work, and I'll stay with you."
"If you are willing to gamble with your life, then stay. It will serve you right," replied the miller, half pleased and half angry.
The new mill hand went into the mill and worked in spite of it all.
When night fell he lay down a bit, but he did not let himself fall asleep, looking and looking to see what might be haunting the mill. Suddenly a large, beautiful cat crept up to him, meowed, arched its back, wagged its tail, and continued to creep around the mill hand. It was all he could do to ward off the uncanny animal. When he realized that "Get!" and "Scat!" and such sayings were to no avail, he became angry, grabbed the cat by its tail and hurled it a good distance from him. With that the cat slunk out the door.
The mill hand thought to himself, "Just dare to come back!" and lay back down and slept without further disturbance.
Early the next morning the miller came, expecting to see the mill hand's corpse. Was he surprised when the boy approached him, singing and whistling, and told him the story of the cat.
As evening was approaching the mill hand fetched a little hatchet and hid it in his bed. Night soon came. The boy lay down, and again the cat crept up to him meowing. This time the mill hand did not shoo it away, but was nice to it and attempted to lure it closer and closer to him. When it was standing right next to his bed, he quickly pulled out the hatchet and with a laugh chopped off one of its front paws. With pitiful meows the cat hobbled on three legs out the door.
Early the next morning the miller came again to see how the boy had fared. The latter had scarcely come into his master's view when he joyfully cried out, "Just see what the beast left behind! It will never come to me again!" With these words he showed the miller the paw that he had chopped off the cat.
The miller had a good laugh and could not have been more pleased with his new mill hand. After laughing his fill, he went about his business, and the morning passed like any other, although the master did wonder why his wife was nowhere to be seen.
Noontime came, and there was still no fire in the kitchen. The master finally lost his patience, and he shouted everywhere for his "old woman." But she neither came nor answered. Finally the miller went upstairs to the bedroom where he found his wife still in bed.
"What you are doing? It is noontime already, and there is not even a piece of kindling burning yet in the kitchen."
"I can't cook today. Something is wrong with me."
The miller was curious what was wrong with her, noticing that she was holding her hands in a strange manner. Then he suddenly saw that one of her hands had been cut off.
"Aha," he thought to himself, "so that is what's wrong with you!"
Angrily he ran down the stairs and told the mill hand what had happened. The mill hand also perceived immediately that the cat had been none other than the master's wife, and that she was a wicked witch.
A miller at a windmill near Wettin was for a long time unable to get a mill hand, because the mill was haunted, and four workers had already died there, one after the other. He finally hired a high-spirited boy. At midnight the boy was shaking out the grain when a small back cat crept up to him. A somewhat larger one followed, and the two of them grinned sinisterly at him.
The one said to the other, "I wish the big gray one would come."
Soon thereafter a big gray cat arrived. As soon as it saw the boy it jumped at his throat; but with an ax the boy skillfully struck off half its paw, which immediately turned into half of a woman's arm. Then the cats ran away.
The next morning the boy waited in vain for his breakfast. He went downstairs and asked the miller why there was nothing to eat. The miller apologized, saying that his wife had turned deathly ill.
"Is she perhaps missing half an arm?" asked the boy. "If so, I can lend her one."
And in truth one of the woman's arms was only half there, and the severed piece fit onto the stump.
Then it was known that she was a witch, and she was burned to death.
In a village there was a mill. The miller could no longer get anyone to work for him, because several workers had died in the mill in a mysterious manner.
One day a mill hand came to the miller and asked about work. The miller said that he desperately needed a helper, but he had to tell him that things were not exactly right in his mill. The mill hand was an outgoing fellow, and he asked the master to hire him, saying that he would deal with the spook. The master agreed to this.
That night the mill hand went into the mill, taking a sword with him. At the strike of midnight a wet cat crept through a hole into the mill and sat down next on the stove bench. After it had sat there a while and second cat came, and then a third one, and they took places next to the first cat.
And then a miracle! The more they warmed themselves, the larger they grew.
Then the first cat said, "Shall we? Shall we?"
The next one answered, "Eeow!"
And the third one, "Get him!"
Then all three, each with a powerful leap, jumped at the mill hand, hissing and spitting, and with angry sparks spraying from their eyes.
The mill hand did not stand idly by. With his sword he cut off a leg of the first cat, and it began to cry pitifully. Then all three cats hurriedly slipped out the same hole through which they had entered.
He picked up the leg, and it was a human hand with a gold ring on one finger. He wrapped it in a cloth. The next morning he took it to the master and told him of the adventure that he had withstood. The latter was very pleased to hear this, for he hoped that the spook would no longer be interested in returning.
At breakfast the master said to his mill hand, "My wife is very ill."
The mill hand wanted to see her, claiming that in some regards he knew just as much as a doctor. The miller led him to the room where his wife was lying.
The mill worker said, "Show me your right hand!" The woman showed him her left hand.
The mill worker said again, "No, show me the right one!" but she refused.
Then the mill hand unwrapped the severed hand from the cloth and held it out. The woman began to shake like aspen leaves. Her face became distorted; and with moans and groans she confessed that she was a witch and that she had been the cat. She also named her two accomplices. And then she died a horrible death.
Since then nothing unusual has happened at the mill.
The next morning it was reported that the miller's wife was still in bed. It was said that during the night she had fallen down the cellar stairs and badly hurt her hands. In reality, howver, all of her fingers had been cut off.
In Trent there formerly lived a girl who had inherited a witch's thong from her grandmother. Whenever she tied the thong around herself she would turn into a hare. In this form she often heckled a forester who lived in the vicinity. Whenever he would shoot at her, his bullets just glanced off her pelt. When he came to realize that there was something uncanny going on here, he loaded his flintlock with a coffin nail that he had somehow acquired.
The next time he saw the hare, he shot it as it was running away. In an instant the hare disappeared, and the girl stood before him in its place. With tears she asked him for help, for she had a serious wound on her foot. In order to gain his sympathy, she confessed her evil power to the forester, promising never again to make use of it.
For a time she kept her promise, but no sooner had her foot healed than she fell back into her old vices. Now her fiancé worked as a herdsman at a nearby estate, and she frequently made use of her thong in order to visit him often and undisturbed. Her fiancé knew nothing of her powers, and one day when she appeared before him as a hare -- for she had not yet had time to assume her human form -- he struck her with a water carrier. As a result she started to bleed profusely, and with tears she confessed to her fiancé what her situation was.
He broke off his relationship with her. She remained lame for the rest of her life. It is said that the witch's thong was later buried in the grandmother's grave.
On two days a hunter from Freiburg saw a hare in Schlossberg Forest and shot at it. Both times it stood still, looked mockingly at the man, only running away when the latter hurried toward it. The hunter presumed that he was dealing with witchcraft, so he loaded his gun with consecrated powder, then used this to shoot at the hare when he saw it a third time. Instead of a hare, a female personage was there, standing on her head and bleeding from a gunshot wound in her breast. When the hunter touched her, she fell to the ground dead.
After they had waited a long while, a fox finally came into view, and they fired a heavy volley at it. The fox tumbled down, but then it got back on its feet and fled. The hunters followed its tracks, which were clearly visible in the snow.
After they had followed the tracks for a good stretch, it suddenly occurred to them that the footprints left by the fox in the snow were getting larger and larger, finally taking the form of human footprints. They could even clearly see that the tracks could have been made only by slippers.
They could only imagine what all this had to do with the fox that they had shot at, but they continued to follow the tracks, which led them finally to a house in the upper marketplace in Reutte. An old woman lived in this house, and she was lying in bed with a bullet wound in her body.
A journeyman cooper found work with an old female master in Binsachsen. Once when he was going out for the evening, the woman asked him if he was not afraid to come home by himself. "No," he said. His way home led him across a meadow, where a large cat approached him and ran along beside him. He took no further notice of it.
The next evening he went out again, and his landlady once again asked him if he was not afraid. He told her about the cat, but said that he had no fear of such a dumb animal. This time when he came to the meadow the cat was there again, but now it ran toward him and was about to jump on him. He hit it with a pair of pincers, breaking its left front leg, and it fled screaming.
The next morning the master did not get out of bed. The journeyman pulled back her covers and saw that her left arm was broken. Thus it was disclosed that the woman was a witch.
Whenever a certain peasant brewed beer, someone drank it all up during the night. He finally decided to stay up and keep watch throughout the night.
He did this, and as he was standing by his vat, a large number of cats approached him. He called out to them:
Here kitty,
Here cat,
Come and warm yourselves!
Then they all sat down in a large circle around the fire and warmed themselves.
After they had sat there for a little while, he asked them if the water was hot.
"It is almost boiling!" they answered, and as soon as they said this, he took the ladle and sprinkled the whole lot of them, whereupon they all disappeared in an instant.
The next day his wife had a badly burned face, so he knew who had been drinking up his beer.
Some years back, the blacksmith of Yarrowfoot had for apprentices two brothers, both steady lads, and, when bound to him, fine healthy fellows.
After a few months, however, the younger of the two began to grow pale and lean, lose his appetite, and show other marks of declining health. His brother, much concerned, often questioned him as to what ailed him, but to no purpose.
At last, however, the poor lad burst into an agony of tears, and confessed that he was quite worn out, and should soon be brought to the grave through the ill-usage of his mistress, who was in truth a witch, though none suspected it. "Every night," he sobbed out, "she comes to my bedside, puts a magic bridle on me, and changes me into a horse. Then, seated on my back, she urges me on for many a mile to the wild moors, where she and I know not what other vile creatures hold their hideous feasts. There she keeps me all night, and at early morning I carry her home. She takes off my bridle, and there I am, but so weary I can ill stand. And thus I pass my nights while you are soundly sleeping."
The elder brother at once declared he would take his chance of a night among the witches, so he put the younger one in his own place next to the wall, and lay awake himself till the usual time of the witch-woman's arrival. She came, bridle in hand, and flinging it over the elder brother's head, up sprang a fine hunting horse. The lady leaped on his back, and started for the trysting-place, which on this occasion, as it chanced, was the cellar of a neighboring laird.
While she and the rest of the vile crew were regaling themselves with claret and sack, the hunter, who was left in a spare stall of the stable, rubbed and rubbed his head against the wall till he loosened the bridle, and finally got it off, on which he recovered his human form. Holding the bridle firmly in his hand, he concealed himself at the back of the stall till his mistress came within reach, when in an instant he flung the magic bridle over her head, and, behold, a fine gray mare!
He mounted her and dashed off, riding through hedge and ditch, till, looking down, he perceived she had lost a shoe from one of her forefeet. He took her to the first smithy that was open, had the shoe replaced, and a new one put on the other forefoot, and then rode her up and down a plowed field till she was nearly worn out. At last he took her home, and pulled the bridle off just in time for her to creep into bed before her husband awoke, and got up for his day's work.
The honest blacksmith arose, little thinking what had been going on all night; but his wife complained of being very ill, almost dying, and begged him to send for a doctor. He accordingly aroused his apprentices; the elder one went out, and soon returned with one whom he had chanced to meet already abroad.
The doctor wished to feel his patient's pulse, but she resolutely hid her hands, and refused to show them. The village Esculapius was perplexed; but the husband, impatient at her obstinacy, pulled off the bedclothes, and found, to his horror, that horseshoes were tightly nailed to both hands! On further examination, her sides appeared galled with kicks, the same that the apprentice had given her during his ride up and down the plowed field.
The brothers now came forward, and related all that had passed. On the following day the witch was tried by the magistrates of Selkirk, and condemned to be burned to death on a stone at the Bullsheugh, a sentence which was promptly carried into effect. It is added that the younger apprentice was at last restored to health by eating butter made from the milk of cows fed in kirkyards, a sovereign remedy for consumption brought on through being witch-ridden.
A witch, desirous of injuring a neighbor, changed herself into a black dog and made her way into the neighbor's ben-end-o'-the-hoose, where she would certainly have created serious disturbance if an old man in the family had not recognized her by a peculiar formation of the eyelids, which, it seems, she could not discard from her canine appearance.
Seizing the tongs, the worthy patriarch brought them down upon the black dog's back with might and main. "Tak' doo yon, Minnie Merran (the witch's name), he cried, "an bear doo da weight o' dis auld airm as lang as doo leeves."
The dog ran howling and limping out of the house, and when next the witch was seen, she who hitherto had walked upright and with the dignity of a Norna, leant upon a stick, and had a hump upon her back. She said she had fallen from a height, and was afraid her spine was broken. But folk called it "the mark o' auld Jockie's taings."
After this deception had many times been practiced, the dogs turned out, the hare pursued, and often seen but never caught, a sportsman of the party began to suspect, in the language of the tradition, "that the devil was in the dance," and there would be no end to it.
The matter was discussed, a justice consulted, and a clergyman to boot; and it was thought that, however clever the devil might be, law and church combined would be more than a match for him. It was therefore agreed that, as the boy was singularly regular in the hour at which he came to announce the sight of the hare, all should be in readiness for a start the instant such information was given; and a neighbor of the witch, nothing friendly to her, promised to let the parties know directly the old woman and her grandson left the cottage and went off together, the one to be hunted, and the other to set on the hunt.
The news came, the hounds were unkenneled, and huntsmen and sportsmen set off with surprising speed. The witch, now a hare, and her little colleague in iniquity, did not expect so very speedy a turnout; so that the game was pursued at a desperate rate, and the boy, forgetting himself in a moment of alarm, was heard to exclaim, "Run, Granny, run! Run for your life!"
At last the pursuers lost the hare, and she once more got safe into the cottage by a little hole in the door, not large enough to admit a hound in chase. The huntsman and all the squires with their train lent a hand to break open the door, yet could not do it till the parson and the justice came up; but as law and church were certainly designed to break through iniquity, even so did they now succeed in bursting the magic bonds that opposed them.
Upstairs they all went. There they found the old hag bleeding, and covered with wounds, and still out of breath. She denied she was a hare, and railed at the whole party.
"Call up the hounds," said the huntsman, "and let us see what they take her to be. Maybe we may yet have another hunt."
On hearing this the old woman cried quarter. The boy dropped on his knees, and begged hard for mercy, which was granted on condition of its being received together with a good whipping; and the huntsman, having long practiced amongst the hounds, now tried his hand on other game.
Thus the old woman escaped a worse fate for the time present; but on being afterwards put on her trial for bewitching a young woman and making her spit pins, the tale just told was given as evidence against her, before a particularly learned judge, and a remarkably sagacious jury, and the old woman finished her days, like a martyr, at the stake.
One, a man name of Shawn Teigue Mack, said he would know if 'twas she that was taking the butter. So he watched all night at the cabin, and about twelve o'clock he saw a hare come out of the house. The very minute it saw Shawn, away would it across the field, but Shawn fired, and struck it in the shoulder.
Begor, the next morning tracks of blood was seen along the road to the cabin. What did Shawn do, but call to the cabin, and the door was barred from inside. But he shoved in the window, and sure enough, there was the old dame, and all her shoulder wrapped up in calico. She left the place shortly after, for she knew she was found out, and no one ever missed butter or milk after.
Revised November 17, 2001.