Berchtold

Also Known As: also Berchtolt, Berhtolt, Bercht; a common Swabian man’s name, from Old High German words for “bright” and “rule”, given to a white spectre that Jacob Grimm read as the male form of Berchta, or Perchta
Region/Culture: Western Europe
Mythos: Germanic Mythology, Swiss Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Fairy Folk and Spirit Beings
Mythical Attributes: Berchtold is a white-clad spectre on a white horse who leads the furious host through Swabia with white hounds on a leash and a horn hanging at his neck.
Role in Mythos: He is the Swabian leader of the Wild Hunt in a source of the 1550s, and in a separate local legend the white mannikin who brings spools to be spun, the same errand told of Berchta.
Relation to Humans: Country people feared the sight of him enough that a trickster in a sixteenth-century jest book could cheat peasants simply by dressing as him. In the spinning legend he comes to the house as a taskmaster, leaving spools that must be filled.

A white horse comes over the winter fields at night. Its rider is white from head to foot, and the hounds that run ahead of him on a leash are white too. A horn hangs at his neck. Behind him, loud in the dark, comes the furious host, the rushing crowd of the dead that German country people heard in the storms of midwinter. In Swabia, in the sixteenth century, the man at the front of it had a name, and the name was Berchtold.

It is an ordinary name. Berchtold, or Berthold, was among the commonest men’s names in Swabia, and dukes, abbots and farmhands all carried it. Elsewhere the furious host was led by Wode, or by a damned huntsman called Hackelberg, or by nobody anyone cared to name. Swabia gave the job to someone who sounded like a neighbour.

The picture of the white rider comes from one book. Achilles Jason Widmann of Schwäbisch Hall wrote a rhymed jest book about a trickster priest named Peter Leu, which first appeared in the late 1550s and was printed at Nuremberg in 1560. In one episode Peter Leu dresses up as Berchtold and plays a trick on a group of peasants. The joke only works if the audience already knows who Berchtold is, what he looks like and why a farmer would not stop to ask questions. So the white clothes, the white horse, the leashed hounds and the horn were common knowledge around Hall by then. A comic poet had no need to explain them.

It is a little hard on a spectre that his best portrait should be a man in a costume. That is how the record stands.

Jacob Grimm found the passage and set it beside a second scrap. A Swabian legend, printed in a nineteenth-century antiquarian journal, calls Berchtolt the white mannikin who brings spools to be spun. The house is quiet, the flax is waiting, and a small white figure sets down empty spools that had better be full when he comes back. That is exactly the errand of Berchta, the white lady of the Twelve Nights, who inspects the spinning rooms of Upper Germany and punishes girls who have left flax on the distaff. Grimm drew the plain conclusion. Berchtold, he wrote, was the male form of white-robed Berchta, and he touched Wuotan in the same way that she touched Wuotan’s wife. Swabian speech had even turned him back into a woman, as the Brechtölterin or Prechtölterli.

The same reading explains his place at the head of the host. Berchta herself leads a night procession in many districts, a train of the souls of children who died unbaptised. Where she rides, a white woman leads the dead. Where Berchtold rides, a white man does. His whiteness is the sense of the name itself, since the old word behind both names means bright or shining.

How he came to be is not told. No legend gives him a mortal life, a crime or a curse, the usual history of a wild huntsman. Grimm asked in passing why the figure should not be older than the sixteenth century, and left the question open. No earlier text has answered it.

Then there is Switzerland, which has a public holiday that seems to be his. Berchtoldstag falls on the second of January in Zurich, Bern and a dozen other cantons. It is kept with guild dinners, nut games and, in the village of Hallwil, a parade of rough masked figures. In sixteenth-century Zurich, people caught one another in the street at New Year and hauled the captive off to drink wine, and the phrase for this was to lead someone to Berchtold. Grimm took all of it as his trace.

The Swiss dictionary makers disagree, and they have the older words on their side. The Schweizerisches Idiotikon derives the day from Middle High German berhttac or berhteltac, the “shining day”, which was a translation of Epiphany. When the word stopped being understood, people respelled it after the familiar man’s name, and later guessed at a saint, or at Duke Berchtold of Zähringen, the founder of Bern. On that account the day made the name, and no spirit stands behind it. A link to Berchta, they add, cannot be proved either. The holiday is real and old. The white rider is not known to have crossed the Rhine to attend it.

What Berchtold can do is what the furious host does. He rides the night air in the dead of winter, he commands the dead and the hounds, and the sound of his coming is enough to empty a road. Meeting him was thought dangerous, and that fear was strong enough for a clever priest to turn a profit on it. In his smaller shape he has the authority of a household inspector, bringing work and expecting it done.

His limits are plain. He belongs to one region and one season. No source gives him a victim by name, a story of his own, or a single word of speech. Nothing is recorded that turns him away, because nobody recorded an encounter with the real thing at all. He is a figure everyone in Swabia once recognised and almost nobody wrote down, and by the time the collectors came with their notebooks, the white woman had most of the stories.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Berchtold in German folklore?

Berchtold is a white-clad spectre who leads the furious host, the Wild Hunt, in sixteenth-century Swabia. He rides a white horse, holds white hounds on a leash and carries a horn at his neck. Jacob Grimm identified Berchtold as the male form of Berchta, also called Perchta.

What is the source for Berchtold as leader of the Wild Hunt?

The source is a rhymed jest book about the trickster priest Peter Leu, written by Achilles Jason Widmann of Schwäbisch Hall and printed at Nuremberg in 1560. In it Peter Leu disguises himself as Berchtold to trick some peasants. A separate Swabian legend calls Berchtolt the white mannikin who brings spools to be spun.

Is Berchtold the same as Perchta?

Berchtold and Perchta are separate figures with the same root. Both are white, both are tied to midwinter, both lead a host of the dead in some districts, and both bring spools to spinners. Jacob Grimm called Berchtold the male form of Berchta.

Is the Swiss holiday Berchtoldstag named after Berchtold?

Probably not. Berchtoldstag is kept on 2 January in many Swiss cantons, and Jacob Grimm linked it to Berchtold. The Schweizerisches Idiotikon derives the name instead from a Middle High German word for Epiphany meaning “shining day”, which was later respelled after the common man’s name Berchtold.

What does Berchtold look like?

Berchtold is dressed in white and rides a white horse. He leads white hounds on a leash and has a horn hanging round his neck. In the Swabian spinning legend Berchtold appears as a small white man.