Błudnik

Below Cottbus the Spree comes apart into a hundred channels, and the ground between them is not reliably ground. Alder roots underfoot, black water a boot’s depth away, the flat cold smell of peat that has been wet for a thousand years. On the worst nights a small pale light comes up off those meadows. It holds still. Then it moves, and it does not move the way a lantern moves in a walking man’s hand. The Wends who farmed that country had a name for it long before anybody arrived to write their stories down.

The name is in print by 1847, in a Lower Lusatian Wendish and German dictionary that gives blud, das Irrlicht, along with the phrase we blużé, in the will-o’-the-wisp. Under bludny, the erring one, the same book lists bludnik and glosses it der Irrige, the man who goes astray. Then the supplement at the back corrects it. Bludnik, Irrwisch, nicht der Irrige. Not the man who gets lost. The thing that loses him.

Thirty-five years later Wilibald von Schulenburg, who lived three years among the Wends of the Spreewald through summers and winters both, took the name down village by village. Bludnik at Burg bei Burghammer, at Groß-Döbbern, at Bohsdorf. Bludźiś at Schleife and Gablenz. Plain Blud in Burg in the Spreewald. Germans in the same villages spoke instead of the Lüchtermann, the light-man, and said only that he was a small man who came out in the evening.

A carter around Drebkau used to bring his team home after dark with that little man riding on the wagon pole, shining, and for years he never once missed the road. At the yard gate he would hand over something for the trouble. That was the arrangement, and the sums are named exactly in the tellings, which is unusual for folklore. A Dreier, three pfennigs. Sometimes a Sechser, sometimes a Groschen. Once a single penny laid on a wooden ladle and passed out through a window, after the thing had knocked and called, I am here, I am here.

Almost every Błudnik story is the same story, and it is about a man who does not pay. Grässe’s Saxon collection has him promise two silver groschen and then press a copper coin into the light’s hand at his own doorstep. The Błudnik takes it without argument and asks, already drifting away, whether he can manage from here. He says yes, cheerfully, he can see his own door standing open. He walks towards it and goes into the water, because there was no door.

The variants are all in that key, and most of them were written down in the 1870s by Edmund Veckenstedt, a senior master at the Cottbus Gymnasium who gathered them through informants, chiefly his own pupils, which is why they arrive tagged with the name of a village rather than the name of a teller. A farmer from Stradow cheated the light three times, promising a Dreier, then a Sechser, then a Groschen, slamming his door and laughing on each occasion, until on the third night the Błudnik slipped into the house ahead of him and turned him round so thoroughly that instead of reaching his parlour he went out of the back door into the pond, and was abandoned there with the water at his neck. A man at Werchau came home past the golden spring, called the light along, paid it nothing, and heard his cattle start bellowing in the byre; when he opened his door to see, the small light was hopping at his feet, and he chased it into the water hole in his own yard while it laughed at him. At Jähnsdorf a man got his cart of flour home behind a Błudnik and then said, praise God I am safely back, rather than thanking the light. The light went out at once. The flour was in the dung pit.

There is a stripe of real cruelty running through it. Schulenburg’s people at Drachhausen said the Blud beslimes the man who withholds the promised money. At Schleife a farmer refused his Dreier with the line if it is not a Dreier then a cudgel will do, and the next time he came home at midnight the light met him and gave him the line back word for word, then beat him with it. Grässe’s version goes after the drunks who give up and lie down in the open, and burns the soles of their feet.

Nobody in the record describes it properly, and the collections are honest enough not to pretend otherwise. A small man in the evening. A light. Only the black ones lead you astray, they said at Branitz. A young farmer walking the causeway from Fehrow to Striesow tried three times to wrestle a small silent man to the ground and finished flat on his own back three times, and later that night the little man turned into a Błudnik and fetched his companions. The nearest thing to a body anywhere in the sources belongs to a farmer at Werben whose boat went over on the Spree; he reached underneath to find out who had done it and came up with a whole fistful of hair. The dirty, eyeless, motionless bulk that sometimes gets attached to this name in English is somebody else entirely, the Belarusian bolotnik recorded around Vitebsk in 1907, a different creature in a different marsh.

On where they come from, the villages agreed. They are dead children. Unbaptised children become will-o’-the-wisps, Schulenburg was told at Schleife, and Grässe heard the same in Saxony. In the Raduscher Busch, back in the time of the Seven Years’ War, the Błudniks held a great hollow willow and some nights lit it up like a seven-branched lamp. Two boys decided to burn them out of it. They were warned off on the grounds that the lights were the souls of dead children, and they went anyway, carrying bundles of brushwood up to the crown of the old tree and setting them alight. They were running in through their own farm gate when an invisible hand took hold of them, threw them over it and dropped them in the water hole in the yard, where they lay senseless a good while. The old people who heard the story said the two of them would be dead inside the year. Both were buried by Kirmes.

What it can do is narrow, and it is enough. It owns the light and the false path, and it is not confined to the night or to the marsh; a woman at Alt-Döbern was led astray twice in broad daylight, and the thing will sit on a walking man’s hat, knock at his window, capsize his boat, or go through his own front door in front of him. Paid properly it will do more than guide. One of them took a penny off a ladle at Sielow and then showed the man a spot where money lay buried in his ground, and he dug there and found it.

Its limits are the limits of a contract. It is cheap, it is exact, and it troubles nobody who has settled up. At Sielow the one man safe from it was whoever could still recall a line from last Sunday’s Gospel. Around Drachhausen a wagon was protected by walking three times round it. Grässe’s advice is the plainest of the lot: do not look at it, and keep walking steadily, because the people it takes are the ones who chase it. A drunk on the road from Cottbus to Dissen swore at a whole field of them, got away with it that night, was told by everybody in his village never to do it again, and did it again. They found him in the swamp.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Błudnik?

A Błudnik is the will-o’-the-wisp of Wendish, or Sorbian, folklore in Lusatia, the marsh country of eastern Germany. The name is recorded in a Lower Lusatian dictionary of 1847 and in village collections of the 1870s and 1880s, where it appears as a small travelling light, and sometimes as a small man, that either guides a lost traveller home or leads him into the water.

What does a Błudnik want in return for guiding someone home?

A single small coin, named exactly in the stories: a Dreier of three pfennigs, sometimes a Sechser or a Groschen, once a penny handed out through a window on a wooden ladle. The Błudnik keeps the bargain scrupulously and will light a man to his own gate for that price. In one Sielow account a paid Błudnik went further and showed the man where treasure lay buried on his land.

What happens if you cheat a Błudnik?

It repays the cheat in kind. The collected tales have it walk a man into a pond up to his neck, tip his cart of flour into the dung pit, chase him into the water hole in his own yard, beat him with a cudgel, cover him in slime, or simply refuse to come again and laugh at him from the dark while he is lost. In the Saxon version it lets a man believe he can see his own front door standing open, and he walks into the water instead.

Where do Błudniks come from?

The villages of Lusatia said they were the souls of dead children, in particular children who died unbaptised. Wilibald von Schulenburg was told this at Schleife, and Grässe recorded the same belief in Saxony. Two boys who tried to burn a colony of Błudniks out of a hollow willow in the Raduscher Busch were warned beforehand that the lights were dead children, ignored it, and were both buried within the year.

How do you protect yourself from a Błudnik?

Pay it, or ignore it. It has power mainly over people who chase the light, so the advice in the sources is to avoid looking at it and walk on steadily. At Sielow the man safe from it was the one who could recall a line from the previous Sunday’s Gospel, and around Drachhausen a wagon was protected by walking three times around it before setting off.

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