Perchta

Snow packed hard against the doorsill, the fire banked to embers, and somewhere past midnight a sound in the house that is not the house settling. In the Alpine valleys of Bavaria, Tyrol, Salzburg and Carniola, the twelve nights between Christmas and Epiphany belonged to a visitor who did not knock. She came to check the work. She counted the spindles, she looked at the floor, she looked at what had been eaten, and depending on what she found she left either a small silver coin in a shoe or a pail, or she opened you up and packed the cavity with straw and pebbles.

Her name most likely comes from brightness. Old High German beraht meant shining, and Berchtentag was the feast of Epiphany, the night of manifestation, so that the woman and the day she walks on carry the same root. Eugen Mogk argued for a different origin entirely, from a verb meaning hidden or covered, which would make her the concealed one rather than the bright one. Both readings suit her. She is a creature of a single luminous night who spends it moving unseen through dark rooms.

Jacob Grimm placed her geographically with some precision, noting that Perchta was known “precisely in those Upper German regions where Holda leaves off, in Swabia, in Alsace, in Switzerland, in Bavaria and Austria.” Lotte Motz later argued that the two are versions of one figure, a mistress of wild things and of the turning year, life-giving in one hand and life-taking in the other. In Baden, Swabia and the Slovene lands she was Frau Faste, the lady of the Ember days, or Pehta, or Kvaternica. Among the Carinthian Slovenes there was even a male counterpart, the Quantembermann, the man of the four Ember days. The names multiply the further you walk, which is what happens to a being who belongs to farmhouses rather than to temples.

She has two faces and the sources do not reconcile them. In one she is beautiful and white, tall, veiled, moving with the composure of something that has never had to hurry. In the other, recorded in the Tyrol, she is a little old woman with a deeply wrinkled face, bright quick eyes, a long hooked nose, her hair loose and disordered, her clothes in rags. Martin of Amberg, writing around 1400, called her Percht mit der eisnen nasen, Percht with the iron nose, which is the sort of detail that survives because it is unpleasant to picture. Strangest of all is her foot. Across a startling spread of languages she is remembered as the woman with the one great foot: Berhte mit dem fuoze in Middle German, Berthe au grand pied in French, Berta dai gran piè in Italian. Grimm read it two ways at once, as a swan maiden’s webbed foot that marks her higher nature and cannot be put aside, and as the splayed treadle foot of a woman who has spent her life at the wheel.

Spinning is the hinge of everything she does. Girls were expected to have spun through their allotted flax or wool by the time the twelve nights arrived, and the distaff was to stand idle during them. Perchta came to see. If the work was done she was generous. If it was not, or if the household had eaten anything on her night other than the plain traditional meal of fish and gruel, the knife came out of the pocket. She slit the belly, drew out the stomach and the guts, and stuffed the hollow with straw, pebbles or refuse. Then she sewed it shut. The horror of it is in the tidiness.

That image is older and travelled further than the Alps. In Laxdœla saga, the Icelandic warrior Án dreams of a hideous woman standing over him with a great knife and a trough; she cuts him open, takes out his entrails, and packs the space with brushwood. Nobody takes the dream seriously, and he carries the nickname Án hrísmagi, Brushwood-belly, for the rest of the saga. Thomas D. Hill traced the resemblance to Perchta directly, which puts a thirteenth-century Icelandic text and an Austrian nursery threat in the same room.

John B. Smith’s reading of her is the most deflating and probably the most useful. He argues that Perchta began as the enforcer of communal obligations rather than personal virtue: the taboo against spinning on holy days, and the duty to eat your share at the collective feast, which was itself a magical act meant to guarantee the coming year’s plenty. Refusing the porridge was not laziness, it was sabotage. Only later, as Alpine peasant women were drawn into the cash economy of textiles and unspun flax became lost income, did she harden into the punisher of the merely idle. Smith goes further and argues she is not a survival of a pagan goddess at all, but a personification of the feast of Epiphany that grew a body. The question is unsettled and likely to stay that way.

What is documented is that people fed her. In 1439 Thomas Ebendorfer von Haselbach recorded, in order to condemn it, the custom of setting out drink, salt and food for Fraw Percht on certain nights, and later church writers filed her alongside Holda, Diana, Herodias and Abundia in the roster of women who lead nocturnal companies. The condemnations are the best evidence we have that the offerings were real and widespread.

Her retinue outlived her. By the sixteenth century the Perchten were masked figures in the flesh, divided into the Schönperchten, bright and beautiful, who came to bring luck and wealth, and the Schiachperchten, tusked and fanged and tailed, who came to drive out spirits. Men wore the ugly masks house to house. They still do, in the Pongau processions, in the Glöcklerlaufen of the Salzkammergut, on stilts at Unken, and as the beaked Schnabelperchten of the Unterinntal, with ski resorts now selling tickets.

Her powers follow from what she is. She passes through locked houses on the nights she owns, sees exactly how much thread a girl has drawn in a year, and is capable of both the coin and the knife without any change of expression. She shapeshifts between the white woman and the crone, and Grimm read the goose foot as the seam where the animal shows through. Her limits follow just as neatly. She holds authority only in her twelve nights and evaporates with them. She can be satisfied, which is not nothing: finish the flax, put the distaff away, eat the fish and the gruel, leave the bowl on the sill, and she has no claim on you at all. Her whole terrible apparatus can be defeated by a tidy house.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Frau Perchta?

Perchta is a figure of Alpine folklore from Bavaria, Austria, Switzerland and the Slovene lands who visits homes during the twelve nights between Christmas and Epiphany. She inspects the household’s work, particularly spinning, and rewards the diligent with a small silver coin while punishing the idle with disembowelment. Her name probably derives from Old High German beraht, “bright”, the same root as Berchtentag, the feast of Epiphany.

Why is Perchta called the belly-slitter?

If Perchta found that a household’s flax or wool had not been spun, or that someone had eaten anything on her feast night other than the traditional fish and gruel, she was said to cut the offender’s belly open, remove the stomach and entrails, and stuff the cavity with straw, pebbles or rubbish before sewing it shut. The folklorist John B. Smith argued this punishment originally enforced communal taboos rather than personal laziness, since refusing the collective holiday meal was thought to endanger the coming year’s harvest.

What does Perchta look like?

Perchta appears in two contradictory forms. In one she is a tall, beautiful woman, white as snow and veiled; in the other, recorded in the Tyrol, she is a small wrinkled crone with bright eyes, a long hooked nose, loose hair and torn clothing. Martin of Amberg around 1400 called her “Percht with the iron nose”, and across several languages she is remembered as having one enormous splayed foot, sometimes described as a goose or swan foot.

Is Perchta a pagan goddess?

This is disputed. Jacob Grimm and Lotte Motz treated her as a survival of a pre-Christian Germanic goddess, with Motz identifying her as the southern counterpart of Holda and a mistress of wild things. John B. Smith argued the opposite, that Perchta is a personification of the Christian feast of Epiphany rather than an inherited pagan deity. Both readings remain in circulation among scholars.

What are the Perchten?

The Perchten are masked figures who form Perchta’s entourage and who still appear in Alpine winter processions. By the sixteenth century they were divided into the Schönperchten, beautiful masks worn to bring luck and wealth, and the Schiachperchten, ugly masks with tusks, fangs and tails worn to drive out evil spirits. Regional survivals include the Pongau processions, the Glöcklerlaufen of the Salzkammergut, the stilt dancers of Unken and the beaked Schnabelperchten of the Unterinntal.

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