Schmutzli

Region/Culture: Swiss German Catholic regions of central and southern Switzerland; broader Alpine
Mythos: Swiss Mythology, Alpine Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Fairy Folk and Spirit Beings
Mythical Attributes: A sooty-faced bogeyman descended from pre-Christian Alpine demon-driving rites, recast as the punitive companion of the Swiss Saint Nicholas.
Role in Mythos: He walks beside Samichlaus on the eve of Saint Nicholas Day, threatening misbehaved children with a bundle of birch switches and a sack while the saint rewards the well-behaved.
Relation to Humans: For centuries Swiss children have feared him, learning small recitation poems and promising better behaviour to avoid his switches and the rumour of being carried into the forest in his sack. In the modern Catholic guild tradition his menace has been deliberately softened, though his blackened face and silent presence still trouble the small ones who meet him at the door.

The candles in the windows are lit early on the night of December fifth. Children are already in coats, breath puffing white as they wait by the lane with paper lanterns held up in mittened hands, listening for the bell. When the donkey appears around the bend, slow and loaded, the gold-clad Samichlaus walks beside it. Behind him, half a step back and silent, walks the other one. His face is black with soot. His robe is brown and rough as a monk’s. A burlap sack hangs from his shoulder, and a bundle of birch twigs is tucked beneath his arm.

This is Schmutzli. The name comes from Schmutz, the Swiss German word for dirt, though the older meaning was closer to grease. He is the dark companion of Samichlaus, the Swiss version of Saint Nicholas, and on the Catholic feast day each December sixth he walks the towns and villages of central and southern Switzerland with his white-bearded counterpart, listening to children recite their poems and dispensing the consequences of a year’s behaviour.

He carries the sack for two reasons. The pleasant reason is that it holds gingerbread, mandarins, peanuts and chocolate, which Samichlaus distributes to the well-behaved. The unpleasant reason is older. If a child has been wicked, Schmutzli might take the sack down, open it, and put the child inside, then carry them off to the forest. That, at least, is what generations of Swiss grandparents have told generations of Swiss children, and what one Lucerne ethnologist remembered being told as a boy. Whether anyone has ever actually been carried off, no one alive can quite say. The threat does the work.

His real beginnings are older than the saint he serves. Long before Saint Nicholas reached the Alps, the people of these valleys held winter festivals in which masked figures stomped through the snow with bells and torches and shouted to drive out the demons of the cold. The festival went by the name Perchtenlaufen, and the costumed figures were called Perchten: wild, ugly, sometimes horned, always loud. When the Catholic Church arrived to civilise the rite, it provided a polite figurehead, the bishop of Myra, and recast the wild masked spirits as his subordinates. One of those subordinates, in Switzerland, became Schmutzli. The earliest documented use of the name appears in 1910, where a folklorist records a strange figure on Saint Nicholas Day called Butzli, with a black face, a black cap, and red eyes. The name shifted, the red eyes faded, the rest stayed.

There is an older line of descent the folklorists also follow. In the pre-Christian Germanic imagination, the leader of the dead in their winter ride across the sky was Wotan, and his retinue contained whippers-in who drove the unredeemed ghostly host along. Some readings of the Schmutzli figure place him in that role: not the judge but the judge’s enforcer, the one who keeps the herd moving. The Christianisation of Wotan into Saint Nicholas, on this reading, is more or less direct, and Schmutzli is the leftover of a much older companion.

The folk version of his origin is humbler. Once, the story goes, an old woodcutter in the forest noticed Samichlaus’s burlap sack splitting open as he walked, the gifts spilling into the snow. The woodcutter gathered them up and returned them. As thanks, he was given the lifelong post of Samichlaus’s helper, a job that came with a sooty face and a switch and the duty of playing bad cop to the saint’s good cop. Folktales tend to soften their figures over time, and this one is doing its work.

He looks the way a man looks when he has spent the year in the woods and not seen soap. Dark hooded robe, often a brown Franciscan cut, sometimes a black cloak. Dark cap pulled low. Hair shaggy, beard untrimmed. The face blackened with grease or soot, partly to hide the man underneath the costume from the children he is visiting, partly because the colour itself signifies the demonic and the unfertile against the white of the saint. In one hand or beneath one arm, the Fitze: a bundle of birch twigs tied at the handle, the old Swiss instrument of correction. Over one shoulder, the sack. He almost never speaks. The voice belongs to Samichlaus.

His powers, such as they are, are limited and specific. He can frighten. He can swat at a child’s legs. He can carry a child off if the saint allows it, and he can withhold sweets, and he can stand wordless in a doorway and exert the kind of presence that makes a small person reconsider their decisions. He works only at the saint’s word. Without Samichlaus, he is nothing. Without Schmutzli, the local Saint Nicholas societies will tell you, Samichlaus is also nothing, because virtue without consequence is just a man in a red robe handing out fruit.

His weaknesses are the same as his powers, inverted. He cannot harm a child who has memorised their Sprüchli, the small rhymed poem children recite in exchange for treats, and who promises with sufficient sincerity to do better. He cannot act outside the December window. He cannot enter homes uninvited. The trend across the last century has been steadily against him: the Catholic guilds that organise the visits now put strict guidelines in place against actually frightening anyone, the punishments have shrunk to symbolic taps, and the sack holds chocolate rather than children. A Saint Nicholas society president in Littau put it bluntly. Schmutzli isn’t there to keep order in people’s homes. He’s there to put them in the mood for Christmas.

He is not the only one of his kind. In French-speaking Switzerland he becomes Père Fouettard, Father Whipper. In Germany Knecht Ruprecht does the same job under a slightly different brief. In the Netherlands, Zwarte Piet. In Austria, Krampus, who out-monsters him by a long way. Wherever the saint goes, someone walks behind him with the switches. Schmutzli is the Swiss German answer to a question Europe has been asking for a thousand years, which is what to do with the part of the season that the saint cannot quite accommodate. The cold part. The part that drives a sane person indoors and locks the door.

When the donkey moves on past the house and the lanterns recede down the lane, the children come back inside still holding their treat bags. Someone says something about how scary he looked this year. Someone says something about how he didn’t really seem so bad. Both are correct. He has always been both.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Schmutzli?

Schmutzli is the sooty-faced dark companion of Samichlaus, the Swiss version of Saint Nicholas. He appears in Swiss German Catholic regions of central and southern Switzerland on Saint Nicholas Day, December 6, walking behind the saint and threatening misbehaved children while Samichlaus rewards the good ones. His name comes from the Swiss German word Schmutz, meaning dirt.

What does Schmutzli do to misbehaving children?

Schmutzli threatens misbehaving children with a bundle of birch switches called the Fitze and a burlap sack. According to the tradition Swiss grandparents have passed down for generations, a wicked child might be placed in the sack and carried off into the forest. In the modern Catholic guild tradition the punishments have shrunk to symbolic taps, and the sack now holds chocolate rather than children.

Where did Schmutzli come from?

Schmutzli descends from pre-Christian Alpine demon-driving rites in which masked figures called Perchten stomped through the snow with bells and torches to drive out the cold’s demons during a festival called Perchtenlaufen. When the Catholic Church arrived in the Alps, it recast these wild masked spirits as subordinates of Saint Nicholas, and in Switzerland one of them became Schmutzli. The earliest documented use of the name appears in 1910, recording a figure called Butzli with a black face, black cap, and red eyes.

What does Schmutzli look like?

Schmutzli wears a dark hooded robe, often a brown Franciscan cut or a black cloak, with a dark cap pulled low and shaggy untrimmed hair and beard. His face is blackened with grease or soot, both to hide the man beneath the costume and to signify the demonic against the white of the saint. He carries a bundle of birch switches under one arm and a burlap sack over his shoulder, and he almost never speaks.

How can children avoid Schmutzli?

Children can avoid Schmutzli by memorizing their Sprüchli, a small rhymed poem recited in exchange for treats, and by promising sincerely to behave better. Schmutzli cannot act outside the December Saint Nicholas window, cannot enter homes uninvited, and works only at Samichlaus’s word. Without the saint, Schmutzli has no authority.