Waldgeist

A tree is coming down in a fir wood above the Saale, and two men are working faster than it falls. Before the crown strikes the ground, or at least while the crash is still sounding through the trunks, they hack three crosses into the fresh stump, set in a small wedge-shaped triangle. It takes both of them. One axe is not quick enough. Woodcutters did this so faithfully that crossed stumps could still be seen all through the forests along the river, and in the pine woods near Bamberg, in the first half of the nineteenth century. Each marked stump, the saying went, set one of the little wood-people free. She could sit on it, and the wild hunt could not touch her.

Waldgeist means forest spirit, and in German it works less like a creature than a filing drawer. The Handwörterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens, the great twentieth-century dictionary of German folk belief, began its entry by admitting that no clean line runs between forest spirits, tree spirits and the other demonic beings of the countryside: the borders are fluid. Its working definition was that forest spirits are the vegetation demons of the wood, not lodged in a single tree the way a tree spirit is, but wandering free. The drawer itself was built in 1875, when Wilhelm Mannhardt titled a long chapter of his Wald- und Feldkulte “the forest spirits and their kin” and gathered into one family the wood and moss folk of central Germany, Franconia and Bavaria, the wild folk of the Eifel, Hessen, Salzburg and Tyrol, the forest women and men of Bohemia, the Tyrolean Fanggen and Saligen, and relatives as far off as the Swedish forest-women and the Russian leshy.

The folk under the label had their own names, and better ones. In the Giant Mountains they were Rüttelweiber. In the Bohemian Forest and the Upper Palatinate they were Holzfräulein and Waldweiblein. In the Orlagau and the Harz they were Moosweiblein, moss-wives, and around Halle they were Lohjungfern, grove maidens. Their menfolk were rarer and went dressed all in green. The oldest glimpse of the family is in Latin. Early in the eleventh century Bishop Burchard of Worms, drawing up questions for confessors to put to penitents, asked about belief in rustic women whom “they call silvaticas”, who showed themselves to their lovers when they chose and vanished when they chose.

Mannhardt’s moss-people, of both sexes, have hairy bodies and old wrinkled faces grown over with moss in patches, like the bark of an old tree. An Upper Palatinate teller said the wood-lady looked all mossy, small, and of no definite shape at all; a Harz account had the moss-wives wrapped in moss like a blanket or a pelt. They lived in hollow trees or moss huts, laid their children on moss or in cradles of bark, and spun the long grey tree-moss that hangs from branch to branch like rope, which is where their clothes came from. Around Münchberg people used to cut down branches wound with it and keep the threads, because wood-lady yarn brought luck to a house. Near Warmsdorf in northern Bohemia the Buschweibchen appeared as an ancient little mother with snow-white hair hanging wild, her feet grown over with moss, leaning on a knotted stick.

Their lives were tied to the trees. Every time someone twisted a sapling on its stem until bark and bast sprang loose, one of the forest folk had to die. So they taught a rule and wrapped it in a rhyme: peel no tree, tell no dream, bake no caraway into the bread, and God will help you in every need. Only the first line is about trees. The rest is about bread, because wood-wives liked to steal fresh loaves from the oven and could not carry off one pricked with the fingertips, and caraway, the tellers guessed, pinned a thief to the spot. One wood-wife tasted a new loaf, ran screaming for the forest, and cried that they had baked her caraway bread and it would bring that house great trouble. The farm went downhill until the family had nothing.

Out in the fields they were paid in crop. In the Upper Palatinate people threw a few flax seeds into the bushes at sowing, and when the flax came up they built a little hut from the stalks and called to the wood-lady to take her share. In the Frankenwald three handfuls of flax were left lying for her at harvest; elsewhere a tuft of ripe ears stood uncut, a small heap of hay stayed on the meadow, a last apple hung on the tree. Some came into farmhouses, tended the cattle, ground at the mill and baked, and took the leavings of meals in return, and the luck of the house lasted as long as they stayed. A story from Pfaffenreuth has one sitting pale on the warm stove wall all winter in a torn linen skirt, fed a little three times a day, until the farmer’s wife had a dress made for her. She wailed that now she must suffer all over again until this one too was worn to rags. Elsewhere the rule is simpler: give a wood-wife new clothes and she is gone on the spot.

What they gave back tended to change in the pocket. A wood-wife with a broken wheelbarrow asked a passer-by to mend it and kept stuffing the falling chips into his pocket; he threw them out in disgust, and the few he missed were hard silver thalers by morning. A peasant woman who nursed a crying wood-child was given the bark of its cradle, and a splinter of it turned to gold. They knew the herbs of the forest. In time of plague the Holzfräulein came out of the woods calling to people to eat burnet saxifrage and valerian, and the plague would pass them by. Two wild women who lived in a cave at the Rodenstein in Hessen said that if the peasants only knew what the wild white heath and the wild white sage were good for, they would hoe with silver mattocks.

Their enemy rode the storm through the treetops. In the Upper Palatinate the spirits of the wild hunt were called Holzhetzer, wood-hunters. In Silesia the night huntsman ran down the moss-clad Rüttelweiber, and around Halle a headless huntsman on a white horse hunted the Lohjungfern with a pack of hounds. Some two centuries before Mannhardt, the Leipzig scholar Johannes Praetorius wrote down a story from near Saalfeld. The hunter passed unseen, horn and baying hounds carrying far across the country, and a peasant with more nerve than sense joined in the hunting cry. Next morning a quarter of a green moss-wife hung on his stable. That is why the stumps were crossed, why crosses went onto harrows and ploughs as well, and why Upper Palatinate haymakers tucked a little hay under a bush, pressed three crosses into it with the flat of the hand, and prayed three Our Fathers that the wild host would not catch the wood-wives.

They could not bear to be named. A story told with small changes from Tyrol to the Upper Palatinate has a farmer walking home through the forest with ox-yokes over his shoulder when a loud voice calls out of the trees: yoke-carrier, tell Stutzkatze that Hochrinde is dead. At supper he repeats it. The unknown hired girl who works harder than ten others leaps up crying “Mother! Mother!”, runs for the forest, and is never seen again, though word went round that she carried on her mother’s trade out there, which was stealing children and eating them. Hochrinde and Rohrinde, high bark and rough bark, are bark-names for bark-people. The dictionary adds that forest maidens married men on one condition: the husband must never ask her name.

Not all the family were small. Bohemia had the Heemann, a giant who killed anyone who answered his call. There was the Wouze in a bear pelt, good for frightening children, and the Pfiffer, a whistling giant who killed a charcoal-burner. The Waldmann of the Rosental was only got rid of with a bowl of scalding porridge. The medieval Waldschrat sits at the family’s edge: Old High German glosses render scrato as pilosus, “the hairy one”, and waltschrate as satyrus, and Jacob Grimm read him as a shaggy wild wood-spirit, while Mannhardt objected that the gloss was borrowed from the Latin Bible and that the schrat was usually pictured small, the size of a child. Christian preaching recast plenty of the family as Waldteufel, forest devils.

Mannhardt saw in all of them the souls of trees grown loose from the trunk, vegetation spirits large enough to stand for the whole forest and then for flax and grain as well, and he followed the line back toward the Roman Silvanus and the fauns. Later folklorists have been much less sure, and read many of these figures as local bogeys for keeping children out of the woods. The stories themselves leave a quieter clue. The wood-wife who brings her broken cart for mending and pays in chips that turn to gold is doing exactly what Frau Holle and Perchta do in the same tales, and the flax set aside for forest women during the twelve nights of Christmas looks very much like Perchta’s due.

Their powers run with growth: luck in the byre, yield in the flax, herbs against plague, yarn that never runs out. Their weaknesses are the same facts turned over. A twisted sapling kills one. A new dress, a curse, a pricked loaf or a spoken name ends their stay. The storm hunts them, and a stump only shelters them if the crosses go in before the tree hits the ground. At Warmsdorf, when ragged mist climbed off the mountains in spring and autumn, people said the forest was smoking and the Buschweibchen was cooking. Over the hills around Zittau, she was making coffee.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Waldgeist?

Waldgeist is German for “forest spirit”, and in folklore it is a collective term rather than the name of one being. It covers the moss-wives and wood-ladies of central Germany and Bohemia, the wild folk of Hessen and Tyrol, and giant forest spirits such as the Bohemian Heemann. Wilhelm Mannhardt grouped them as one family in 1875, and the Handwörterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens later admitted the category has no firm borders.

What does a Waldgeist look like?

The moss-people are described with hairy bodies and old, wrinkled faces overgrown with moss in patches like an old tree trunk. They wear clothes made from the grey tree-moss they spin, and one Harz account has them wrapped in moss like a blanket or pelt. The Bohemian Buschweibchen appears as a very old woman with wild white hair, moss-covered feet and a knotted stick.

Why did woodcutters cut three crosses into tree stumps?

The three crosses gave the wood-wives a refuge from the wild hunt, which chased them through the forest in storms. The crosses had to be cut into the stump while the tree was still falling or its crash could still be heard, and it took two woodcutters to work fast enough. A wood-wife sitting on a crossed stump could not be touched by the hunt.

How is a Waldgeist killed or driven away?

A wood-wife’s life is tied to the trees, so twisting a young tree on its stem until the bark springs loose kills one. Household forest spirits leave for good if they are given new clothes, if someone curses in their presence, or if their name becomes known. Caraway bread and loaves pricked with the fingertips were also said to drive them off.

What did people leave out for the Waldgeister?

Households left them the scraps of meals and sometimes baked an extra cake for them. In the fields, people left a few flax seeds in the bushes at sowing, three handfuls of flax or a tuft of grain standing at harvest, a heap of hay on the meadow, and the last fruit on the tree. In return the forest spirits were believed to bring luck, good harvests and help with sick people and animals.

Related Entries

Moss people, Moss Maiden, Wild Hunt, Perchta, Wild man, Woodwose, Kobold, Heinzelmännchen, Changeling, Tomte, Skogsrå, Hulder, Leshy, Silvanus, Faun