In Kœstlach, a small village lying northwest of Old Ferrette, there lived an old witch who had in her service a very beautiful young maiden. She treated her harshly, so harshly that the girl had more than once given notice and tried to leave; yet the wicked woman always managed to keep her by means of flattery and promises.
After finishing the household work, the poor girl had every night to spin, knit, and mend, and she was rarely allowed to go to bed before midnight, although the next morning, as soon as daylight broke, she had to be up again. She was therefore greatly astonished when, one evening, her mistress sent her to bed immediately after supper.
She obeyed gladly enough, yet all the while she felt so strange and uneasy that she could not fall asleep. Presently she thought she heard a noise in the living room opposite her little chamber, and when she raised herself and listened for a while, she clearly heard the whirring of spinning wheels. “Mistress has people gathered for spinning,” she thought; “I am good enough for drudgery, but whenever there is merriment in the house, I am sent to bed.” She listened a little longer, and then curiosity overcame her. Peeping through the keyhole into the room, she saw a circle of great straw bundles with human heads upon them; they nodded to one another and spun so furiously that they made a dreadful buzzing sound. The girl let out a cry and hurried back to bed, where she lay feverish all through the night.
The next day she told the woman that she could not remain any longer, that she must be paid her wages and dismissed. The old woman pleaded with her again, flattered her, and finally threatened her as well. But this time the girl remained firm in her resolve and packed up her belongings. As she was leaving, however, the woman seized her by the arm and said, “Listen: if you tell any human being what you saw last night, I shall do you harm, wherever you may be.”
The girl promised to keep silent, and she kept that promise faithfully for two years. Then she thought her mistress would no longer remember the matter and would not find out if she gave relief to the long-hidden secret that weighed so heavily upon her; so she confided the nightly witchly haunting to a few companions. But when she tried to get up the next morning, her feet were swollen, and she could not move a limb.
A few weeks later it happened that a young man from Kœstlach returned home from abroad. He had been delayed and took the shortest way across the witches’ ground, a heath clearing surrounded by forest, with the witches’ tree standing in its middle. When he heard footsteps and voices coming from the woods, he grew frightened and in his confusion climbed up the tree as high as he could and hid himself among the leaves.
And behold, a great number of women, young and old, came leaping from his village and the neighboring places, and among them was the wicked woman who had bewitched the beautiful girl. They danced several times around the tree and then settled in a circle, and each of them had to tell what harm she had done to people and cattle since their last meeting.
The witch then told what she had done to her former servant because the girl had blabbed about the nocturnal spectacle, and all her fellow witches praised her for the neat trick. But one of them said, “If the lass only knew that she would recover by bathing her feet in the milk of the three oldest black cows in the village, she would have no more cause to grieve. But it serves her right—why did she chatter?”
When day began to pale, the witches scattered like the wind.
The young man, who had not felt at ease during this uncanny business and had all the while been in constant fear of being discovered, then climbed down from his tree. He knew the beautiful girl of whom the witches had spoken, and he had loved her since boyhood.
He hurried toward the village, and as soon as he thought the time suitable, he went to the girl’s parents and told them the remedy. It worked at once, and the sick girl became as fresh and healthy as before.
When the parents asked the young man what reward they should give him, he answered, “Nothing would please me more than your daughter herself.” She, too, felt affection for her former playmate, who had now become her rescuer, gladly consented, and the wedding was celebrated soon afterward.
