It is not so very long ago, they say, that there lived in Ettelbrück a man named Jekel, who possessed magical powers and often made sport of the inhabitants of Ettelbrück.
Once, a butcher named Mai was on his way back from Burscheid, where he had gone to buy a calf, but he had found none and had to return empty-handed. As he was walking along quietly, he saw a calf running on the path that leads through the hedgerows. Since it was a fine-looking animal, he at once ran after it, slipped a rope around its neck, and, well pleased, led it homeward.
He had just reached Ettelbrück when the calf suddenly turned into a man and said: “Mai, you’ve led me long enough—now you go home, and I go my way.”
That was Jekel.
The fishermen, however, had the most to suffer from him. It is said that he once followed a fisherman in the form of a large dog, and whenever the fisherman caught a fish, the dog would jump up and swallow it in an instant. The fisherman did everything he could to drive the dog away, but always in vain.
One day, though, he struck at the dog’s shadow with his net, and suddenly the dog vanished and was never seen again. The dog, of course, had been Jekel.
Jekel especially delighted in frightening people. He would often lie across the road to Warken (in the place called Efer) in the form of a streak of fire, particularly on Sunday evenings when the folk of Warken were on their way to evening devotions. At other times he would appear as a cat sitting at a street corner after dark, spitting fire when people passed.
When children played on the marketplace, the place would often suddenly swarm with rabbits, sending the little ones into fear and confusion. That, too, was Jekel’s doing.
An end was at last to be made to Jekel’s wicked ways. One day he fell asleep near the ironworks of Colmar-Berg. The smiths found him and said: “Oh Jekel, you’ve plagued and tormented people long enough; now you shall receive your reward.”
They seized him and threw him into the smelting furnace, where he came to a miserable end.
