Folklore of the Woodwives
The title of this blog, Woodwives, came from the folklore of the Germanic woodwife (or wood-wife).
Their lore varies but some common threads exist: the forest, baking, and being helpful. Well, maybe being a little vengeful depending on how you treated them.
Which, you know, fair.
Grimm’s woodwives
Jacob Grimm, of Grimms’ Fairy Tales fame, collected and studied Germanic folklore, and it is his writing that has led to most of what I’ve read about woodwives. In his 1835 book Deutsche Mythologie (translated into English by James Steven Stallybrass called Teutonic Mythology) he attempts to explain their origins and how they interacted with humans. He studied stories, languages, and traditions.
Grimm thought the woodwives may have been related to the Greek and Roman stories of dryads or fauns. larger, scarier entities whose lives were bound up with the trees. Over time, these figures evolved into smaller, more elf-like “wild women” dressed in moss.
Grimm thought the woodwives may have been related to Greek and Roman stories of dryads or fauns. Larger, scarier type entities that lived in trees and the forest at large. Over time, the figures became more elf-like, dressed in moss, wild-women. Their souls are tied to specific trees. [1] Grimm described them beautifully:
“The little wood-wives come up to woodcutters, and beg for something to eat, or take it themselves out of their pots; but whatever they have taken or borrowed they make good in some other way, not seldom by good advice… then, like Berhta she pays you with the fallen chips, which turn into gold; or if you are knitting, she gives you a ball of thread which you will never have done unwinding.” [2] [2a]
“On the Saale they tell you of a bush-grandmother and her moss-maidens ; this sounds like a queen of elves, if not like the ‘weird lady of the woods’. The little wood-wives are glad to come when people are baking, and ask them, while they are about it, to bake them a loaf too, as big as half a millstone, and it must be left for them at a specified place ; they pay it back afterwards, or perhaps bring some of their own baking, and lay it in the furrow for the ploughmen, or on the plough, being mightily offended if you refuse it.” [3]
These tales caution you to remain generous, and not to count your dumplings in the pot or loaves in the oven. After all, with the woodwives you rarely lose anything by being generous. If they take from your pot, they balance the scales. Their gifts look worthless at first (like wood chips or scraps of bark), but if accepted with gratitude, they transform into gold or neverending resources.
Unless, of course, it’s caraway bread. How dare you.
Bread Lore
“A wood-wife, after tasting some newly-baked bread, ran off to the forest, screaming loud:
Sie liaben mir gebacken kiimmelbrot, das bringt diesem hause grosse noth!
(They’ve baked me caraway-bread, it will bring that house great trouble!)
…Whether the seasoning with, cummin disgusted them as an innovation merely, or in some other connection, I do not know.” [4]
It’s possible that caraway worked in the way of other strong-smelling aromatics like garlic as a way to counter magic like in other tales. Perhaps caraway inadvertently banished the woodwife, poor thing.
But as for me? I’ll happily take your caraway bread, your garlic bread, and whatever else you’re baking.
And so, here we are.
Footnotes
[1] Jacob Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, Vol. 2, trans, James Steven Stallybrass (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1883), 484.
[2] Ibid, 483-484.
[2a] More on the figure of Berhta.
Jacob Grimm, Teutonic Mythology Vol. 1, trans, James Steven Stallybrass (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1883) xv.
[3] Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, Vol. 2, 483-484.
[4] Ibid, 484-485.
References:
Grimm, Jacob. Teutonic Mythology. Translated by James Steven Stallybrass. Vol. 1. London: G. Bell and Sons, 1883.
https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_c8AoAAAAYAAJ/page/n15/mode/2up.
Grimm, Jacob. Teutonic Mythology. Translated by James Steven Stallybrass. Vol. 2. London: G. Bell and Sons, 1883.
www.archive.org/details/teutonicmytholo02grim.
