Hansel's witch

There was once a poor woodcutter who lived in a little shack on the edge of a great forest. When he was already well on in years he had taken a young wife. Great was their joy when she was delivered of twins, but greater was his sadness a short while later when she took sick and died. So the old man was left alone to bring up his two children in the little house by the wood, and a great struggle it was in hard times on the meagre earnings of a humble woodsman, who had to work long and hard to earn the little he did.

The children, however, were his pride and joy and his great solace, and their names were Hansel and Gretel.

One day when Hansel and Gretel were still quite young their father fell sick and was unable to rise from his bed. There would be no woodcutting done that day, so there would be no money, and that meant no food for the three of them to eat.

"We must take father's axe," said Gretel, "and go into the wood. We may be too small and weak to cut down great trees as father does, but we can cut small branches to sell for firewood."

So Hansel and Gretel took their father's axe and a basket to carry whatever wood they could cut, and away they bravely marched into the dark forest.

All morning they cut small branches and collected pieces of wood that had fallen until they had enough for six baskets. And then Hansel said: "I am hungry. We must stop for something to eat."

But in their haste to go about the woodcutting business they had forgotten to bring any food with them. So Hansel said: "We must make do with what we can find in the forest." And he at once set about finding things they could eat.

This was not so easy, for it was not yet the fruitful autumn time, but Hansel found some bright berries and greedily ate handfuls of them, though Gretel would not.

Then he found some small mushrooms, and these too he plucked up in handfuls and thrust into his mouth, though again Gretel would not.

At length he declared he was thirsty, and Gretel this time joined him in drinking from a small stream that ran sparkling through the wood.

Soon Hansel began to feel unwell. In the greenish light of the forest he turned greener and more plaid. He began to sweat. His arms and legs started to itch. His head swam. He collapsed in a faint.

Poor Gretel did not know what to do for the best. She thought first of running home for help, but she remembered her poor father lying in a fever himself. Then, they had wandered far into the forest and in her flustered state she was not sure she would be able to find her way home - or then to find her way back to Hansel, who would be sure to be eaten by wild beasts if left alone in a swoon.

Poor Gretel sat down by Hansel, put her hands to her face and wept as she wondered what would become of them. Finally, as afternoon grew towards evening and the light in the woods grew dangerously dimmer, she smelt something that made her lift her face with new hope. What she smelt was smoke, the familiar, homely smell of woodsmoke. And she knew that meant someone was nearby.

Finding unexpected strength, Gretel lifted Hansel to his feet, and clasping one of his arms around her neck she made him walk, still all but unconscious, towards the source of the wonderful smell.

Soon they came upon a cottage among the trees, a little run-down and shabby, but with neatly tended shrubs and a perfect little herb garden all around it. Gretel rapped at the door and after a short while a voice came from within: "Who is there and what is it you want?"

"My name is Gretel," answered Gretel. "My brother is sick. We are lost."

At once the door was opened by an old woman, who took a quick look round before taking Hansel by his other arm and helping Gretel to half walk, half carry him into the cottage.

"You poor dears," she said once they were safely inside. "We must lie him on the bed."

She lay Hansel down on her own bed, which was the only one in the cottage, arranging him carefully on his side, and began to feel his forehead and other parts of his body with her gnarled old hands.

"What has he been eating?" she asked Gretel. And without waiting for an answer she added: "You were wise not to eat it too, or you might now both be dead upon the forest floor."

Gretel looked thunderstruck at this and asked in a small, frightened voice: "Can you save him?"

The old woman looked at her kindly. "Oh yes, my dear," she said. "Oh yes."

For three days Hansel remained in a fever, barely waking, while the old woman applied various remedies, schooling Gretel as she did so in the arts of preparing herbal soups, mint tea, nettle compresses, soothing potions and lavender posies to freshen the air. At the end of this time Hansel woke, not knowing where he was. Not until the fifth day did the old woman declare that he was well enough to leave, and bade them farewell with a basket of fruit and vegetables and some fresh bread she had made and careful instructions about how to find their way home.

When they got there they found their old father well again and almost beside himself with joy at the return of his darlings, whom he had thought lost and gone forever.

He was of course eager to know where they had been, and Hansel quickly began to tell him.

"We were captured by an old witch who wanted to eat us," said Hansel. "She poisoned me with evil potions and kept Gretel a slave in her foul-smelling kitchen while she tried to fatten me up."

Hearing this, Gretel, who had become very fond of the old woman, was left speechless. She knew that if she contradicted her brother she would as likely as not be beaten for insolence and lying.

Hansel continued: "Her house was made of fruit and sweets and delicious cakes on the outside to tempt children like us who might wander by. But they made us very drowsy and ill so she was able to overpower us both and lock us up in the house, which was dark and cold and evil-smelling inside.

"She kept us there for months and maybe years and Gretel had to work and work while I was too weak to help, because I wouldn't eat much so I didn't get fat enough for her to eat. And in the end she was going to bake us in bread and eat us anyway, only Gretel managed to trick her and we got away."

Through all this Gretel's eyes grew wider and wider and her jaw dropped lower and lower. But the old woodcutter was a credulous soul, and he so doted on his son he would believe anything he said, however strange.

And so life in the little shack on the edge of the forest took up again and went on much as it had before. But the woodcutter was much struck by the tale his son had told, especially the extraordinary aspect of months or years of his children's life taking only a few days of his own. Of course he forbade Hansel and Gretel from ever going into the forest again without him, though he believed it unlikely they would wish to.

Twice a week the woodcutter went into the nearby town, taking a cart piled high with wood to the market. And it so happened on one such day that he sold all the wood he had taken and went for some refreshment at the inn in the marketplace before setting off once more for home. And of course in the inn he fell to talking, and of course the thing that most readily came to him to talk about was the dreadful adventure that had befallen Hansel and Gretel in the forest. And since this was much the most remarkable tale anyone had had to tell in the inn for some time, he was plied with more beer than he was in the habit of drinking and encouraged to tell his story over and again with ever more attention to the details, which became ever more precise and ever more lurid. The added details which particularly appealed to the woodcutter's growing audience were the wooden cage Hansel was locked up in, and the bone used by Gretel to fool the witch into thinking Hansel was too thin to consider eating. This thin, dry bone, the woodcutter said, Hansel would proffer as if it was his finger, so the witch would think he had no flesh upon him.

The foolish old woodcutter was sick again the next day, while the curious tale he had told was relayed all around the town.

By evening the men had all told their wives the story, the wives had incited their men to righteous fury and action, and a party was formed to fetch the witch from the wood. They did not dare go at night, but when day dawned once more a bold group of twenty or so of the town's bravest assembled in the market square, armed with batons and ropes for their dangerous mission.

Before they set off there was some discussion about how the witch should be handled. The first suggestion, that the cottage should be set alight with her inside, was at once ridiculed, for it was thought she might simply fly away, or change into a rat to run from the flames. She would then undoubtedly curse all those who had come for her.

The second suggestion was that she should be captured, bound, and returned to the town for burning in the square. The third that she should be drowned.

The debate between these two became drawn out, perhaps because none of the men was quite so eager for action in the light of day as they had been when urged on the night before. While they argued the matter the priest appeared, in a hurry to intervene in the unfolding drama.

"It is most unseemly," said the priest, "to conduct this matter in such an ungodly way." And he added: "If the woman is indeed a witch, it could also be perilous - to your lives and your loved ones in this world and perhaps to your souls in the next." And so the mob was forestalled.

It so happened, however, that there was at this time staying in a nearby town a certain friar who was very learned in the matter of witches, and it was not long before the story of Hansel's witch reached his eager ears.

This friar was not a simple man. He believed little he heard of Hansel's tale. But he had a studied respect for witchcraft. He knew things were often not as they seemed. And he knew a good opportunity when one presented itself.

He did not go into the forest himself, but sent two henchmen to fetch the old woman to the priest's house. Two days later he had a written confession.

The old woman, it seemed, had lived many years in the forest, since her husband had gone off to fight in the wars and not returned. She had entered into a pact with a demon, who often lay with her at night. Sometimes he came in the form of a man with cloven feet and tail, sometimes that of a stag with smoking antlers, sometimes a cat with eyes that glowed like red coals. By this union she had been delivered of many babies, all deformed, and all of these she had killed, cooked and crumbled into powder for use in demonic pastes and potions.

Four times a year, at the height of each season, she would take a branch from a forest tree, smear it with an ointment provided by her demon, and fly like a night wind to a witches' sabbat.

There, with countless other witches and devotees of Satan, she would take part in a great feast. The chief and choicest food was the flesh of children who were taken there alive and killed in the heat of a great fire around which all the witches danced.

Presiding at this feast was the Devil himself, or one of his senior host, appearing as a horned and crowned goat. He would sit in majesty upon a high throne, which became an altar for sacrifice when children's bones were baked into bread for the demonic mass. As the ritual reached its climax, each witch would kiss the Devil beneath the tail.

Then every female witch would mate on the ground or in the air either with a male witch or with a demon. In capturing Hansel and Gretel, the witch had meant to provide fresh children for roasting at such a sabbat, as she had done scores of times before.

Now all this was just as the friar had expected, but in one respect he and his henchmen were disappointed. When pressed to name others who attended the sabbat, the old woman at first gave no names, then named a priest of the town, but one who was long dead. Then she named a local land-owning lord, but a predecessor of the one who held the manor now. Finally she named her own daughter, but she too had been dead many years.

So it was the old woman alone who stood before the magistrate for sentence. And now again there was disappointment for the hard-working friar and his eager assistants. For the old woman exclaimed: "My lord, none of these things you have heard is true. I agreed to the things they said only to make them stop hurting me." And she showed the magistrate the fresh marks of torture upon her hands, her wrists, her arms and shins.

She was about to undo her shift to reveal the marks elsewhere on her body when the friar shouted out: "She recants, she recants! She must be burned at once before she infects others with her evil and her lies."

The magistrate, however, was a fair man, and a brave one. "She shall not burn," he declared, "until we have God's own verdict upon her. Let her undergo the trial by swimming."

So the old woman was taken to the lake at the edge of the town, and out onto a jetty where fisherman would cast their lines or tie up their boats. There, while the magistrate and the priest stood witness to what would befall, the friar's two henchmen bound her right thumb to the big toe of her left foot and hurled her, thus bent, out over the lake.

By this test it would be known whether she was truly a witch or no. If she was in league with demons, the water, being a pure element, would reject her as something foul and evil. She would float. Were she innocent, the lake would quickly swallow her up. Of course, she would probably drown, but in that case they would all be happy in the knowledge that they had hastened her on her way to a better place.

Now it so happened that the old woman, despite the discomfort of her contorted bondage, after briefly sinking below the surface bobbed up again like a cork and floated with one shoulder, one knee and most of her face clear of the water. And so, despite her continued protests of innocence, the verdict was that she must burn.

A pyre was raised at once in the market square, built up of faggots from the woodcutter's store. The witch was bound hand and foot to a log somewhat bigger than she herself, and placed upright atop the wooden pile. There she remained, at times proclaiming her innocence loudly, at others muttering to herself, until a crowd had gathered, numbering most of the people of the town. It was quite a holiday atmosphere, though some folk jeered and a few boys threw rotted fruit and other bits of detritus from the street.

At length, as evening sunlight slanted across the square, the friar put a torch to the pyre and the wooden faggots began to flare. Hansel and Gretel stood quietly by, the rising flames shining in their young eyes as the old woman was consumed.

The witch's property by custom went to her accusers or those who had brought her to justice. Had she been richer, the friar's two assistants would doubtless have profited. It had happened elsewhere, and might have done so here had they succeeded in racking from her the names of other witches living. The friar himself, of course, was sworn to poverty and so could not gain by his work.

So the little house and garden in the forest became Hansel's, and a fine place it was for the woodcutter he would grow up to be to make his home and raise his family.