farmer once had a witch in his service that the
herder boy just couldn’t stand. Often, she
would slap him in the face so hard that his
whole head throbbed and she frequently
mistreated him in other ways. The farmer's wife
didn’t say a word about it: she held the maid in high
esteem because the cows gave more milk than ever befo-
re and there was plenty of butter and cheese.
One Thursday, she had to go with the pasture boy to
the mountain in order to gather foliage. When she was
next to the bushes, she said to the boy: “Now, you gather
leaves until both baskets are full, because I have to conti-
nue up the mountain to find hazelnuts. Work quickly and
don’t check up on me! If both baskets aren’t full when I re-
turn, I’ll beat so hard you’ll still feel it on Judgment Day!”
She went away, but the whole thing seemed fishy to
the boy. When he thought she was quite a distance away,
he stole after her. Soon, he saw a lot of women dancing
and jumping on a flat mountain meadow. Then they
started fighting one another, pulling each other by the
hair and tearing it, until they had torn the maid comple-
tely apart. Then the dance began anew.
Soon, however, some witches gathered the bones of
the dead and put them together. There was only one that
they could not find. After much fruitless search, a woman
broke a twig from a hazel tree and put it in place of the
missing little bone, saying all sorts of spells. Immediately
afterward, the one who had been torn apart came back to
life and jumped up. “Now you're back completely," said
the old woman, “until someone calls you Hazel Witch. If
that happens, the magic will come back and you’ll fall
back into just as many pieces as before.”
The boy took note of this and crept back to his work.
Soon afterwards, the maid arrived and saw that the bas-
kets were not filled. She began to curse at the boy, scol-
ding him and even beating him. “Leave me alone or I’ll
help you," he threatened. She took no notice – in fact she
only abused him the more. Finally he shouted, “You're the
Hazel Witch!” and with that, she fell immediately into pie-
ces.
The boy was now liberated from the witch. The far-
mer's wife, however, was not happy about the whole
thing because the milk and butter dwindled and the who-
le village found out that they had a witch in their service.