Cooking Magical Herbs

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Geographic Coordinates: 50° 58' 41.00" N, 11° 1' 45.00" E

Bräuner’s Curiositäten, p. 58-61 and oral tale.

In Erfurt in the year 1672, it occurred that a carpenter’s maid and a dyer’s journeyman who had served in the same house had a love affair, which, in its levity, lasted for some time. But, eventually, the journeyman got tired of this, continued on his journeys, and started to work for a master tradesman in Langensalza. However, the maid could not get past her thoughts of love, and wanted her lover at her side again. On the holy day of Pentecost, when everyone else living in the house (excepting the apprentice) were in church, she put certain herbs into a pot, and put the pot next to the fire. Once the pot began to boil, her lover was supposed to be present.

But the apprentice didn’t know about the contents of the pot. Thus, when the pot was next to the fire and bubbled, he moved it closer to the blaze, and put his own pan with glue in its place. As soon as the pot with the herbs got closer to the heat of the fire, he heard a voice coming from within the pot multiple times. The voice said: “Come, come, Hansel, come! Come, come, Hansel, come!” But while the apprentice was stirring his glue, there was something dropping behind him like a sack. When he turned around, he saw a young man lying there who wore nothing except a shirt, and started to wail pitifully about his situation.

The maid came running, as well as other people living in the house, in order to see why the boy had screamed so vehemently. They then found the journeyman lying there in a shirt as if he had just awakened from deep slumber. But he soon recovered somewhat, and, after being questioned, related that a large, black, coarse animal shaped like a billy goat had appeared in front of his bed. This creature had frightened him terribly, and soon grabbed him with its horns and flew out of the large window with him. What happened to him after that, he could not say. He was otherwise not aware of anything peculiar. But now he was so far away from where he had been. For about eight o’clock in the morning he had still been laying in bed in Langensalza, and now it was barely half past eight in Erfurt. He was convinced that Catharine, his former girlfriend, was responsible for this somehow. For she had told him when he left that, if he didn’t return soon, she would fetch him on a billy goat.

After she was threatened with being handed over to the authorities as a witch, the maid started to cry and confessed that an old woman, whose name she passed on, had talked her into this. That woman had given her herbs with the instruction that, if she boiled them gently, her boyfriend would appear, regardless how far away he was.

Source: Grimm - Deutsche Sagen Band 1, p. 182f