The Bandits of the Eckernkrug Tavern in the Schimmerwald Forest
The Schimmerwald forest between Harzburg and Ilsenburg was infamous for the bandits who dwelled within it. An old woman who lived at the Zellbach in Clausthal, and whose daughter was ancient but still alive in this city in the year 1850 (according to an old woman from Lerbach) once was caught by surprise by the night within the Schimmerwald, and sought a place to stay in the Eckernkrug tavern. There she slept on the floor in the main chamber.
But in the night, many bandits arrived who had brought a fat man as a prisoner with them. They cut up his meat, and made sausage out of it. But before they did so, they held a light above the old woman, and even tickled on the soles of her feet in order to see if she was really fast asleep. If she had moved in even the slightest manner, she would have been murdered as well. However, she withstood all tests, and nevertheless saw clearly what was happening.
The next morning the bandits said that they had butchered a pig in the night, and asked her if she hadn’t heard anything. The woman replied that she had not heard anything and that she had never slept as well in her life before, and looked at them in a friendly manner. Then the bandits put sausage soup in front of her. The old woman from the Zellbach ate the sausage soup and praised it. If she had shown only the slightest disgust, she would have had to die. Then the bandits brought a fresh sausage to her. She wrapped a piece of cloth around it, said that she wanted to bring it to her children, and thanked them many, many times for it. In this manner, the bandits let her go on her way.
However, when she had traveled for some time through the forest, two men stepped towards her whom she did not know, and asked her where she had spent the night. As she said: “In the Eckernkrug”, they started to disparage its inhabitants, and claimed that nothing good was spoken of them. But the old one said that no one could please everyone, and wagging tongues were laying in ambush for even the best of them. She had rarely been to more benevolent people than the ones in the Eckernkrug. As proof, she showed the sausage which she had been given there. If she had not done so, she would have died after all, for the men were part of the band of robbers.
They now left her, but after a while two further men stepped before here once more. They again denigrated the people of the Eckernkrug, and straight up said that they had heard that they were bandits. Then the woman showed her sausage again, and said that such good people could not be found twice on God’s whole earth. If she had not said that, she would have had to die even now, for these men, too, were bandits.
As soon as the old woman was out of the forest without further harm, she ran to the next town as fast as she could. There she revealed everything she had seen to the authorities, and the bandits were immediately captured. When they were lying in a chamber, bound at their hands and feet, the old mother was led to them and testified that she had seen all these people go into and out of the Eckernkrug at night, and how they had butchered the fat man. But the bandits frothed with rage, as this old woman, whose life they had only spared after so many trials and who had tricked them in the end, was now walking among them healthily and hale.