Europe's inner demons

But it is the queen’s other name, Holda, that shows most clearly how her followers regarded her.⁽²⁵⁾ When Burchard gives this as an alternative to Diana and Herodias, he is evoking a figure who was to remain prominent in German folklore right down to the nineteenth century— and nowhere more so than in Hesse, where Burchard was born. Holda (Hulda, Holle, Hulle, Frau Holl, etc.) is a supernatural, motherly being who normally lives in the upper air, and circles the earth. She is particularly active in the depths of winter; snowflakes are the feathers that fall when she makes her bed. She travels in the twelve days between Christmas and Epiphany, and this brings fruitfulness to the land during the coming year — from which one may conclude that originally she was a pagan goddess associated with the winter solstice and the rebirth of the year. She can sometimes be terrifying — she can lead the “furious army” which rides through the sky on the storm, she can also turn into an ugly old hag with great teeth and a long nose, the terror of children. Yet in the main she becomes terrifying only when angered — and what angers her is above all slackness about the house or the farm.

For Holda is not always in the sky: she visits the earth, and then she functions as patroness of husbandry. The plough is sacred to her, she assists the crops. She is particularly interested in the women’s work of spinning and weaving; and if she punishes laziness she rewards diligence, often by pushing gifts through the window. She is also concerned with childbirth — babies come from her secret places, her tree, her pond. Fruitfulness and productivity of every kind are her special preoccupations.

When Holda goes on her nocturnal journeys she is accompanied by a train of followers. These are the souls of the dead, including the souls of children and of babies who have died unbaptized (but here one must remember that often the soul itself is imagined as a child). And this makes sense of the passages in the Canon Episcopi

and in Burchard’s Corrector; the women who imagined themselves to fly at night, in the trainof Diana or Herodias or Holda, were sending their souls to join, temporarily, the wandering souls of the dead — and on errands which were not murderous and destructive but, on the contrary, beneficent and sustaining.

Such beliefs, or fantasies, were by no means confined to Germany. Guillaume d’Auvergne, bishop of Paris, who died in 1249, has similar tales to tell from France. He has heard of spirits who on certain nights take on the likeness of girls and women in shining robes, and in that guise frequent woods and groves. They even appear in stables, bearing wax candles, and plait the horses’ manes. Above all these “ladies of the night” visit private homes, under the leadership of their mistress Lady Abundia (from abundantia), who is also called Satia (from satietas

, meaning the same). If they find food and drink ready for them, they partake of them, but without diminishing the quantity of either; and they reward the hospitable household with an abundance of material goods. If on the other hand they find that all food and drink have been locked away, they leave the place in contempt. Inspired by this belief, foolish old women, and some equally foolish men, open up their pantries and uncover their barrels on the nights when they expect a visitation. The bishop, of course, knows just what to think of such practices. Demons trick old women into dreaming these things; and it is a grievous sin to think that abundance of material goods can come from any other source than God.⁽²⁶⁾

A generation later Lady Abundia appears in that vast encyclopaedia in verse, Jean de Meun’s Roman de la Rose, which was to become the most popular vernacular work in the whole of medieval literature. Many people, we are told, foolishly imagine that at night they become witches, wandering with Lady Habonde. They also say that the third child in a family always has the capacity to do this (just as one third of mankind serves Herodias). Three times a week they journey, entering every house through the chinks and holes, ignoring locks and bolts. Their souls, leaving their bodies behind, travel with “the good ladies” through houses and through strange places. Jean de Meun himself has no use for such imaginings, which — like Guillaume d’Auvergne — he regards as a speciality of foolish old women. In his view dreams are the explanation of all these journeys.⁽²⁷⁾