#perchta

THE YULE MARCH

The air grows cold and the march of the yule beasts, witches, crones, and tricky fellows begin their work. So hide your naughty children and keep them on St Nicholas' good side.

[Prints available in my shop!]

-Perchta- First day of snow here today ❄️ Days are getting very short with long dark nights. Final 3 days the tapestries are still available!

Claws, pages 7-11

In modern folklore, Frau Holle (or Holda, Perchta, Berta) endures as a complex domestic and seasonal spirit. Perhaps her most famous portrayal is in the Brothers Grimm’s tale “Frau Holle” (Kinder- und Hausmärchen, no. 24), where she is depicted as an elderly woman who bestows gold upon a hardworking girl while punishing her lazy step sister. Medieval traditions further reveal her dual nature: ecclesiastical texts, such as those by Burchard of Worms, connect her with demons while popular folk traditions consider her a household spirit and regulating domestic order. Over time, Holda became conflated with figures such as Herodias, Diana, and Perchta, linked to fertility, spinning, and moral judgment, winter, Yule and even the Wütende Heer (“raging host”).

Linguistic evidence traced Holda to the Proto-Germanic root *hulþaz—meaning “gracious” or “friendly”. However, the appearance of “unhulþons” (demons) in the fourth-century Gothic translation of the Bible, such as seen in Mark 1:34, suggests that Holda may be a figure with roots in the pagan past rather than a myth originating in the late Middle Ages. 

The translator of the Scripture named Wulfila (c. 311-c. 383) used the term unhulþo (pl. unhulþons) as a lexical equivalent for Greek δαιμόνιον (with privative un-, meaning “malevolent being” or “evil spirit.” fem: “unhulþo” and masc.: “unhulþa” - Grimm, Teutonic Mythology P. 266). As the essay “Holda: Between Folklore and Linguistics” (Indogermanische Forschungen 113, pages 312-338) points out, Wulfila use of unhulþo suggests Goths were familiar with the term and had already been used among the Goths long before he translated the Bible.