Berchta
Also called Frau Berchta, Perchta, Percht, Precht, Bertha, Berkta, Brechta.
The ragged Alpine winter woman with one flattened treadle foot, who inspects barns and spinning between Christmas and Twelfth Night.
At a glance
- Tradition
- Alpine folklore
- Region
- European Alps (place of origin)
- Trait family
- The Child-Frighteners
Near this figure
Symbols
Judged against the description by a model. Meanings are our own paraphrase.
- Foot bears image-domain The foot denotes contact with earth and the ground of reality, bared to receive its blessing, while cloven or wounded it marks a chthonic nature.
why
The ragged Alpine winter woman with one flattened treadle foot, who inspects barns and spinning between Christmas and Twelfth Night.
- Hair bears image-domain Hair denotes vitality and the state of the head it grows from, ordered or wild, shorn in renunciation, and red for ardour and suspicion alike.
why
Berchta comes down as small, old and badly kept: the hair uncombed, the eyes small and glittering, the nose long with a hook in it — and, the detail no other winter figure carries, one foot spread wide and flattened by years on a spinning treadle.
- Nose bears image-domain The nose denotes the breath of life and oldest of the senses, judging by scent what sight cannot, and cut away to deny survival.
why
Berchta comes down as small, old and badly kept: the hair uncombed, the eyes small and glittering, the nose long with a hook in it — and, the detail no other winter figure carries, one foot spread wide and flattened by years on a spinning treadle.
- woman is Woman denotes a complex feminine principle linked to moon, earth, water, instinct, nourishment, protection, and destruction; folklore also embeds patriarchal creation anxieties.
why
The ragged Alpine winter woman with one flattened treadle foot, who inspects barns and spinning between Christmas and Twelfth Night.
Traits
Read from the figure's description, which a model wrote. Open "why" for the sentence a trait came from.
Behaviour
- Invoked to frighten children into obedience
why
She is still held over disobedient children and workshy young people in parts of the Austrian and south German lands, and across into Switzerland and Alsace, and the sources are deliberately open about her rank, calling her a hobgoblin or a minor goddess according to who is telling it.
- Annual seasonal attack
why
Disordered herself, she requires order and steady work from everybody else, and her season is exact rather than general: the stretch running from Christmas to her own feast at Twelfth Night.
Roles
Judged from the works' own entries, not from the description. Carries: the figure holds the role. Meets: the role is in its stories, held by something it meets.
- Shadow carries
1 citation
- Carol Rose, Spirits, Fairies, Leprechauns, and Goblins, s.v. "Berchta."