[1] Frau Holle (also known in various regions as Holla, Holda, Perchta, Berchta, Berta, or Bertha) was initially a pre-Christian female legendary figure who survived in popular belief well into the 19th century.

By the end of the High Middle Ages, Germanic paganism was almost completely marginalized and blended into rural folklore, in which the character of Frau Hulda eventually survived.

According to Erika Timm, Perchta emerged from an amalgamation of Germanic and pre-Germanic, probably Celtic, traditions of the Alpine regions after the Migration Period in the Early Middle Ages.

[6] Holle is the goddess to whom children who died as infants go, and alternatively known as both the Dunkel Großmutter (Dark Grandmother) and the Weisse Frau (White Lady), elements which are more typically associated with the Grimms' fairy tale as well.

As early as the beginning of the 11th century, she appears to have been known as the leader of women, and of female nocturnal spirits, which "in common parlance are called Hulden from Holda".

Burchard's later recension of the same text expands on this in a section titled "De arte magica": Have you believed there is some female, whom the stupid vulgar call Holda [in manuscript Cod.

[citation needed] Ginzburg has identified similar beliefs existing throughout Europe for over 1,000 years, whereby men and women were thought to leave their bodies in spirit and follow a goddess variously called Holda, Diana, Herodias, Signora Oriente, Richella, Arada, and Perchta.

He also identifies strong morphological similarities with the earlier goddesses Hecate / Artemis, Artio, the Matres of Engyon, the Matronae, and Epona, as well as figures from fairy-tales, such as Cinderella.

Here cometh up Dame Hulde with the snout, to wit, nature, and goeth about to gainstay her God and give him the lie, hangeth her old ragfair about her, the straw-harness; then falls to work and scrapes it featly on her fiddle.

— M. Luther (1522)[12]Grimm based his theory of Holda on what he took to be the earliest references to her: An 11th-century interpolation to the Canon Episcopi by Burchard of Worms, and pre-Christian Roman inscriptions to Hludana that he tentatively linked to the same divinity.

There were early challenges to connecting this figure with a pagan goddess,[13] since her earliest definite appearance links her with the Virgin Mary, commonly called the "Queen of Heaven": An early-13th-century text listing superstitions states that "In the night of Christ's Nativity they set the table for the Queen of Heaven, whom the people call Frau Holda, that she might help them".

[14] Lotte Motz[11] and Ginzburg[7] both conclude that she is pre-Christian in origin, based on comparison with other remarkably similar figures and ritual observances spread throughout Europe.

A pagan Holda received wide distribution in catalogs of superstitions and in sermons during the 15th century, and in the 16th, Martin Luther employed the image to personify the shortcomings of hostile Reason in theological contexts.

[17] The Grimms say Perchta or Berchta was known "precisely in those Upper German regions where Holda leaves off, in Swabia, in Alsace, in Switzerland, in Bavaria and Austria.

"[18] According to Jacob Grimm (1882), Perchta was spoken of in Old High German in the 10th century as Frau Berchta and thought to be a white-robed female spirit.

According to Erika Timm, Perchta emerged from an amalgamation of Germanic and pre-Germanic, probably Celtic, traditions of the Alpine regions after the Migration Period in the Early Middle Ages.

If all the tow is already spun, then not only will there be no punishment, but also one of Holle’s apotropaic nettles left behind to banish misfortune from the house for the whole of the coming year.

[citation needed] The Bohemian Frau Holle is accompanied by small deformed wights whom she orders to beat lazy and slovenly spinsters with rods.

Some details were added in the second edition (1819), most notably rooster's greetings, based upon the account of Georg August Friedrich Goldmann from Hanover.

The girl agreed to take service with Frau Holle, and took care to always shake the featherbed until the feathers flew about like snowflakes.

Like many of the other tales collected by the Grimm brothers, "Frau Holle" personifies good behavior and bad, and the appropriate reward meted out for each.

Jakob Grimm[27] notes that Thunar (Thor) makes rain in a similar fashion, implying for Frau Holle a very high rank in the pantheon.

[28] Though not unique in this respect, the Frau Holle story is also notable for the absence of class-related motifs, such as palaces, halls to which one may or may not be invited, and the rise to the status of the nobility through marriage.

According to the Aarne and Thompson classification system of fairy tales, Mother Hulda is a story of type 480, The Kind and the Unkind Girls.

Others of this type include Shita-kiri Suzume, Diamonds and Toads, The Three Heads in the Well, Father Frost, The Three Little Men in the Wood, The Enchanted Wreath, The Old Witch, and The Two Caskets.