Hödekin
He famously haunted the castle of Bishop Bernard (Bernhardus), Prince-Bishopric of Hildesheim, Lower Saxony, and in some versions, inhabited Winzenburg, a county the spirit helped the bishopric to obtain.
[10][11] The story gained immense popularity after its inclusion in the 1586 German edition of Johann Weyer's De praestigiis daemonum (not in the original 1563 Latin).
[14] A full English translation of the Grimms' retelling was provided by Thomas Roscoe (1826), titled "The Domestic Goblin Hutchen".
des Hoch=Stiffts Hildesheim writes that he took his first ten chapters from Johannes Letzner's Chronicon monasterium hildesiense, including an account of the Hödecken, which he says resided in Winzenburg.
[3] The sources explain that the sprite wears a peasant's clothing and a hat on its head, and for this reason is called in the Saxon dialect "Hüdekin"[26] ("Hedeckin";[27] "Hödekin"[28]).
[12] Acting on Hütgin's tip, Bishop Bernard (Bernhardus) was able to seize Winzenburg (as aforementioned), and annex the county to Church of Hildesheim.
[36][44] At the "Court" of the Bishop (the tale also refers to the "castle"[46]) the spirit would frequently manifest himself in the kitchen doing some sort of service, and talking to people familiarly so that they stopped fearing him.
[d] The sprite vowed revenge, and when the kitchen boy went to sleep, Hödekin strangled him, cut him to pieces, and put his flesh in a pot over the fire.
It prompted Hödekin to squeeze the blood and poisons of toads over the bishop's meat, and finally cast the cook into the castle's ditch or moat.
[55][e] According to the sources, it was in the aftermath of these poisonings and serial murders prompt the night guards of the city walls and castle to go on alert.
[59][60] Thus it seems misleading for the Grimms (and Keightely) in an earlier passage to credit the sprite as performing an act of diligence to keeping the night watch alert.
When the husband returned, Hödekin complained, that safe-guarding the wife from debauchery was more challenging thank keeping a giant herd of swine from all of Saxony.
[11][66] It is observed that the motif is paralleled by the medieval folktale about "wife-guarding" by Jakob von Vitry (Jacques de Vitry, d. 1240),[f][11] about a man who grows tired of his unfaithful wife and leaves, commending her to the devil, who does the hard work of keeping the male adulterers away, and complains it was worse than keeping ten wild mares.
[73] The sources tell that the Bishop Bernard finally made use of his "ecclesiastical censures" (per censuras ecclesiasticas")[71] or spells (Beschwörung) to exorcise the kobold from the premises.
In the 1803 novel Der Zwerg by Goethe's brother-in-law Christian August Vulpius, a dwarf called "Hüttchen" pretends to be a helpful sprite but eventually turns out to be the Devil.
But I beg of you never more to commit her to my keeping; for I would sooner take charge of, and be accountable for, all the swine in Saxony than for one such woman, so many were the artifices and plots she devised to blink me.
