Moss people
[2] Jacob Grimm believed that Gothic skōhsl, used to translate Koine Greek δαιμόνιον (daimonion), "daemon", in the New Testament, was related to Old Norse skōgr and Old English sceaga, both meaning "forest", and therefore represented a cognate of the moss people in Gothic folklore.
[14] In Upper Palatinate, the Holzleute or wood people dwell in hollow trees if married or divided by gender during youth.
[15] According to Jacob Grimm: "Between Leidhecken and Dauernheim in the Wetterau stands the high mountain, and on it a stone, der welle fra gestoil (the wild woman's chair); there is an impression on the rock, as of the limbs of human sitters.
The people say the wild folk lived there 'wei di schtan noch mell warn,' while the stones were still soft; afterwards, being persecuted, the man ran away, the wife and child remained in custody at Dauernheim until they died.
[17] Ludwig Bechstein describes her in his folktale 551: "According to certain tales of the peasantry, a demonic creature dwells near Leutenberg and on the left bank of river Saale, called the Buschgroßmutter ("Shrub Grandmother").
She is essentially the same spirit as Hulda or Bertha, the Wild Huntress – to whom local tales ascribe a following of children under the guise of the Heimchen who constitute her attendants in the area she frequents."
(Translated from the German text)[18]According to legend, these fairies would occasionally borrow items from people or ask for help but would always compensate the owners generously, often with either good advice or bread.
It was, however, easy to anger such wood-sprites, either by spurning their gifts (which might be the compensations named above) or by giving them caraway bread – of which they had a particular hatred, often being heard to utter the doggerel rhyme "Kümmelbrot, unser Tod!"
During epidemics the Holzfräulein ("Wood ladies") would emerge from the forest to show the people which medicinal herbs could cure or ward off plague.
[21] Des Knaben Wunderhorn records "folk-songs [that] make the huntsman in the wood start a dark-brown maid, and hail her: 'whither away, wild beast?
