The butter witch of Wagenitz

retold by Martina D‰hne, class 5 of the primary school in Senzke

drawn by Eugen Gliege

With milking and buttering the witches should do some devil work and bizarre stories were told on that. For example, it was told that in Wagenitz there was a woman who was a butter witch. That was the result of following: She always had the best butter and sold it all over. One day in Friesack her sister got a pot of butter that could not get empty. It was always butter in it. Then she told her sister in Wagenitz that the butter did not run out. Then she meant: "So you got my pot". The sister looked at that pot and saw a toad on the bottom. Then she knew why was that. Also the people in Wagenitz had noticed that for a long time that there is something odd about the butter and kept an eye on it. And so it was. When it was dark there was a light in the cellar of that woman in blue, yellow and red flames. It it did not take long a big cat came right out of the cellar. The cat was that skinny and went to the castle. It did not take long that the cat came out of the milk cellar and was that fat so that she could not hardly move. As it disappeared from the cellar the people saw how everything glowed and the cat spat the cream into a tub. Then they knew it that it was the witch and where she got the cream fromwhich she made the delicious butter from. It did not end well with her, because one day she was dead in her cellar. The devil seemed to had broken her neck.