Hödekin^[2][3][a] (spelled Hödeken,^[4][5][6] Hütgin, Hüdekin,^[7] and Hütchen,^[8][5] etc.) is a kobold (house spirit) of German folklore. The name is a diminutive meaning "Little Hat", and refers to the hat he wears, explained as being a pileus a felt hat of certain shapes.

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. Although Hütchen did not initiate harm, he was murderously vindictive and dismembered a kitchen boy who had habitually of insulted him and poured kitchen filth upon him. When the cook (who hadn't controlled the misbehaving boy) griped, the sprite tainted the meat for the bishop with toad blood and venom; the cook remained unfazed, and got pushed down the heights into a ditch to die.

There was a man who during his absence entrusted his wife jokingly to the Hütchen, and the sprite chased off all the men calling on the adulterous wife. He also helped an idiot clerk appointed to the synod by giving him a ring made of laurel leaves that made him erudite within a short time. In the end, Bishop exorcised him with ecclesiastical incantations and drove him out of Hildesheim.

The story was told in Johannes Trithemius Chronicon Hirsaugiense (1495–1503), who places the story in the context of historical events which Trithemius dates to c. 1132.^[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).^[11] Joseph Ritson translated Trithemius via Weyer.^[12]

The legend was retold by the Brothers Grimm in Deutsche Sagen as No. 74 "Hütchen", based on multiple sources, including Weyer, Johannes Praetorius (1666),^[13] Erasmus Francisci (1690) and unspecified oral sources.^[14] A full English translation of the Grimms' retelling was provided by Thomas Roscoe (1826), titled "The Domestic Goblin Hutchen".^[15]

An abridged account of the "Hödeken" was given in English by Thomas Keightley (1828).^[16] Heinrich Heine also discusses the story in Deutschland (1834),^[17][11] copying from Dobeneck which gives a German translation of Trithemius;^[11] Heine's essay can be read in English translation.^[18]

Johann Conrad Stephan Hölling (1687–1733), in his 1730 work Einleitung [etc.] 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.^[19]

An oral version, placing the spirit named "Hans with the little hat" at Winzenburg, was recorded by Kuhn & Schwartz as "Hans mit dem Hütchen", and includes the kitchen boy's murder (cf. § Kitchen murders; § Oral Winzenburg version).^[20]

The spirit is called "the capped [one]" (pileatus) in the Latin prose, with the German form given as Hütgin and the "Saxon form" as Hüdekin;^[22] the "Saxon form" is spelt Hedeckin by Weyer,^[23] and Lower Saxon form Hödekecken by Francisci, who lists Hudgen and Hütchen as normalized forms.^[24]

Praetorius gives "Hödekin".^[2] Grimm gave the form "Hödeken" attested in a Lower Saxon dialect poem.^[4] Keightley also employed the form "Hödeken" (further Englished as "Hatekin" or "Little Hat"),^[6] but the name in the index is emended to "Hödekin" in Keightley's 1850 edition.^[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]). Wyl glosses the Latin noun form, deriving from adj. pilleatus, as meaning "felt cap".^[29] Grimm's DS retelling concurs and calls it a "felt hat" that it wears.^{[30][b][c][17]}

The forms given by Hölling (1730) are various: Hödecken;^[19] Heidecke, Hoidecke, Hödecke:^[32] Heideke, Hödeke, Heideken.^[33] Chronicon Luneburgicum (to 1421) gives "VVinsenberch Hoideke",^[34] while Botho [de]'s Chronica Brunswicenses (1489) gives "Bodecke" as the sprite's name.^[35][36]

The Hütchen's haunt is placed at the Stift Hildesheim^[37] ostensibly the Prince-Bishopric of Hildesheim, and where the office held court (Latin: curia), the spirit appeared and foretold to Bishop Bernhard of impending dangers.^[39] The Bishop of Hildesheim subsequently overtook Winzenburg, in Hildesheim (district), thanks in part to the sprite delivering new about the upheaval there, whereas the Grimms^[40] gave a fictive version of what happened (cf. below).

Historically, transfer of Winzenburg followed the killing of Burchard I of Loccum [de] by Herman I, Count of Winzenburg killing ca. 1130, resulting in Herman's outlawry (geächtet) and loss of Winzenburg.^[41] The sources describe this, stating that the kinsmen of Burchard attacked in reprisal and began looting Winzenburg, but, the story claims, the sprite Hütchen alerted the Bishop of Hildesheim one step ahead, allowing the clergyman to assume control of the county of Winzenburg, with the auspices of the Emperor.^{[26][42][25][12]}

The spirit named Hütgin (Hutgin) had been seen by many in the diocese of Hildesheim, according to Trithemius's version. It would speak familiarly with people, both visibly and invisibly. It appeared in rustic clothing, and of course, the hat. It did not initiate harm, and only reciprocated. But it never forgot injury or insult, and paid back with shame befallen upon the perpetrator.^[12]

Acting on Hütgin's tip, Bishop Bernard (Bernhardus) was able to seize Winzenburg (as aforementioned), and annex the county to Church of Hildesheim.^[12] Grimm provides a different account, apparently taken from Bothonis Chronica Brunswicenses Picturatum (1489), where Count Herman sleeps with the wife of a knight serving him, and the cuckolded knight sees no other way to redress his shame except by bloodshed, stabbing both the count and his pregnant wife to death, so that Winzenburg is forfeit without heir. This vacancy in the county is delivered as news by the sprite to the bishop, who consequently gains Wintzenburg and nearby Alfeld as added territory.^[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. Until, that is, the kitchen overstepped the sprite's tolerance by taunting and repeatedly splashing kitchen filth on the sprite (filthy water in some sources).^[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. The master chef who had not disciplined the boy in the first place, and now rebuked the kobold for the grotesque prank, became the next target. 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.^[46] Francisci (also the Grimms) add that there was suspicion the sprite might commit arson (anzünden on the Bishop's residence.^[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.^[61][53]

The murder of the "Bishop of Hildesheim's Kitchen-boy" is retold in nursery rhyme fashion by American poetess M. A. B. Evans (1895).^[45]

A man residing in Hildesheim asked Hödekin (jokingly^[62]) to guard his wife while he was away. "My good fellow, just keep an eye on my wife while I am away, and see that all goes on right." When the wife was visited by several paramours Hödekin leapt between them and assumed terrible shapes, or threw them to the floor to scare them away before the wife could be unfaithful. 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. ^[63]

This tale is found in the various sources including the Latin.^[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.^[67]

When an simple-minded idiot of a clerk got called to the synod, the spirit gave him the miracle of a ring made of laurel leaves^[68] and other things, which made the man extremely learned after some time.^[71][72]

A vague parallel noted is the Lower Lusatian tale of "The ghostly dog and the laurel wreath" ("Der geisterhafte Hund und der Lorbeerkranz"), though in the latter tale, a man shadowed by the black dog gets rid of it after buying a laurel wreath.^[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.^[76]

An episode of the Hütchen giving an impoverished nailsmith a magic piece of iron from which golden nails could be made; the spikes appearing in rolls out of the holes, and could be cut inexhaustibly without diminishing the ore.^[79] The Hütchen also gave the smith's daughter a roll of lace which could be meted out inexhaustibly without diminishing the supply.^[78][80]

The version "Hans mit dem Hütchen" ("Hans met Häutken") set in Winzenburg is given in three parts. In the first, the spirit's namesake headwear is described, and it is said that only the large red tassel^[g] on its hat, or the large red hat itself was visible on the spirit. A kitchen maid pressed the spirit to show its entire form, and the spirit finally relented, instructing her her to go to the cellar, where she found a young child lying in a pool of blood (this is a recurrent motif for kobolds). In the second, a kitchen boy of Winzenburg taunts Hans and suffers the fate of dismemberment. In the third, when the Count of Winzenburg lay dying, the spirit quickly built the Rennstieg [de] (a messenger's road), and deliver the news to the Bishop of Hildesheim, warning him to subjugate Winzenburg before the Braunschweiger forces arrive.^[20]

A connection between Hödekin and Friar Rush, a rascally devil in the guise of a friar, who murderously subverts the abbot's household while seeming to make himself useful in the kitchen and with chores, was suggested by the Shakespeare scholar George Lyman Kittredge, who noted the connection has been made in Reginald Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft, 1584.^[81][82][h]

The idea that Hudgin wearing a hat was equivalent to Robin Hood who wears a "hood" had also been noted in the same passage by Scot^[81] T. Crofton Croker in a letter to the Dublin Penny Journal published 1833 credits himself for making this connection which he reckons Sir Walter Scott had overlooked; Croker explains that Robin Hood may have been a version of "Hudikin or Hodekin, that is little hood, or cowl, being a Dutch or German spirit, so called from the most remarkable part of his dress, in which also the Norwegian Nis and Spanish Duende were believed to appear".^[83] Sir Sidney Lee (1859–1926) in his entry in the DNB also conjectured that the "Robin Hood" figure had folkloric forest-elf origins, and that "in its origin the name was probably a variant of 'Hodekin', the title of a sprite or elf in Teutonic folk-lore".^[84] The proposed connection of the Hödekin with the woodland sprite Robin Goodfellow, in the absence of traces of magic in the Robin Hood ballads, has not been taken up by modern scholars.

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.^[85]