Hödekin

Hödekin (spelled Hödeken, Hütgin, Hüdekin, and Hütchen, 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, the 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. 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). Joseph Ritson (publ 1831; written c.1800 translated Trithemius via Weyer.

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

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

Johann Conrad Stephan Hölling (1687–1733), in his Einleitung [etc.] des Hoch=Stiffts Hildesheim ("Introduction [etc.] to the Hochstift of Hildesheim" , 1730) 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.

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).