Tradition: Swiss Mythology
Alternative Names: Gotwärgi
Category: Dwarf
The Myth
The Dwarf Woman was a small supernatural being associated with the Gotwärgi, the dwarf folk of the Valais mountains. Her child was stunted and dwarfish in appearance, unable to speak like an ordinary child, and the creature could easily be mistaken for a strange human infant.
In Zeneggen, a mother had a child who never seemed to grow properly. Despite all her loving care, it remained tiny and dwarfish, and although it appeared intelligent and understood everything she said, it never spoke a single word. Worried and unable to understand what was wrong, the mother went to her neighbor for advice. The neighbor became suspicious and told her to give the child several empty eggshell halves to play with while secretly watching what it did. The mother followed the advice, and when the child saw the eggshells, it suddenly exclaimed in amazement that it had never seen so many little pancakes before. The mother was delighted to finally hear her child speak, but her neighbor was convinced that this proved something stranger was happening. She suspected that the mother’s real child had been stolen from its cradle and replaced with a Gotwärgi, a dwarf child.
The frightened mother was told to take the strange child up the hill and beat it until its cries could be heard across the valleys, believing that this might force the dwarf people to return her real child. Although she found it almost unbearable to strike the little creature, she eventually carried it up the hill and began to beat it. The child cried out so loudly that the surrounding hills echoed with its screams. Suddenly, a little dwarf woman came rushing toward them. In her arms was a beautiful, healthy child. The mother stared in astonishment, realizing that her own child had indeed been taken. The dwarf woman immediately snatched the stunted child from the mother’s arms, placed the beautiful child in her lap, and cried, “Then you take yours and I’ll take mine, you merciless little mother!” Clutching her own dwarfish child tightly, the dwarf woman disappeared down the mountain like a chamois, while the human mother remained behind, overwhelmed with wonder and joy as she finally held her true child again.
Sources
“Die Zwergenfrau.” SAGEN.at – Traditionelle Sagen aus der Schweiz. Reproduced by SAGEN.at.
https://www.sagen.at/texte/sagen/schweiz/allgemein/zwergenfrau.html