Tradition / Region: Luxembourg Mythology
Alternate Names: The Keyhole Spirit, The English Witch-Bride
Category: Spirit
The Myth
A young man once lived alone in his house and was content with his life. One night a very beautiful maiden suddenly appeared to him. He was deeply struck by her beauty and wished she might become his wife. Yet whenever he tried to hold her back, she vanished as suddenly as she had come.
Troubled, he sought advice from a clever neighbor. She told him that the maiden must be entering and leaving through the keyhole of his front door and that if he sealed it once she was inside, she would not be able to escape.
The young man found the keyhole and made a plug that fit it exactly. That night, when the maiden appeared again, he leapt from bed and sealed the hole. The girl could not leave. He kept her with him and asked her to become his wife. She agreed, and they married, and in time they had three children.
Years later, while his wife baked pancakes, the man idly thought it no longer mattered whether the hole remained closed. He removed the plug.
At once the woman cried out loudly before the children, saying that she could hear the bells ringing in England. Then, in an instant, she vanished through the opened hole and was never seen again.
The man remained behind with his three children, and people said that if he had not opened the way, the strange woman — said to be a witch-spirit from England — would have stayed with him.
Gallery
Sources
sagen.at contributors. (n.d.). Der betrogene Mann. In sagen.at, from https://www.sagen.at/texte/sagen/luxemburg/betrogene_Mann.html
Interpretive Lenses
Religious Readings
- Christian Ascetic Deep Dive
Philosophical Readings
- Nietzschean Deep Dive
Psychological Readings
- Jungian Deep Dive
Esoteric Deep Dive
- Hermetic Deep Dive
Political / Social Readings
- Marxist Deep Dive