Tradition: Austrian Mythology
Alternative Names: Die Hexe als Reh
Category: Deer
The Myth
A hunter once encountered a roe deer on a forest clearing above the “broat’n Rief’n” near Axams. He immediately raised his weapon to shoot it. But the animal suddenly placed its front feet together pleadingly, while tears streamed from its eyes. The hunter noticed that there was something unusual about the creature and could not bring himself to shoot it.
Several months later, the hunter visited the market in Imst and stopped at an inn. To his great surprise, the waitress served him a rich meal and assured him that she herself would pay for everything.
As he prepared to leave, he thanked the waitress and asked whether she knew him. Since the hunter believed that he had never met her before, he was astonished when she told him that she had once been a roe deer in the forest near Axams and that he had been about to shoot her.
She explained that when he had raised his weapon, she had pleaded with him in the form of the deer. Had he shot her then, she said, it would have meant the loss of her soul. From that moment onward, however, she had changed her ways, improved herself, and renounced the Devil.
Sources
Dörler, Adolf Ferdinand, ed. “Die Hexe als Reh.” In Sagen aus Innsbruck’s Umgebung, mit besonderer Berücksichtigung des Zillerthales. Innsbruck, 1895, no. 106. Reproduced by SAGEN.at.
https://www.sagen.at/texte/sagen/oesterreich/tirol/doerler/hexe_reh.html