[Near to Dabo, there is a place called Walscheid, and also Plaine-de-Walsch close by]
Chapter XXX.
Some other examples of Elves.
On the 25th of August, 1746, I received a letter from a very worthy man, the cure of the parish of Walsche, a village situated in the mountains of Voges, in the county of Dabo, or Dasburg, in Lower Alsatia, diocese of Metz. In this letter he tells me, that the 10th of June, 1740, at eight o’clock in the morning, he being in his kitchen, with his niece and the servant, he saw on a sudden an iron pot that was placed on the ground turn round three or four times, without its being set in motion by any one. A moment after, a stone, weighing about a pound, was thrown from the next room into the same kitchen, in presence of the same persons, without their seeing the hand which threw it.
The next day, at nine o’clock in the morning, some panes of glass were broken, and through these panes were thrown some stones, with what appeared to them supernatural dexterity. The spirit never hurt any body, and never did any thing in the night time, but always during the day.
The cure employed the prayers marked out in the ritual to bless his house, and thenceforth the genius broke no more panes of glass; but he continued to throw stones at the cure’s people, without hurting them, however. If they fetched water from the fountain, he threw stones into the bucket; and afterwards he began to serve in the kitchen. One day, as the servant was planting some cabbages in the garden, he pulled them up as fast as she planted them, and laid them in a heap. It was in vain that she stormed, threatened, and swore in the German style; the genius continued to play his tricks.
One day, when a bed in the garden had been dug and prepared, the spade was found thrust two feet deep into the ground, without any trace being seen of him who had thus stuck it in; but they observed that on the spade was a ribbon, and by the spade were two pieces of two soles, which the girl had locked up the evening before in a little box. Sometimes he took pleasure in displacing the earthenware and pewter, and putting it either all round the kitchen, or in the porch, or even in the cemetery, and always in broad daylight. One day he filled an iron pot with wild herbs, bran, and leaves of trees, and, having put some water in it, carried it to the alley or walk in the garden; another time he suspended it to the pothook, over the fire. The servant having broken two eggs into a little dish for the cure’s supper, the genius broke two more into it in his presence, the maid having merely turned to get some salt. The cure having gone to say mass, on his return found all his earthenware, furniture, linen, bread, milk, an dother things, scattered about over the house.
Sometimes the spirit would form circles on the paved floor, at one time with stones, at another with corn or leaves, and in a moment, before the eyes of all present, all was overturned and deranged. Tired with these games, the cure sent for the mayor of the place, and told him he was resolved to quit the parsonage house. Whilst this was passing, the cure’s niece came in, and told them that the genius had torn up the cabbages in the garden, and had put some money in a hole in the ground. They went there, and found things exactly as she had said. They picked up the money, which was what the cure had put away in a place not locked up; and in a moment after they found it anew, with some liards, two by two, scattered about the kitchen.
The agents of the Count de Linange being a rrived at Walsche, went to the cure’s house, and persuaded him that it was all the effect of a spell; they told him to take two pistols, and fire them off at the place where he might observe there were any movements. The genius at the same moment threw out of the pocket of one of these officers two pieces of silver; and from that time he was no longer perceived in the house.
The circumstance of two pistols terminating the scenes with which the elf had disturbed the good cure, made him believe that this tormenting imp was no other than a certain bad parishioner, whom the cure had been obliged to send away from his parish, and who to revenge himself had done all that we have related. If that be the case, he had rendered himself invisible, or he had had credit enough to send in his stead a familiar genius who puzzled the cure for some weeks; for if he were not bodily in this house, what had he to fear from any pistol shot which might have been fired at him? And if he was there bodily, how could he render himself invisible?
p200, The Phantom World, by Augustin Calmet (1672-1757), published 1850.