[CW: brief violence, threat of murder, unsettling/body-horror imagery]
Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index type 334: In the Household of the Witch
Fair warning on this one: it’s short, it’s one of the odder entries in the Grimm canon, and it did not survive the editorial cut to the final 1857 edition, which should tell you something. It also happens to be perfect for Halloween week, because it is, structurally, a haunted house story wearing a dinner party’s clothes.
Because it’s so short, I’m going to just give you the whole thing. It’s also not easy to find images. The only thing I could actually find were two very disturbing stills from what looked to be some very disturbing YouTube videos. But, that’s ok, because I think this might be a case where your imagination will only make things worse.
Here’s what you need going in: Blutwurst (a blood sausage) invites her friend Leberwurst (a liver sausage) to dinner. On the way up the stairs, Leberwurst keeps passing things that are very much not fine. It’s the kind of wrongness you’d normally turn around for, if social obligation didn’t exist, but she goes in anyway. What waits for her at the top is less a meal and more a warning that she should have heeded sooner, and the tale ends on a line of dialogue that’s stuck with readers for two centuries for a reason.
It’s absurd and genuinely unsettling in a way that’s hard to pin down. It’s also a good reminder, right before we close out the month, that not every Grimm tale resolves; some of them just let you run.
And now…
A blood sausage and a liver sausage had been friends for some time, and the blood sausage invited the liver sausage for a meal at her home. At dinnertime the liver sausage merrily set out for the blood sausage’s house. But when she walked through the doorway, she saw all kinds of strange things. There were many steps, and on each of them she found something different. A broom and shovel were fighting with each other, and there was a monkey with a big wound on his head, and more such things.
The liver sausage was very frightened and upset by this. Nevertheless, she took heart, entered the room, and was welcomed in a friendly way by the blood sausage. The liver sausage began to inquire about the strange things on the stairs, but the blood sausage pretended not to hear her or made it seem it was not worth talking about, or she said something about the shovel and the broom such as, “That was probably my maid gossiping with someone on the stairs.” And she shifted the topic to something else.
Then the blood sausage said she had to leave the room to go into the kitchen and look after the meal. She wanted to check to see that everything was in order and nothing had fallen into the ashes. The liver sausage began walking back and forth in the room and kept wondering about the strange things until someone appeared—I don’t know who it was—and said, “Let me warn you, liver sausage, you’re in a bloody murderous trap. You’d better get out of here quickly if you value your life!”
The liver sausage didn’t have to think twice about this. She ran out the door as fast as she could. Nor did she stop until she got out of the house and was in the middle of the street. Then she looked around and saw the blood sausage standing high up in the attic window with a long, long knife that was gleaming as though it had just been sharpened. The blood sausage threatened her with it and cried out, “If I had caught you, I would have had you!”
Source:
The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm: The Complete First Edition
