There is something magical about watching ice feathers crystalizing on a window pane at this time of year. . . According to Germanic folklore, the first flakes of snow are the feathers from Mother Goose’s featherbead as she shakes it, marking the arrival of winter.
Mother Goose, also known as “Frau Holle” or “Old Mother Frost”, is a folktale collected by the Brothers Grimm in their Children's and Household Tales in 1812. Frau Holle may have also been a goose herself, or may have shapeshifted between an elderly woman and a white swan or goose, because in some versions of the story she has a one large foot, like that of a goose or swan, or perhaps a splayed foot from pressing the treadle of her spinning wheel. Spinning is often associated with winter, because it is the time when people have more time on their hands when they are not absorbed with the tasks of spring planting and summer and fall harvesting.
Because of her shapeshifting nature between a white goose and an elderly woman, she represents both maiden and crone, as well as the transition between life and death, lightness and darkness, representing this transitional time of the year: the Winter Solstice. Frau Holle is known as both the Dark Grandmother and the White Lady, a person to whom infants are taken when they die, as well as being associated with the lengthening of the daylight after the Solstice.
Frau Holle is often depicted with a broom, symbolizing the sweeping away of the old and making way for the new. In some versions of the story, her spinning wheel represents the cycle of life, death, and rebirth. Because of her connection to the spirit world through the magic of spinning and weaving she is also sometimes considered a witch in Catholic German folklore, and is said to ride on broomsticks, or on the back of a goose.
The Brothers Grimm thought Frau Holle might be a modern version of an ancient pre-Christian Alpine goddess of winter and weaving named Perchta, who is thought to roam the countryside at around Yuletide. Yuletide was, and continues to be, the twelve days between the Winter Solstice and the beginning of the next solar year, a sacred liminal period belonging neither to the old year nor the new year during which the ancestral spirits were thought to roam in the living world. Also known as the Snow Queen, or White Lady, Perchta is associated with birch trees, one of the first trees to sprout when a forest is cleared symbolizing rebirth and renewal.
As Christianity slowly replaced Germanic paganism during the Early Middle Ages, many of the old customs were gradually lost or assimilated into Christian tradition. By the end of the High Middle Ages, Germanic paganism was almost completely marginalized and blended into rural folklore, in which the character of Frau Holle eventually survived.
I have created a collection of new linocut prints all centered round the same theme of Mother Goose / Frau Holle / Perchta. . .including a variety of sizes and designs allowing for them to be displayed alone or grouped together within one frame or several frames. The artwork includes Mother Goose and various winter evergreen and fruiting plants including: mistletoe, juniper, spruce and winterberries along with plenty of feathers, stars, snow geese, snow flakes, a full moon and a spinning wheel.
Photo Credits:
Blog post cover image is Tom Fisk on Pexels.
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