7. POMOCLIWY KUBOŁĆIK - The Helpful House Spirit
Translated by Elmer Hohle
In times past one would also see little ghosts working in the homes that looked like little old men with long beards. They were called
kubołćiki (impish goblins). They lived in stalls or cellars. But they mostly liked to stay in the room under the oven, or in
"hell", i.e., the space between the oven and the wall. They were very helpful to people. They would groom the horse for the servant. They would scrub
for the maid, or wash the dishes. With a kubołćik in the house, everything would be very orderly. For payment they required a
little something to eat, preferably millet porridge or beer soup.
If a person gave them nothing or treated them shabbily, they could become very angry. Yes they would even leave the home and take all good luck with
them. How the kubołćik helped was told by the people in Schleife in the following manner: Once upon a time a servant always kept
beautifully well-groomed horses. The farmer puzzled about this, because the brushes were usually just idly lying on the shelf. And the stable boy
didn't earn enough in wages to hire anyone to help him. So the farmer wishing to reassure himself, hid in ambush. Soon he saw through a keyhole how a
little man groomed the horses while whistling a tune. Now the farmer's suspicions were confirmed. He asked the farm-hand what sort of chap that was
who was helping him. The servant, however, had a defiant answer: "It's none of your business!" So the farmer ran him off the place.
On another occasion, a maid had a kubołćik. He had to help her with her spinning. The maid would remove her slippers to peddle the spinning
wheel. The kubołćik would sit inside one of her slippers and whistle a folk-tune to himself. If you tied to catch him - whoosh - he
quickly disappeared into the hole under the stove tiles. And if you lit some pine kindling wood, you couldn't find him there. Soon he'd be sitting in
the slipper again. And so the playful game went back and forth. Consequently, when it was time for the young lady to go home, the spools were full of
fine yarn. Yes, she would take off two full spools as she went home, and in the morning they would both be spun full again.
