Fänggen

In the ethnographic and folkloric accounts summarized by Mannhardt and later compilers, Fänggen belong to a wider class of 'wilde Leute' or forest-spirits. Mannhardt frames these beings as arising from an older conception in which individual trees were seen as ensouled; over time these tree-psychē were reimagined in many locales as independent forest-personalities whose lives remained tied to the trees. Folktales and regional reports thus present some Fänggen as personified tree-mothers whose existence depends on particular trees, while other variants preserve them as free-roaming wild women or smaller wood-dwellers.

Descriptions vary by region. In Tyrol and parts of the Bavarian Alps Fänggen are said to appear as hideous giantesses as tall as trees: wholly hairy or bristled bodies, coarse hair and beard-lichen in the hair, a gaping mouth described as reaching 'from ear to ear,' deep male-like voices, and black eyes sometimes said to flash like lightning. They are described wearing bark-like jackets or skirts/aprons of animal pelts and often moss- or lichen-covered. Swiss and Vorarlberg variants (Waldfänken, Waldfänken/Waldfänken mannli) are reported as thicker, shorter, hair-covered mannikins; Fankerl in some Upper Palatinate reports appears as a bearded dwarf with flashing red eyes.

Sources attribute to Fänggen a life-force tied to particular large or old trees such that felling or death of the tree causes the corresponding Fangga to die or vanish. They are portrayed as physically formidable—giant size or superhuman strength is explicitly noted in several regional accounts (Waldfänken described with superhuman strength). In behavior they are dangerous to humans: many accounts call them man-eaters with a particular preference for children; they are also reported to steal newborns (with unnamed newborns/unbaptized infants vulnerable to exchange for changelings) and to take women who have just given birth. Some traditions record that Fängge-daughters are farmed out as maids to human households but remain outside Christian rites and will return to the forest on hearing of kin deaths.