In Löbenicht there lived a woman who owned the local brewery. And she was a witch. Every night, together with her friend and neighbour, she turned into a cat; then they both sat in a brewing vat and rolled in it down the Cat’s Steps to the Pregel, and from there they set off for the witches’ sabbath. A watchman who stood guard at the Wood Bridge on the other bank of the river once saw them and told everything to a servant from that very brewery.
The servant did not keep quiet either, and told everyone who cared to listen who his mistress really was.
At last these stories reached the ears of the witch herself. She grew angry and decided to settle accounts in full with her talkative worker.
One day, when he was standing by the brewing vat watching the beer boil, a big cat came up to him, began to purr and to rub her back against his leg. And all the while she was trying to push the lad so that he would fall into the vat. He took fright, seized the cat and hurled her with all his might into the boiling wort. The next morning they found at the bottom of the brewing vat not a cat but a dead witch.
SOURCE
Газета Das Ostpreussenblatt, Hamburg, №32 / 15.11.1952.
* * *
Heinrich Tobal
The Ballad of the "Cat’s Path" in Königsberg
——————
In Upper Löbenicht of old
There lived a crone, they tell,
Her face was ugly and her soul
Was black, her heart as well.
The tavern there was hers to keep,
As everybody knew,
Yet among honest folk she passed
For a sorceress, it’s true.
The rumour ran that this same witch,
In silence of the night,
Would work her wicked sorceries
With a neighbour, out of sight.
Once at the dead of midnight hour,
When all were sound asleep,
A servant from the tavern saw
His mistress out to creep.
Suspecting something foul was up,
He hid in bushes near,
And from them watched the women both
From a height up high and clear.
Turned into two black cats that blazed
With fire all aglow,
The she-devils leapt into a vat
And spun round to and fro.
The vat, as if it were alive,
Over the cobblestones
Went hurtling downhill at full tilt
To where the Pregel flows.
Steering the vat just like a boat
Upon the gloomy tide,
Until the very break of dawn
The two cats whirled and plied.
The servant blabbed to everyone
What in the night he’d seen.
Since then folk, as best they could,
Kept out of the two witches’ way.
The mistress quickly understood
Where all the talk came from;
Her vengeance on the servant’s set,
The reckoning for what he’s done.
Once, in a great big vat, from dawn
He was brewing beer away,
When out of nowhere, suddenly,
A cat crept up his way.
She fawns upon the lad and purrs,
Rubs her back against his leg,
Yet towards the rim of the vat
She presses him closer yet.
Eyes tightly shut, the youngster seized
The false cat round the middle
And, remembering the "Our Father", flung
Her in the boiling kettle.
Upon the morning of the next day
On the vat’s black floor
They found the mistress of that tavern,
Who’d been a cat before.
P.S.
(from the translator)
Since then a good few years have passed
And many winters gone,
And quite a lot of water too
Down the Pregola has run.
No one practises witchcraft now
In Löbenicht today.
It’s quiet here, and there’s no more
"Cat’s Path" around. Nicht.
SOURCE
Heinrich Toball
Katzensteig zu Königsberg. 1892
«Ostpreussische Sagen und Schwanke»
● Editor’s note: Read on VisitPrussia.com an interview with the translator of German and, in particular, Prussian fairy tales, our regular contributor Tatyana Kolivay, who runs her own blog, where countless other parables, legends and fairy tales in her translations have been published.
Translated from Russian with the help of AI (Claude, Anthropic), October 2026.
