Tatzelwurm

Quick facts

The form and threat rows follow p. 146, not an amalgam of all the article’s examples.^[1]

What Doblhoff records

Doblhoff opens with the humorous literary Tazzelwurm associated with Scheffel and an inn near Oberaudorf, then argues for continued comparative study of the legends. He brings together printed collections, older natural-history reports and communications from correspondents. His article is a documentary witness to that collecting and comparison, rather than a transcript of one storyteller’s performance.^{[1: pp. 142–145]}

On p. 146 he summarizes local accounts collected by R. von Freisauff. The Salzburg Birgstutzen threatens lambs, goats and people. It is described as a worm with feet, three to five Fuß long and, in a comparison credited to Steub, as thick as a beer mug. Reports disagree over whether it has two, four or six feet. It rises up and whistles in an attack; its breath is said to be poisonous. The tail appears abruptly cut off, a feature the author connects with its name.^{[1: p. 146]}

The same page records a different, localized report obtained by Oberbergrat Prinzinger in 1850 on the Tännenalm: a forearm-length worm with two little front feet supposedly took milk from one cow. Doblhoff adds that a young man was subsequently said to have been milking the cow and blaming the theft on the creature. That reported explanation belongs beside the allegation; the milk loss is not proof of a supernatural animal.^{[1: p. 146]}

Description and its limits

The Salzburg summary supports a footed, worm-like form and a blunt-looking tail. It does not supply wings, flight, fire-breathing or a fixed colour. Poisonous breath is not flame, and the conflicting foot counts cannot be reduced to a mandatory pair of forelegs.^{[1: p. 146]}

Cat-like heads appear explicitly in Doblhoff’s Swiss Stollenwurm discussion and in his Styrian comparison. Those are separately located statements, not grounds for silently adding a cat’s head to every Salzburg report. The four-footed illustration discussed on p. 145 likewise provides no missing anatomical certainty.^{[1: pp. 143–145]}

Source realm: Alpine folklore places

The foregrounded account belongs to Salzburg’s reported local folklore. The named Tännenalm is the setting of one milk-theft report, not a habitat assigned to every Tatzelwurm. Doblhoff’s opening Swiss comparison names the country between Unterseen and the Grimsel, towards Gadmen. These distinct places sit together on the site’s Folklore places shelf without becoming one mapped supernatural kingdom.^{[1: pp. 142–143, 146]}

Names and version boundaries

Tatzelwurm is the spelling of the article’s heading; Tazzelwurm also appears in its literary opening. On p. 144 Doblhoff associates the name Tatzelwurm with Upper Bavaria and neighbouring districts, and says it survives alongside Bergstutzen in Salzburg. His Salzburg discussion also uses Birgstutzen. These are the forms encountered in this witness.^{[1: pp. 142, 144–146]}

His p. 142 footnote says that the name Tatzelwurm is not found in Switzerland and explains Stollen as a short, thick foot. The Swiss Stollenwurm material on p. 143 is therefore presented here as his comparison, not as evidence that Swiss tellers used the intake name. Its crowned serpents, milk-taking creatures and helpful animals remain distinct reports, not additional powers of the Salzburg creature.^{[1: pp. 142–143]}