Literature / Sennentuntschi

"Sennentuntschi"^note "Sennen" are herdsmen that spend the entire summer on the Alps. The meaning of "tuntschi" has been suggested to be "doll" or to relate to the toggel, an Alpine nightmare spirit. is one of many names for a family of Alpine folktales regarding a maltreated doll that takes revenge on her creators. The specific home territory ranges from Germany's Bavaria down to the border area of Switzerland, Liechenstein, and Austria, and ends in Italy's South Tyrol. The oldest known written version is the 1839 Romantic poem "Die Drei Melker". Among the tale's signature components is the flayed sinner, which is a rare Fairy Tale motif. Stories other than "Sennentuntschi" that utilize this motif have the Devil be the one to either flay or otherwise be promised the skin of a sinner.

A group of herdsmen, usually three in numbers, spend the summer tending the cattle on the mountain. Wishing for female company, they make a doll of wood, straw, cloth, and other such materials to be their mountain wife. They feed her, talk to her, keep her groomed, and they have sex with her. One day, the doll comes to life in response to their treatment of her. For the rest of summer, she continues to perform the tasks she was made for and helps out with herding the cattle. When it becomes time for the herdsmen to return home, it is no question the doll won't come with them and so she makes one demand, namely that one of the men stays with her. Depending on the version, she picks the one who made her or abused her most, or someone seemingly at random, or the herdsmen draw straws. The other herdsmen leave their comrade with a heavy heart the next day. When they look back, they witness the doll spreading the freshly flayed man's skin over their hut's roof and laugh.

The key elements of the tale are the maltreatment of a doll, the doll coming to life, and the doll taking revenge. Everything else varies. For instance, the herdsmen may feed the doll sincerely, but they may also gleefully smear food in her face challenging her to eat. And that's only one form of violence the doll is subjected to. Variants may omit the sexual element and make the other abuse and/or abandonment the source of the doll's anger. Among these are tales that feature a male doll instead. The murder of the chosen herdsman may be described, in which case it's mentioned that the doll flayed him alive. It's also sometimes so that she injures but not kills another herdsman that treated her badly. Lastly, while by far most stories identify the men as herdsmen or similar livestock-related workers, they may also be hunters.

The name "Sennentuntschi" gained fame over the other names these stories are known by due to the 1972 play by Hansjörg Schneider. Notably, Sennentuntschi caused a scandal in 1981 when it was broadcasted on TV in Switzerland, mainly for reasons of blasphemy but the sexual content didn't help. Then in the mid-1980s, the Rätischen Museum was donated what has been identified as a genuine mountain wife doll, which until then wasn't thought to have actually been a real thing. The doll was donated by Peter Egloff, who purchased it in 1978 in the Calanca Valley. The find helped the folktale gain cultural recognition and along with changing attitudes towards religion and sex, when another movie called Sennentuntschi came out in 2010, there were no scandals to be seen.

See also "Harold", published in Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones, for a modern take on the folktale.

Provides examples of:

• Asshole Victim: The men that abuse the doll and/or make it work for them without a peep of gratitude aren't victims one feels very sorry for.
• Badass Preacher: In "Die Unze", the doll flays one herdsman and beats up the others badly. The survivors get a priest involved, who with plenty of preparation succeeds in banishing the doll to an inaccessible part of the mountains.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: The herdsmen wanted a mountain wife, so they made themselves one of straw and cloth and treated it as they'd apparently treat a woman if she were alone up in the mountains with them. Then the doll comes to life and plays her assigned role. What the herdsmen failed to take into account is that they might be held responsible for their actions.
• Best Served Cold: Sometimes, the doll lives and works with the herdsmen until their descent, which is when she makes her thinly veiled demand for a victim. The strength she's revealed to possess underscores that she could've offed the lot of them long ago, but wanted a specific scenario to make her revenge all the sweeter.
• Big Eater: At least for the first days of her existence in "Die Puppe auf Klariden", the doll eats a monstrous amount of food to get bigger and heavier.
• Curiosity Killed the Cast: The herdsman that gets murdered in "Die Unze" chose to stay alone in the cabin to investigate who was making a mess of the interior every time the group was out tending the cattle. The others, in hindsight rightfully, believed something supernatural was the cause and thus were glad he was offering to keep in wait.
• Dark Secret: The herdsmen intended for the doll, who'd come alive due to their inexcusable actions, to be their dark secret left on the mountain. How this worked out when they ended up with a murder to explain is left unaddressed.
• Dirty Coward: There's two scenarios:
  • Occasionally, a source of the doll's wrath is that she served the herdsmen well all summer and yet when autumn is near they "thank" her by abandoning her to avoid all the trouble she may bring about down in the town.
  • Stories that don't end with the herdsmen leaving end with the doll attacking them in their shared bed. Two of the men have something to fear from the doll, while a third doesn't. The guilty ones have the innocent one lie on the outside of the bed to act as a shield or distraction of sorts. In "Die Schintemunt-Alm", the two guilty herdsmen have the nerve to shield themselves with the shepherd boy.
• Don't Look Back: The men that may leave are instructed not to look back. There doesn't seem to be a reason for this other than to buy the doll time. Equally so, there aren't any consequences to the men when they do look back other than that they might wish they hadn't.
• Flaying Alive: This happens to one of the men. Then his skin is draped over the roof to dry.
• Force Feeding: Present in most versions is a scene in which the men play-feed the doll. They may taunt her for not eating and smear her face with the unconsumed food. Sometimes, it's during this scene that the dolls comes to life and starts eating, much to the men's shock.
• I Have Many Names: The doll's name is different in each version that mentions it. (Sennen)Tuntschi itself is sometimes used as a name, there's Zurrimutzi, Hoazl or Hausäli, Unze, and Hansel in case of a male doll.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: The doll is made to represent a human. However, the doll is occasionally associated with human-like mountain spirits such as the toggel and the almputz. So rather than a regular human simulacrum, she's sometimes unintentionally a mountain spirit simulacrum.
• Now What?: The tale ends abruptly in most cases, with Survivor Guilt on the horizon and a killer doll on the loose potentially waiting for the herdsmen next summer. Plus, a gruesome murder has just occurred and the surviving herdsman will have to explain that to the authorities.
• Off with His Head!: Rather than flaying a man, the doll rips his head off in "Der Hölzerne Almputz". She still places it on the roof.
• Perverse Puppet: The doll wants her vengeance paid in blood. She kills at least one man, and sometimes maims another or attacks others.
• Pintsized Powerhouse: The doll sometimes grows to human size, but more often stays just over one foot tall when she fights and defeats her primary victim.
• Rape and Revenge: The sexual abuse the doll undergoes may occur before she comes alive and it's "only" retroactively rape, but the rape is a factor in her coming to life and in her murdering one of the men. Also, in "Die Unze", the doll is made because, due to previous bad experiences, no woman wanted to go up there with the men again, so the violence in that story lies somewhere between third party revenge and karmic revenge.
• Religious Horror: It's woven into the groundwork of the tale what with the un-Christian-like behavior of the herdsmen and the motif of the flayed sinner, but some versions call special attention to it. In "Die Unze", a priest needs to get involved to banish the doll. In "Die Schintemunt-Alm", it's the fact that the men don't respect food as God's gift by play-feeding a doll that causes it to come to life. In "Die Puppe auf Klariden", the leader likens his creation of the doll to God's creation of humans and declares it not that big a deal.
• Rule of Three: It's usually a group of three men who create and live with the doll. It gets highlighted in versions, mostly the Austrian ones, in which the doll singsongs about the men's fates: The first is found (ie, could've been harmed, but was left alone), the second is injured with permanent consequences, and the third is made to suffer a grisly death.
• Slain in Their Sleep: An alternative to the herdsmen leaving the mountain is that they are attacked while in bed. They're not sleeping, however, because they know the doll is coming for them.
• What You Are in the Dark: In most versions the men all fail this test during their time isolated from society. In a few, there's one among them who does not abuse the doll, but who lacks the strength to stop the others from doing so.
• Would Hit a Girl: In the herdsmen's defense, violence against a doll representing a woman isn't the same as violence against a woman. But it raises red flags, certainly the more they treat the doll as a person.