Demons

Demons in the Hawk’s tale are both agents of worldly advancement and claimants waiting for a soul. They work under the name Michałek, take the forms of farmhands or Germans, and help enlarge and enrich the Hawk’s farm after he signs a pact in his own blood. Their apparent usefulness gives way to menace when he nears death: they gather at his house with pitchforks, trying to get inside and seize him before he can receive the sacraments. Yet the tale also sets a limit on their power. They can tempt, prosper, threaten, and torment, but cannot prevent divine mercy from answering repentance.

Bargain and worldly success

The Demons’ relationship with the Hawk begins in a written contract. He agrees to surrender his soul, and the document is signed in the blood of his ring finger. From then on, Michałek and the other Demons do the work that makes the bargain visible: some are disguised as farmhands, others as Germans, while the Hawk himself does little beyond issuing orders and supervising. The farm grows larger, better, and richer. Demonic service thus appears not as a spectacle of supernatural force but as a practical source of labor and prosperity.

The success has a conspicuous limit. The Hawk has no new children, because the tale frames fertility as dependent on God’s blessing, not on wealth or demonic assistance. This absence separates material plenty from the continuation of family life. The farm can expand under the Demons’ help, but that success cannot supply what their power does not possess.

The cost of the pact

Prosperity does not quiet the Hawk’s fear of what he has signed. At night he broods on the prospect of eternal punishment, and his riches cease to delight him. Michałek answers by pointing to wealthy people, gentlemen, kings, scholars, and even bishops who have supposedly sold themselves to the Devil without worrying about what comes after death. The comparison offers the Hawk a way to dismiss his anxiety by treating such a bargain as commonplace. It does not, however, remove the spiritual consequence that troubles him.

When the Hawk falls gravely ill, the Demons reveal the self-interest beneath their earlier assistance. His flesh wastes and his bones crumble; he whimpers for help, but Michałek and the others cannot rescue him from what the tale presents as God’s wrath. Nor do they show compassion: they regard the Hawk as already theirs and breathe on his wounds to make them fester. Their service has never been protection freely given. Once the bargain’s human cost comes due, the Demons hasten rather than relieve his suffering.

The deathbed siege

The Demons’ threat becomes physically visible on a stormy autumn night. The gale tears away the roof and rips out the doors and windows; a band of Demons flies down and dances around the house, trying to force its way inside with pitchforks because the Hawk is close to death. The scene turns the earlier contract into a contest over access to the dying man. Their presence is no longer concealed in the ordinary labor of the farm: the helpers who secured his prosperity appear as a waiting force at the threshold.

The Hawk’s wife resists with the protections available to her. She shields him with a holy picture, marks the threshold and windows with blessed chalk, and later uses a rosary, prayer, and the Lord’s Name to defend the entrance. Her concern is not simply that he should remain alive; she wants him to die reconciled to God and receive the sacraments. The repeated acts of guarding the house oppose the Demons’ effort to cross its boundary, while her pursuit of a priest makes the spiritual stakes explicit.

Limits and narrative significance

The Parish Priest of Lipce initially refuses to visit the Hawk, reasoning that the man is godless and beyond help, and rides away to the manor to play cards. The Demons’ attempted seizure therefore takes place while the ordinary human representative of the Church has failed to respond. The Hawk’s wife turns instead to the Lady of Częstochowa in desperate prayer. The tale then reverses the priest’s refusal: the Mother of God intervenes, and he goes to the house with her, arriving as death sits at the threshold and the Demons press to enter.

The Hawk confesses and repents. God grants forgiveness and absolution, and at that moment the Hawk gives up his soul to God; the Most Holy Lady closes his eyes. The Demons’ pursuit is thus brought to its limit: they can claim the man by contract and menace him at the point of death, but they do not control the final outcome. Their role in the embedded tale is to make the danger of worldly gain concrete, while the last reversal depends on repentance, intercession, and the sacraments rather than on the wealth the bargain produced.