is often to be seen, especially on the eve of holy-days, a gold-worm of
wonderful brilliancy, which lies there motionless, and wrinkled in such
a manner that it looks like a golden chain.
Sometimes this gold-worm has also been seen down in the valley far
beneath the Reichen-Felder, even once so far as the banks of the
Alpbach, on a spot which is called G’reit. Several times daring people
approached the worm, but when they had come near to him they were
struck with an uncontrollable terror; and on running to fetch others as
witnesses, on their return the worm was no longer to be seen.
The peasants round about say, “Those people had not the grace of
putting something sacred upon the worm, and for that reason it
disappeared.” After all, it is not stated what the worm is, whether it
is a treasure-bloom, or a treasure-guardian, of which there are numbers
in this rich gold country.
_THE GLUNKEZER GIANT._
In the Volder valley, out of which rises the Glunkezer, and where now
stands the sheep Alp, called Tulfein, is a very picturesque mountain
meadow, in the middle of which, some centuries ago, a peaceful King
had built his palace, in which he lived with his four daughters, of
whom each was more beautiful than the other. Round about the palace was
a magnificent garden, full of Wonder-Flowers, and large expanses of
meadow-lands, upon which tame Alpine animals browsed in large herds,
and of these the four daughters of the King were very fond. They went
also very often down into the huts of poor herds-people, to whom
they did all sorts of charity, and all around they were honoured and
reverenced as protecting genii.
This quiet happiness was troubled, and at last destroyed, by the
arrival of a wild giant in this Alpine paradise, who built himself
a cavern on the top of the Glunkezer, from whence, during the night,
he roared so dreadfully that the mountains trembled, and huge masses
of rock rolled down into the valleys. After he had caught sight of
the four daughters of the King, he determined to try and gain one of
them for his wife; so he decorated his bearskin mantle with enormous
new buttons, tore up a fine tree for a walking-stick, passed his
long finger-nails a few times through his shaggy beard and hair, and
set off down to the Tulfein to pay his addresses. The King’s heart
trembled with fright as he saw this pretender to the hand of one of his
daughters, and replied that his daughters were perfectly free to choose
their own husbands, therefore, if one of them would accept him, he
should have no opposition to make.
Upon this the giant made himself as small as possible, but that was
not very much, and did not bring him in much either, for one after
the other of the girls refused him. This enraged the giant out of
bounds, and he determined upon the most terrible vengeance, which he
did not tarry in executing as quickly as possible. In the following
night, rocks as large as a house rolled down upon the Tulfein, hurled
against the palace, which they carried along with its inhabitants into
the Wild-See, into whose depth it disappeared, and which was almost
completely filled up with the tumbling rocks. The little of its dark
waters which is still left, now bears the name of the “Schwarzenbrunn”
(black spring), and round about it is a “death valley,” for nothing
will grow there.
After the vengeance of the giant was satiated, repentance came over
him, and he mourned for the murdered innocent father and daughters,
he sat for whole nights on the borders of the Wild-See, into which he
gazed, and howled and cried so incessantly, that even the stones had
pity on him, for they became quite soft, and his cavern trembled and
fell to ruin. At last he bewitched himself and became a mountain dwarf,
while the King’s daughters were transformed into fairies or mermaids,
and appear often on moonlight nights, floating over the water. There
then sits the small grey dwarf, stretching longingly his hands towards
their light forms, which however dissolve in mist; the dwarf then
plunges again into the See, with a noise so great that it seems as
though a large rock had fallen into it, and cools in a cold bath the
agony of his remorse.
_THE WEAVER OF VOMPERBERG._
The practice of the medical art is even now in the higher parts of
the Tyrol rather in a primitive state. Those who are ill send a
common messenger down to the doctor, to whom he has to explain all
the illnesses of those who have sent him, and, therefore, he has to
consult sometimes for twenty or thirty illnesses at a time. The doctor
listens to his explanations, and gives to one patient a potion, to
another a tisane, to another an unguent, etc., and hands the whole lot
to the messenger. Happy it is if, in the confusion of his ideas, the
messenger does not change the medicines, but gives to each patient his
own. In this manner used the peasant Vögele to cure, who died in 1855,
in the hamlet of Matrai, in the Under Wippthal. From early morning till
late in the afternoon his farm was overrun with the sick, or their
messengers.
But the arts which the weaver of Vomperberg, near the village of Vomp,
in the Inn valley, practised were unknown to human doctor, for they
were supernatural. It was generally reported that he was in league with
the evil one, and eye-witnesses have even certified that the devil
once caught him, but that the clever magician managed to slip through
his fingers. This weaver, who died in 1845, once sold a herd of pigs
to a peasant on the opposite side of the river Inn. The purchaser was
driving his pigs over the bridge called Nothholzerbrücke, and, as they
arrived in the middle, lo! they all disappeared. All those to whom he
recounted this called out, “The weaver is a cunning fellow, he has got
the money, and no doubt he has bewitched the pigs back again to his
sheds.”
In his anger the peasant, after drinking a few bottles of wine, and
when his head was rather hot, returned to the hut of the weaver, who
was lying on a long plank, warming his feet against the stove. The
indignant and half-drunken peasant threw himself upon the man, and,
in his anger, tried to drag him out of the hut by his feet, but oh,
Heaven! he had scarcely touched the feet, when they both came off in
his hands. Trembling with terror and fright, he dropped the feet on the
floor and ran off, and has never dared again to say one word about the
loss of the pigs.
_THE FIERY SENNIN._
Over the high valley of Alperschon stands a mountain called
Gerichtsalp, belonging to the canton of Landeck, of which the judge,
for centuries past, has had the right of letting the meadows to all the
different parishes of the district; and from time immemorial it has
been the privilege of the flock-herds to pasture there also their own
animals, together with those of their masters, and then to sell them in
the autumn on their own account.
There was at that time upon the Alp a young “Sennin” (or herd-woman),
who had among the herd some of her own pigs, of which she took rather
too much care, for she cheated the parish to feed them, and gave them
goat-milk and the milk from the butter, so that they soon became very
fat and round; while the parish pigs she made live upon the thin
cheese whey, upon which, of course, they did not thrive. The Sennin was
always gay and joking, and sang the nicest songs, and therefore every
one liked her for her good temper, and nobody dreamed that she was an
alm thief.
A couple of root seekers of the village of Schnaun, the girl’s native
village, often climbed the Alp, and one day, when busy over their work,
they remained there longer than usual, after the Sennin had driven
the herd home. They were in the habit of using the empty enclosure
in which the pigs were driven to rest in the middle of the day, as a
drying-place for their roots, and when they returned home again, late
at night, to Schnaun, they heard to their great astonishment that “the
pretty young Sennin” had suddenly died, and they stayed a few days in
the village to attend her funeral with the rest of the villagers.
Some few days afterwards, they went up again on the mountain to resume
their usual business, and it was almost quite dark as they arrived on
their favourite spot. As they approached the enclosure, they heard the
voice of some one calling the pigs to their feeding-troughs, which
they immediately recognized as that of the dead young Sennin, and, as
they approached nearer, they saw her in bodily form, carrying a bucket
of whey in her hand, and walking about in the enclosure, but red as a
fiery furnace. The men stood thunderstruck and gasped with terror, and
the spirit called to them, “Yes, sigh for me; here I must burn until my
dishonesty is wiped away, even to the last _pfennig_;” and in saying
this she disappeared from their sight, while making a terrific noise,
and enveloped in a cloud of sulphurous smoke.
_THE SPIRIT OF THE ZIRL USURER._
Beneath the Solstein, which stands over 9000 feet high, and upon whose
summit on certain Thursdays the witches are said to dance, is situated
a dreadful chasm, which takes its name from the charming village of
Zirl, which lies at the foot of the mountain, and has more the aspect
of a little town than an Alpine village. There once lived a wealthy
miller, a noted usurer, who amassed no end of unjustly gained money,
and, as after his death none of his wealth was restored to those whom
he had defrauded, his spirit was condemned to the depths of the chasm,
where he suffered indescribable torments, and often during the night
his screams have been heard crying, “Help, help me!”
About twenty years ago, two merry gazelle hunters were walking in the
night from the village of Soln, over the Schützensteig, on their way
to Hötting, and, as it became very dark, they resolved to pass the
night above the Zirl chasm, for fear of falling, in the darkness, over
some precipice, or meeting with any other accident. They lighted a
large fire, and during the night they heard somebody call out, “Help,
help me.” The two men immediately thought some one had fallen down the
precipice, and one of them shouted, “Have patience, for the night is
too dark for us to venture down the gully, but to-morrow we will help
you out.” In the early dawn they set off to hunt for a track by which
to descend the precipice to the rescue of the unfortunate traveller.
On their way they met the shepherd of Soln, and told him of their
night’s adventure, and, as they recounted it to him, he said, “There
you may look in vain, for this call comes not from a lost traveller,
but from the wicked miller;” and he then told them all he knew about
the wretched money usurer. Many people of Zirl have also heard these
frightful screams for help, first in one place and then in another, for
the chasm is dreadfully deep and long. In the very depth of it, and at
the foot of the Solstein, lies the Graupenloch, where a roaring torrent
forms a high cascade, and fills the chasm with the roar of thunder,
and even to this day nobody has ever dared to descend to this spot.
There sits the spirit of the miserable usurer, howling, with chattering
teeth, in his freezing torment.
_THE ALPINE HORSE-PHANTOM._
On the high Alp, called Els, in the Hinderdux, resides a mountain
spirit, which the inhabitants of the surrounding country are unable
to paint horribly enough. It is described as a terrible horse-phantom,
which nobody dare approach, and which snorts fever and death
wheresoever it goes. Many mountaineers and gazelle-hunters have met
with their death by this spirit, and only he is safe who has gun,
sword, and dogs with him.
One day a courageous Alpine hunter resolved to go and fight the
mountain ghost, so he loaded his rifle with a crossed bullet, and
climbed up the mountain. Not far from the hut, which stands on the Els
Alp, is a cross, at which he knelt and repeated a prayer, and he had
scarcely left the spot, when a little grey mountain dwarf drew near to
him, and begged for a little bread and brandy. The huntsman shared with
the dwarf his bread and smoked-gazelle meat; after which the little
grey man told him to go back, and bring his gun, sword, and dogs, or
else he would be powerless against the mountain ghost, who otherwise
would smash him into pieces. The gazelle-hunter followed this advice,
and soon returned to execute his courageous purpose.
But it happened far otherwise than he had expected. The mountain
ghost, in the form of a horrible horse, appeared, and galloped upon him
with tremendous fury, snorting fire and sulphurous smoke, stamping, and
roaring, and neighing so loud, that the very mountain shook with the
sound; then he shouted to the huntsman with a voice of thunder, “You
rascal, if you had not gun, sword, and dogs with you, I should smash
you to pieces.”
At this reception, the huntsman stood like one petrified; his teeth
chattered, and all desire to fight with a ghost passed away for ever
from his mind. The horse-phantom then turned his heels and galloped
back again to the Gletscherwand, from whence he had come.
_THE WITCHES OF G’STOAG._
Not many years ago a very rough mountain lane led from Tarenz to Imst,
which was called the G’stoag; the post-road now runs over this spot,
and still bears the same name.
The tailor, Anton Gurschler, of Strad, once returned home from
Grieseck, near Tarenz, where he had been to visit his sweetheart. It
was getting on for the ghost hour, and as he arrived near the smith’s
shop, called Hoada-Schmiede, near G’stoag, he ran up against a little
chapel, which is consecrated to the holy Vitus, and, having hurt
himself in the violence of the shock, he was very angry, and began to
swear, for he wanted to know who had pushed him so savagely. At that
moment a carriage with lights drove up, and in it were sitting some
women, whom the tailor immediately recognized perfectly well. They
stopped the carriage, alighted, and offered to dance with him, and
turned him round and round, without his being able to resist them.
Then, as they released him, one of them whispered in his ear, “If you
say one word about this, you had better look out for yourself;” and
then they drove off like a flash of lightning. The tailor was stupefied
with amazement, and, in his anger, he recounted to his friends at home
all that had befallen him, in which, however, he did very wrong, for he
grew thin and ill, and went out at last like the spark of a candle.
To another man, a shoemaker of Tarenz, whose name was Jennewein
Lambach, happened the following circumstance:--He was on his way to
the castle of Starkenberg, close by his village, and on passing by the
church, he neither stopped a moment, nor crossed himself, as it is the
custom in the country to do. It was yet dark, for the shoemaker had got
up earlier than he was aware of; all at once he heard the sounds of
magnificent music, to which he listened for a long time with delighted
ears, and then, to his astonishment, he heard the church clock strike
midnight. He shuddered with fright, for he knew that something must
be wrong, and hurried on as fast as his legs would carry him to
Starkenberg, where he was engaged to work; but as there he could find
no peace of mind, on account of his strange accident, he returned home
again in the afternoon. While he was sitting drinking a glass of wine
with the innkeeper Marrand, of Tarenz, a woman of the village entered
the room, and said to him mockingly, “The music last night must have
pleased you very much, for you listened like a stupid.” The shoemaker
was struck dumb and could not reply, for it came to his mind that what
he had heard in the preceding night had been hags’ music, and that
that very same woman had been amongst the number of the witches. From
that time he shunned the creature as much as possible, but never told
any one what had happened to him on that eventful evening. He then
bought himself an alarm clock, which he set up close to his bed, so
that he never went again too early to his work, and thus by his silence
he no doubt escaped the dreadful fate of the poor tailor.
_THE HEXELER._
In the village of Hall, in the valley of the Inn, close to Innsbruck,
lived a man who was a peasant doctor, cattle doctor, and fisherman, in
one person; he was also a noted witch-finder, and, as such, held in
terrible dread by all those who had “red eyes.” His name was Kolb, but
he was generally called the “Hexeler” (hag hunter), or “Hexenkolb.”
One day Kolb was engaged fishing in the lake, called Achenthaler-See,
when suddenly thunderclouds as black as ink collected over his head,
and on a sign which he made with his hand, a weather hag fell down
into the water. The hag seized the side of Kolb’s little boat, who,
however, beat the rudder down upon her hands, with the intention of
drowning her, but she implored him to save her, promising that she
would renounce her witchcraft. “As to me,” said Kolb, “I will save you
if you will give up your wicked trade; but you must hand over to me
your sorcery book, so that I shall know all your hellish artifices,
and be able to discover their antidotes.” After a long dispute, during
which the hag was nearly drowned, she gave him a book, in which her
most secret charms were written down.
After that incident, Kolb became one of the first “Wonder Doctors”
in the Tyrol. When he was asked to cure somebody, the sufferer was
compelled to come to him during the night, and it was only on special
occasions that he consented to visit the house of the sick. When he
was called to the assistance of a bewitched person, he made exactly
at midnight the smoke of five different sorts of herbs, and, while
they were burning, the bewitched was gently beaten with a martyr-thorn
birch, which had also to be cut during the same night, and through
which means, at each stripe that was given, the hag who had bewitched
the person received the most terrible blow, so that the blood flowed at
each stroke. Kolb went on beating in this way, until the hag appeared
and took off the charm. But, during the operation, no one was allowed
to speak, and the necromancer alone treated with the witch. If any one
had spoken but one word, the Hexeler’s power would have gone for that
night, and all his work would have been useless.
_THE CAT-HAGS OF GRIES._
Cats generally take a large share in anything appertaining to
witchcraft, and as single apparitions, out of the company of some
hag, they are scarcely, if ever, to be seen; though Peter, one of the
servants at the farm of Simel, near the village of Gries, once had the
misfortune to meet them.
The farmer was an excellent manager, and never allowed any of his
servants to be out in the evening after the Angelus had sounded. But
Peter had been a volunteer, during the revolution of 1848, and, as
such, he considered himself entitled to take more liberty than the
others, and to go after hours and pay a visit to his love. One evening,
just as he had arranged to carry out this plan, the farmer, who was
a member of the parish administration, said, after supper, to his
servants, “Now you all go to bed; at two o’clock to-morrow morning I
shall call you, for it has been decided by the Council that we must go
oftener on patrol round about, to keep on the look out for the Welsh
republicans, which are expected in the country, and to shoot them down
wherever they appear, for the sake of preserving order and peace.”
This command anything but pleased Peter, who, however, apparently
obeyed, and went to bed; but soon afterwards he got up very quietly,
and thought to himself, “Long before the clock strikes two I shall be
back;” and then he crept silently through the stables, and hurried
towards the Berghof farm, on the mountain where his sweetheart lived,
to bid her good-bye for ever, should it be necessary, in case he fell
in the war against the Welsh rebels.
He remained till one o’clock at the Berghof, and then he set off home,
running as fast as ever he could, and he had arrived already within
a distance of two or three hundred feet of the Simel farm, when,
just over his head, he caught the sound of suppressed whispering. He
looked about, and lo! all about him, the air and ground was full of
cats, of all colours and shapes, black, white and tricoloured, which
sprang upon him from every direction. Frightened out of his wits, poor
Peter began to pray and cross himself, when all at once the tribe of
cats disappeared; but this release did not last long, for when he
had reached the farm, he found the cats sitting in a swarm round the
entrance-door, and they stopped him from getting in, and against this
no praying, no cross-making could avail, for the cats set up such a
terrific noise, that the poor bewildered fellow lost his senses of
hearing and seeing. He made up his mind, however, to get into the farm
at any risk, and, springing through the cats, he gained the little door
by which he had gone out; but the door was closed, so he was forced
to knock at the great entrance, where he was received by the farmer
himself, who, after giving him a good scolding, concluded his sermon
in these words:--“There is nothing so fine spun but that it comes
always to the sun.”[2]
[2] “Es ist nichts so fein gesponnen,
Es kommt immer an die Sonnen.”
_THE LOCKSMITH OF THE FLIEGERALM._
Under the mountain, Fliegeralm, which now belongs to the Baron
Steinbach, of Mühlau, used to stand the shop of a locksmith, whose name
was Huis. The hut was situated in a most beautiful position, on the
edge of a rushing mountain torrent, close to the side of a dense and
magnificent forest of fir-trees. The locksmith was an industrious and
fearless man, and the report that during the winter a “Kaser-Mandl”
(a Tyrolian mountain ghost) walked about, could not deter him from
building his house just beneath the Alm; so he went up in the autumn
to fell trees for its construction, about which he set determinedly to
work.
The hut was soon finished, and then the locksmith lighted a large fire
and commenced his business. One evening, while engaged over his work,
he heard footsteps prowling round the hut, and directly afterwards the
door was violently shaken, as though it would be forced in. Huis got
up, and called out, “Who is there?” and then opening the door, he said,
“Well, come in then;” but nobody was to be seen. He went once more to
his work, and again heard the same footsteps about the house; so at
last, becoming uncomfortable, he determined to retire to rest, in order
that he might get up very early in the morning to finish what he was
about.
He laid himself down upon a bundle of hay, on which he soon fell
asleep; but an hour or two afterwards he was awakened by a most
extraordinary noise, and all at once the terrible Alm ghost stood close
beside him, and threw himself instantly upon him, like a big butcher’s
dog, with fiery eyes, and with the fixed intention of tearing his
victim to pieces. But the locksmith brought all his gigantic strength
to bear upon the ghost, and dealt him a blow, which hurled him to a
distance; then, after this victory, he laid down again in another
corner of the hut, and slept peacefully until daybreak; but from that
moment he determined never again to pass the night alone in the hut,
and so he returned every evening to the valley, carrying his work with
him.
He never recounted one single word to any living soul, except his wife,
whom he bound down by the strongest vows never to repeat it to any
mortal being; but a woman’s confidence is but a stage secret, open to
the ears of all who like to listen to it.
_THE SALVE-TOAD._
It is a well-known fact in the Tyrol that the Jordan chapel, which
stands on the mountain, called Salve, and which is dedicated to St.
John the Baptist, has been founded by a widow, who, out of maternal
weakness, had been the cause of encouraging her only son in all sorts
of wickedness, which he carried so far as to become the chief of a band
of robbers and cut-throats. Too late, the infatuated woman discovered
the crime of which she had been guilty, and, in deep repentance, sought
her son, and, after following him for many days, found him at last on
the top of the Hohe Salve.