"Blessed are the people of whom history is silent; for
history occupies itself more with the doings of fools than of
the wise; with storms than with tranquil days: it immortalizes
the butcher and the tyrant, and consigns to oblivion
the innocent and peaceful."--Cibrario.
Something of the deep, strong attachment to their native mountains
which is innate in the children of the Alps steals over me when I
think of my pleasant journeyings in Tirol [1].
Though it is a little, out-of-the-way country whose cry is seldom heard
in the newspapers, though it exercises little influence in political
complications, the character of its people is one which, next after
that of our own, has a claim to our esteem and admiration. Hardy,
patient, and persevering; patriotic and loyal to a fault; honest and
hospitable to a proverb--they carry the observance of their religion
into the minutest practice of every-day life; and there underlies
all these more solid qualities a tender, poetical, romantic spirit
which throws a soft halo round their ceaseless toil, and invests
their heroic struggles for independence with a bright glow of chivalry.
Surrounded from their earliest years with living pictures of Nature's
choicest forms and colouring, they need no popular fiction to cultivate
their imagination, no schools of design to educate their taste.
Shut out from the world's ambitions by their pathless Alps, they have
learned to see before them two aims alone,--to maintain the integrity
and the sanctity of their humble homes on earth, and to obtain one
day a place in that better Home above, to which the uplifted fingers
of their sun-bathed mountain-peaks ever gloriously point.
The paramount claims on their hearts' allegiance of the hearth and
the altar are inseparably interwoven in their social code, and their
creed scarcely knows of a distinction between Nature and Nature's God.
At their mother's knee they have learnt, every one, to prattle
of their Father in heaven with as complete a realization of His
existence as of that of their father on earth. Just as they receive
their toil-won food and raiment as an earnest of the paternal care
of the one, the change of the seasons, the sunshine and the rain,
betoken to them as certainly that of the Other. They scarcely trace
any line of demarcation between the natural and the supernatural;
and earth and sky are not for them the veil which hides Divinity, but
the very temple and shrine of the Godhead dwelling among His creatures.
Going forth in this simple faith through the pure, unfogged atmosphere
which surrounds them, it is scarce to be wondered at if they can trace
the guiding footprints and the unerring hand of Providence where for
others are only chances and coincidences. Or that--like the faint
outline of wished-for land revealing itself to the trained eye of
the sailor, where the landsman sees but a hopeless expanse of sky and
ocean--they should recognize a personal will and individuality in the
powers which are the messengers to them of the good pleasure of Heaven,
in the germination of fruit and grain, in the multiplication of their
flocks and herds; or of the envious malice of the Evil One, in the
wind and the lightning, the torrent and the avalanche, destroying
the work of their hands.
It is necessary to bear this well in mind, or we shall not appreciate
the delights which their fantastic tales have in store for us. We
must learn to realize that this way of viewing things has created a
nomenclature, almost a language, of its own.
When the boisterous blast sweeps through their valleys, scattering the
scent of the wild game, and driving them far out of their reach, they
say it is the Wilder Jäger [2], the Beatrìk [3], or the Nachtvolk
[4], on his chase. Their restless energies, pent up within the
shelter of their rattling walls and casements, invest him with a
retinue of pitiless followers and fiery-eyed hounds--while the fate
of some who have ventured out while he is said to be abroad, blown
over precipices or lost in crevasses, is expressed by the fancy that
his train is closed by a number of empty pairs of shoes, which run
away with those who come within his influence.
When the bright beams of sun and moon enliven their landscape,
or fructify their seed, or guide their midnight way, they fable of
them as beautiful maidens with all sorts of fanciful names derived
from associations as old as the world: Perahta, brightness, daughter
of Dagha, the daylight--hence, also, Perchtl and Berchtl. In other
localities, Holda or Hulda; in others again, they are known as Angane,
and Enguane, the Saligen Fraüelein, Nornen, Zarger Fraüelein, and
Weissen Fraüelein. They say they smile on the overburdened peasant,
beguile his labour by singing to him, show him visions of beautiful
landscapes, bestow wonderful gifts--loaves which never diminish,
bowls and skittles, charcoal and corn of pure gold; to the husbandman
they give counsels in his farming; to the good housewife an unfailing
store--bobbins of linen thread which all her weaving never exhausts;
they help the youth or the maiden to obtain the return of the love they
have longed for, and have some succour in store for every weary soul.
Such helpers the people recognize of the masculine gender, also, in
the so-called Nörgl, Pechmannl, Pützl, Wiehtmännlein, Käsermännlein,
and Salvanel; for possibly, they say, not all the angels who rebelled
with Lucifer may have been cast into the outer darkness. There may
have been some not so evilly disposed themselves, but talked over
and led astray by others; and such, arrested in their descent by a
merciful reprieve, may have been only banished to the desolate and
stony places of the earth, to tops of barren mountains and fruitless
trees. Such as these might be expected to entertain a friendly
feeling for the human beings who inhabit the regions which gave them
shelter, and to be ready to do them a good turn when it lay in their
way--lift weights, and carry burdens for them up the steep heights,
and protect their wild game. And, also, it is not inconsistent with
their nature to love to play them a mischievous trick full oft--make
off with the provision of loaves prepared for the mowers; sit, while
remaining invisible, on their sledges and increase their difficulty
and confusion in crossing the mountain-paths lost in snow; entice
them into the woods with beseeching voices, and then leave them to
wander in perplexity; overturn the farm-maids' creaming-pans; roll
the Senner's cheeses down the mountain sides.
Worse tricks than these are those of the Wilder Mann. When the soil
is sterile and ungrateful; when any of the wonted promises of nature
are unfulfilled; when the axe of the lonely woodman rebounds from
the stubborn trunk and wounds him; when the foot of the practised
mountain-climber fails him on the crisp snow, or the treacherously
sun-parched heather; when a wild and lawless wight (for such there are
even in Tirol, though fewer, perhaps, than elsewhere) illtreats the
girl who has gone forth to tend her father's flock upon the mountains,
trusting in her own innocence and Heaven's help for her protection--it
is always the Wilder Mann--in some places called the Wilder Jörgel, in
others, the Lorg, the Salvang or Gannes, the Klaubaut or Rastalmann,
in Vorarlberg, Fengg, Schrättlig, Doggi, and Habergâss--to whose
account the misfortune or the misdeed is laid. His female counterpart
is called Trude and Stampa, and the Langtüttin.
The mineral riches of the country, and the miners occupied in
searching for them, are told of as of hidden treasure sought after or
revealed, as the case may be, by the Bergweib and the Bergmannlein,
or Erdmannlein, the Venedigermannlein and the Hahnenkekerle, the
stories of whose strength and generosity, cupidity and spite, are
endless; while the mountain echoes are the voices of sprites playfully
imitating the sounds of human life.
If the mountains and the forests are thus treated, neither are the
lakes and torrents without their share of personification, and many
are the legends in which the uses and beauties of the beneficent
element are interpreted to be the smiles and the helpful acts of the
Wasserfraülein, while the mischances which occur at the water's edge
are ascribed to the Stromkarl and the Brückengeist.
The sudden convulsions of nature to which their soil has been subject
from age to age are all charged with retribution for the sins of the
people, like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities of
the plain. Castles and forest possessions of wicked rich men are sunk
beneath the waters of lakes so that their foundations may never again
be set up, and their place be no more found; while a curse pursues
those who attempt to dig out the ill-gotten treasure. Villages
are recorded to have been swallowed by the earth or buried by the
snow-storms when their people have neglected the commandments of God.
This literal adaptation of the admonitions of Holy Writ receives among
this people another development in traditions of instances where good
deeds done to the poor have been believed to have been actually done
to visions of our Lord and of His Saints. Then again, their devout
belief in both the irresistible justice and the ineffable love of
God convinces them that there must be a place on earth where souls
too soiled for heaven, yet not given over to utter reprobation, may
wander till the final day of rest. And thus every shepherd, as he keeps
his lonely watch upon the Alpine pastures, expects that he may meet
the feurige Sennin who broke the Sunday rest; or the Tscheier Friedl
who was cruel to the cattle in his charge; or the büssender Hirt who
stole the widow's kine; or the Markegger who removed his neighbour's
landmark; or the Pungga-Mannl who swore a false oath; or the feuriger
Verräther who betrayed the mountain pass to the Roman legions.
On the other hand, the heroes and types of the Christian faith are
thought of as taking a perpetual interest in the welfare of their
struggling brethren: St. Nothburga and St. Isidore watch over
the husbandman, and St. Urban over the vinedresser; St. Martin
over the mower; St. Martha, St. Sebastian, and St. Rocchus, the
drei Pestschutzheiligen [5], are expected to be as potent in their
intercession now as when at their prayers, when on earth, plagues
were stayed. St. Anthony and St. Florian similarly protect against
fire. St. Vigilius, the evangelizer of the country and martyr to
his zeal, is still believed to guard its jealously-preserved unity
of faith. In return, they receive special veneration: the ordinary
dealings of life are regulated by the recurrence of their festivals,
and the memory of sacred mysteries is kept in perpetual honour by
setting up their tokens in every homestead and every house, in every
vineyard and in every field, on every bridge and by every wayside.
It is not surprising that a people so minded have tales to tell
of wonderful events which seem to have befallen them, and which
take the record of their lives out of the prosaic monotony which
rules our own,--tales always bearing a wholesome moral lesson,
always showing trust in Providence and faith in the World Unseen,
and always told with the charming simplicity which only a logically
grounded expectation that events should turn out even so--and no
invention or imagination--can give.
A selection of these tales I have put into English dress in the
following pages. Though some few of them may be found to bear analogy
with similar tales of other German nations, the distinctive qualities
of the Tirolese, and the peculiar nature of the scenery amid which
they have been conceived, will be found to have stamped them with a
character entirely their own.
I think that what I have said is sufficient to give, to such of my
readers as did not possess it already, the key to their application,
and I need not now append to each a tedious interpretation of the
fantastic personages and scenes I shall have to introduce.
It remains only to say a word as to their distribution. The present
principality of Tirol is composed of four provinces. North Tirol,
South Tirol, Wälsch or Italian Tirol, and Vorarlberg. North and South
Tirol have been for long so closely united that, like their language
and customs, their mythology has become so intimately intermingled that
it scarcely comes within the scope of a work like the present to point
out their few divergences or local peculiarities. But those of Wälsch
Tirol and Vorarlberg each maintain a much more distinctive character,
and I have accordingly marked with a separate heading those which I
have gathered thence.
"The Rose-garden of King Lareyn," however, is not the peculiar property
of any one province. Though the three places which claim to occupy its
site are all placed in South Tirol, this pretty myth is the common
property of the whole country--its chief popular epic--and has even
passed into the folklore of other parts of Germany also. It is beside
the purpose of the present little work to enter into the controversy
which has been raised concerning the authorship. There can be little
doubt, however, that it was originally the utterance of some unknown
minstrel putting into rough-and-ready rhyme one of the floating myths
which symbolized the conflict of the heroes with the powers of evil,
so popular in the middle ages. Then poets of more pretensions wrote
out, and, as they wrote out, improved the song. Thus there are several
different manuscripts of it extant, of between two and three thousand
lines each, but not of equal value, for later scribes, in trying
to improve, overlaid the simple energy of its diction with a feeble
attempt at ornament which only served to damage its force. The name of
the Norg-king who is the subject of it, is in these spelt variously,
as Lareyn, Luarin, Luarine, &c.; the modern orthography is Laurin. The
spelling I have adopted is that of the Chronicon of Aventinus.
I have thought it well to precede the story by some account of the
Norg folk and some samples of their legends, that the reader may not
come wholly unacquainted with their traditional character to the tale
of the discomfiture of the last Norg-king.