The Valleys of Tirol: Their traditions and customs and how to visit them

Joseph Speckbacher, who shares with Andreas Hofer the glories of ‘the year nine,’ was a native of Rinn, a village on the opposite bank; but he is honoured with a grave in the Pfarrkirche, at Hall, bearing the following inscription, with the date of his death, 1820:

Im Kampfe wild, doch menschlich;In Frieden still und den Gesetzen treu;War er als Krieger, Unterthan und Mensch,Der Ehre wie der Liebe werth.96

Another object of interest, in the same churchyard, is a wooden crucifix, carved by Joseph Stocker in 1691; as well as the monuments of the Fiegers, and other high families of the middle ages. In the church itself is a ‘Salvator Mundi’ of Albert Dürer, on panel; the altarpiece of the high altar is by Erasmus Quillinus, a pupil of Rubens. One of the chapels, the Waldaufische Kapelle, was built in 1493–5, by one Florian von Waldauf, to whom an eventful history attaches. He was a peasant boy, whom his father’s severity drove away from home: for a long time he maintained himself by tending herds; after that he went for a soldier in the Imperial army, where his talents brought him under the special notice of the Emperor Frederick, and his son Maximilian I., who took him into their councils and companionship. Maximilian made him knight of Waldenstein, and gifted him with lands and revenues. His love of adventure took him into many countries. On one journey, being in a storm at sea, the memory of his early wilfulness overcame him, and he vowed that if he came safe to land, he would build a chapel in his Tirolean home. He subsequently fixed on the Pfarrkirche of Hall, as that in which to fulfil his vow, being the parish church of the castle of Rettenberg which Maximilian had bestowed on him, and enriched it with a wondrous store of relics, which he had collected in his journeyings. Above 40,000 pilgrims flocked from every part of Tirol, to assist at the consecration; and a goodly sight it must have been, when singing and bearing the relics aloft, they streamed down the mountain side and across the river, the last of the procession not having yet left the gates of Castle Rettenberg, while the foremost had already reached the chapel.

There are other churches in Hall; where that of S. Saviour now stands was once a group of crazy cottages; but one day, in the year 1406, in one of them a poor man lay dying, and the priest bore him the holy Viaticum, which knows no distinction between the palace and the hovel: the furniture was as rickety as the tenements themselves; the only table, on which the priest had deposited the sacred vessels, propped against the wall for support, gave way by some accident, and the Santissimo was thrown upon the floor. Johann von Kripp, a wealthy burgher, hearing of what had befallen, bought the cottages, and in reparation for the desecration, built a church on the spot, with the dedication, zum Erlöser.

The town is well provided with educational and charitable institutions; the latter comprising a mad-house worth seeing, under Professor Kaplan, and a deaf and dumb school. The Franciscan monastery is, I think, the only unsuppressed religious house. In the Rathhaus is preserved a quaint old picture, representing the Emperor Sigismund, in hunting costume, coming to ask the assistance of the men of Hall against a conspiracy he had discovered in Innsbruck, assistance which loyal Hall was not slow to supply. Its situation made it a place of some importance to the defences of the country; and the regulations for calling the inhabitants under arms were very complete, so that this service was promptly rendered.

An amusing story is told in evidence of the ready gallantry of the men of Hall. There was a time when Hall was at feud with the neighbouring village of Taur: the watchman, stationed on the tower by night-time, rang the alarm, and announced that the enemy was advancing with lanterns in their hands; at the call to arms, every man jumped from his bed, and seized his weapon, eager to display his prowess against the foe. Prudent Salzmair97 Zott, anxious to spare the shedding of neighbours’ blood, hastily donned a shirt of mail over his more penetrable night-gear, and proposed to ride out alone with a flag of truce, to know what meant the unseasonable attack. The warlike burghers with difficulty yielded to his representations, and not having the consolations of the fragrant weed wherewith to wile away their time, set to sharpening their swords and axes, and outvieing each other with many a fierce boast during his absence.

Meantime, Salzmair Zott proceeded on his way without meeting the ghost of a foe, or one ray from their lanterns, till he came to Taur itself, where everything lay buried in peaceful silence. Only as he came back he discovered what had given rise to the alarm: it was midsummer-tide, and a swarm of little worms of St. John98 was soaring and fluttering over the fields like a troop provided with lanterns. So with a hearty laugh he despatched the townsmen, ready for the fight, back to their beds. And even now this humorous imitation of the Bauernkrieg99 is a by-word for Quixotic enterprises.

Of all the numerous excursions round Hall, the strangest and most interesting is that to Salzberg, the source of the salt, the crystallizing of which and despatching it all over Tirol, to Engadein and to Austria, forms the staple industry of Hall. It is a journey of about three hours, though not much over eight miles, but rugged and steep, and in some parts rather frightful, particularly in the returning descent, for the Salzberg lies 6,300 feet above the sea: but there is a road for an einspanner all the way; entrance is readily obtained, and the gratuities for guide, lighting up, and boat over the subterranean salt lake, exceedingly moderate. There are records extant which shew that there were salt-works in operation in the neighbourhood of Hall early in the eighth century, but these would appear to have been fed by a salt spring which flowed at the foot of the mountain. In the year 1275, however, Niklas von Rohrbach, who seems to be always styled der fromme Ritter (the pious knight), frequently when on his hunting expeditions in the Hallthal, observed how the cattle and wild game loved to lick certain cliffs of the valley; this led him to test the flavour, and finding it rich in salt, he followed up the track till he came to the Salzberg itself, where he prudently conjectured there was an endless supply to be obtained.100 Ever since this time the salt has been worked pretty much in the same way, namely, by hewing, later by blasting, vast chambers in the rock, which are then filled with water and closed up: at the end of some ten or twelve months, when the water is supposed to be thoroughly impregnated, it is run off through a series of conduits to Hall, where it is evaporated, a hundred pounds of brine yielding about a third the weight of salt. A considerable number of these chambers, an acre or two in extent, have been excavated in the course of time, and you are told that it would take more than a week to walk through all the passages connecting them. ‘Cars filled with rubbish pass you as you thread them,’ says an observant writer, ‘with frightful rapidity; you step aside into a niche, and the young miners seated in the front look like gnomes directing infernal chariots. The crystallizations in some of these chambers lighted up by the torches of a party of visitors have a magical effect, and recall the gilded fret-work of some Moorish palaces. There is a tradition that Hofer and Speckbacher, who never, before their illustrious campaigns, had wandered so far as these few miles from their respective homes, took advantage of the lull succeeding their first triumph at Berg Isel, to come over and visit the strange labyrinths of the Salzberg. It is hardly possible to exaggerate the effect which such a scene might produce on minds so imaginative, and at the same time so unsophisticated. It is not difficult to believe that they regarded such a journey like a visit to the abode of the departed great, or that in presence of the oppressive grandeurs of nature they should have matured their spirit for the defence of their country which was to confound the strategy of practised generals.

Returning through the dark forests of pine and the steep cliffs of the Hallthal, otherwise called the Salzthal, you are arrested by the hamlet of Absam, which in your hurry to push forward you overlooked in the morning. Before reaching it you observe to the east, on an eminence rising out of the plain, Schloss Melans, now serving as a villa to a family of Innsbruck. The peasants have a curious story to account for the rudely sculptured dragons which adorn some of the eave-boards of their houses, though no singular mode of ornamentation, and by others accounted for differently.101 They say that in olden time there was a wonderful old hen which laid her first egg when seven years old, and when the egg was hatched a dragon crept out of it,102 which made itself a home in the neighbouring moor, and the people in memory of the prodigy carved its likeness on their houses.

In Absam itself once lived a noble family of the name of Spaur, which had a toad for a bearing on their shield, accounted for in the following way: – ‘A certain Count Spaur had committed a crime by which he had incurred the penalty of death; his kinsmen having put every means in motion to get the sentence remitted, his pardon was at last accorded them on the condition that he should ride to Babylon the Accursed, and bring home with him a monstrous toad which infested the tower. So the knight rode forth to Babylon the Accursed, and when he drew near the tower the monstrous toad came out and seized the bridle of the knight’s horse; the knight, nothing daunted at the horrid apparition, lifted his good sword and hewed the monster to the ground, bringing the corpse back with him as a trophy.’

What audacious tales! Could anyone out of a dream put such ideas together? No writer of fiction, none but one who believed them possible of accomplishment! ‘Who can tell what gives to these simple old stories their irresistible witchery?’ says Max Müller. ‘There is no plot to excite our curiosity, no gorgeous description to dazzle our eyes, no anatomy of human passion to rivet our attention. They are short and quaint, full of downright absurdities and sorry jokes. We know from the beginning how they will end. And yet we sit and read and almost cry, and we certainly chuckle, and are very sorry when

Snip, snip, snout,This tale’s told out.

Do they remind us of a distant home – of a happy childhood? Do they recall fantastic dreams long vanished from our horizon, hopes that have set never to rise again?.. Nor is it dreamland altogether. There is a kind of real life in these tales – life such as a child believes in – a life where good is always rewarded; wrong always punished; where everyone, not excepting the devil, gets his due; where all is possible that we truly want, and nothing seems so wonderful that it might not happen to-morrow. We may smile at those dreams of inexhaustible possibility, but in one sense the child’s world is a real world too.’

A singular event, or curious popular fancy, obtained for Absam the honour of becoming a place of pilgrimage at the end of the last century. It was on January 17, 1797; a peasant’s daughter was looking idly out of window along the way her father would come home from the field; suddenly, in the firelight playing on one of the panes, she discerned a well-defined image of the Blessed Virgin, ‘as plain as ever she had seen a painting.’ Of course the neighbours flocked in to see the sight, and from them the news of the wonderful image spread through all the country round; at last it made so much noise, that the Dean of Innsbruck resolved to investigate the matter. A commission was appointed for this object, among their number being two professors of chemistry, and the painter, Joseph Schöpf. Their verdict was that the image had originally been painted on the glass; that the colours, faded by time, had been restored to the extent then apparent by the action of the particular atmosphere to which they had been exposed. The people could not appreciate their arguments, nor realize that any natural means could have produced so extraordinary a result. For them, it was a miraculous image still, and accordingly they put their faith in it as such; nor was their faith without its fruit. It was a season of terrible trouble, a pestilence was raging both among men and beasts; General Joubert had penetrated as far into the interior as Sterzing; everyone felt the impotence of ‘the arm of flesh’ in presence of such dire calamities. The image on the peasant’s humble window-pane seemed to have come as a token of heavenly favour; nothing would satisfy them but that it should be placed on one of the altars of the church, and the ‘Gnadenmutter103 von Absam’ drew all the fearful and sorrowing to put their trust in Heaven alone. Suddenly after this the enemy withdrew his troops, the pestilence ceased its havoc, and more firmly than ever the villagers believed in the supernatural nature of the image on the window-pane.

Absam has another claim to eminence in its famous violin-maker, Jacob Stainer, born in 1649. He learnt his art in Venice and Cremona, and carried it to such perfection, that his instruments fetched as high prices as those made in Cremona itself. Archduke Ferdinand Karl, Landesfürst of Tirol, attached him to his court. Stainer was so particular about the wood he used, that he always went over to the Gletscher forest clearings to select it, being guided in the choice by the sound it returned when he struck it with a hammer. Towards the end of his life the excitement of the love of his calling overpowered his strength of mind, and the treatment of insanity not being then brought to perfection at Absam, one has yet to go through the melancholy exhibition of the stout oaken bench to which he had to be strapped or chained when violent.104

Mils affords the object of another pleasant excursion from Hall, reached through the North, or so called Mils, gate, in an easy half-hour; around it are the old castles of Grünegg and Schneeburg, the former a hunting-seat of Ferdinand II., now in ruins; the latter well-preserved by the present noble family of the name. Those who have a mind to enjoy a longer walk, may hence also find a way into the peaceful shady haunts of the Gnadenwald. Some two hundred years ago there lived about half way between Hall and Mils a bell-founder, who enjoyed the reputation of being a very worthy upright man, as well as one given to unfeigned hospitality; so that not only the weather-bound traveller, but every wayfarer who loved an hour’s pleasant chat, knocked, as he passed by, at the door of the Glockenhof. Among all the visitors who thus sat at his board, none were so jovial as a party of wild fellows, whose business he was never well able to make out. They always brought their own meat and drink with them, and it was always of the best; and money seemed to them a matter of no account, so abundant was it. At last he ventured one day to inquire whence they acquired their seemingly boundless wealth. ‘Nothing easier, and you may be as rich as we, if you will!’ was the answer; and then they detailed their exploits, which proved them knights of the road. Opportunity makes the thief. The proverb was realized to the letter; the Glockengiesser had been honest hitherto, because he had never been tempted before; now the glittering prize was exposed to him, he knew not how to resist. His character for hospitality made the Glockenhof serve as a very trap. The facility increased his greed, and his cellars were filled with spoil and with the skeletons of the spoiled. Travellers thus disappeared so frequently that consternation was raised again and again, but who could ever suspect the worthy hearty Glockengiesser! Though the new trade throve so well, there was one quality necessary to its success in which the Glockengiesser was wanting, and that was caution. Just as if there had been nothing to hide, he let a party of sewing-women come one day from the village to set his household goods in order; and when they retired to rest at night, one of them, who could not sleep in a strange house, heard the master and his gang counting their money in the cellar. Astonished, she crept nearer, and over-heard their talk. ‘We should not have killed that fellow,’ said one; ‘he wasn’t worth powder and shot.’ ‘Pooh!’ replied another, ‘you can’t expect to have good luck out of every murder. Why, how often a cattle-dealer kills a beast and doesn’t turn a penny out of it.’ The seamstress did not want to hear any more; she laid her charge at the town-hall of Hall next morning; the officers of justice arrested the bell-founder and his associates, and ample proofs of their guilt were found on the premises. Sentenced to death, in the solitude of his cell, he yielded to the full force of the reproaches of his conscience; he made no defence, but hailed his execution as a satisfaction of which his penitent soul acknowledged the justice. However, he craved two favours before his end; the one, to be allowed to go home and found a bell for the lieb’ Frau Kirche in Mils; the second, that this bell might be sounded for the first time at his execution, which by local custom must be on a Friday evening at nine o’clock.105 Both requests were granted, and his bell continued to serve the church of Mils till the fire of August 1791.

Another walk from Hall is the Loreto-Kirche, intended as an exact copy of ‘the Holy House,’ by Archduke Ferdinand and his wife, the pious Anna Katharina of Gonzaga, who endowed it with a foundation for perpetual Masses for the repose of the souls of the reigning House of Austria; it was at one time a much visited pilgrimage, so that though it had three chaplains attached to it, monks from Hall had often to be sent for to supplement their ministrations. Ferdinand and Anna often made the pilgrimage on foot from Innsbruck, saying the ‘stations’ as they went, at certain little chapels which marked them by the way, and of which remains are still standing. It would be an interesting spot to trace out: I regret that we neglected to do so, and I do not know whether it is now well kept up.

Starting again by the North gate of Hall, and taking the way which runs in the opposite direction from that leading to Mils, you come, after half an hour’s walk through the pleasant meadows, to Heiligen Kreuz; its name was originally Gumpass, but it had its present name from the circumstance of a cross having been carried down stream by the Inn, and recovered from its waters by some peasants from this place, by whom it was set up here. So great is the popular veneration for any even apparent act of homage of Nature to ‘Nature’s God,’ that great crowds congregated to see the cross which had been brought to them by the river; and it was found necessary in the seventeenth century to erect the spot into a distinct parish. Heiligen Kreuz is much resorted to for its sulphur baths, also by people from Hall as a pleasing change from their smoky town, on holidays.

Striking out towards the mountains, another half-hour brings you to Taur, a charming little village, standing in the shelter of the Taureralpe. Almost close above it is the Thürl, a peak covered to a considerable height with rich pasture; at its summit, a height of 6,546 ft., is a wooden pyramid recording that it was climbed by the Emperor Francis I., and called the Kaisersäule. There are many legends of S. Romedius connected with Taur, one of which is worth citing, in illustration of the confidence of the age which conceived or adapted it, in the efficacy of faith and obedience. S. Romedius was a rich Bavarian, who in the fourth century owned considerable property in the Innthal, including Taur. On his return from a pilgrimage to Rome, he put himself at the disposal of S. Vigilius, the apostle of South Tirol, who despatched him to the conversion of the Nonsthal, where he lived and died in the odour of sanctity. He was not unmindful of his own Taur, but frequently visited it to pour out his spiritual benedictions. He was once there on such a visit, when he received a call from S. Vigilius. Regardless of his age and infirmities, he immediately prepared for the journey over the mountains to Trent. His nag, old and worn out like his master, he had left to graze on the pastures at the foot of the Taureralpe, so he called his disciple David, and bid him bring him in and saddle him. Great was the consternation of the disciple on making the discovery that the horse had been devoured by a bear. Saddened and cast down, he came to his master with the news. Nothing daunted, S. Romedius bid him go back and saddle the bear in its stead. The neophyte durst not gainsay his master, but went out trusting in his word; the bear meekly submitted to the bidding of the holy man, who bestrode him, and rode on this singular mount into Trent. It is only a fitting sequel that the legend adds, that at his approach all the bells of Trent rang out a gladsome peal of welcome, without being moved by human hands.

The lords of Taur gave the name to the place by setting up their castle on the ruins of an old Roman tower (turris; altromanisch, tour). S. Romedius is not the only hero from among them; the chronicles of their race are full of the most romantic achievements; perhaps not the least of these was the construction of the fortress, the rambling ruins of which still attest its former greatness. Overhanging the bank of the Wildbach is the chapel of S. Romedius, inhabited by a hermit as lately as the seventeenth century, though the country-people are apt to confuse him with S. Romedius himself!106 One dark night, as he was watching in prayer, he heard the sound of tapping against his cell window. Used to the exercise of hospitality, he immediately opened to the presumed wayfarer: great was his astonishment to see standing before him the spirit of the lately deceased parish priest, who had been his very good friend. ‘Have compassion on me, Frater Joshue!’ he exclaimed; ‘for when in the flesh I forgot to say three Masses, for which the stipend had been duly provided and received by me, and now my penance is fearful;’ as he spoke he laid his hand upon a wooden tile of the hermit’s lowly porch, who afterwards found that the impression of his burning hand was branded into the wood. ‘Now do you, my friend, say these Masses in my stead; pray and fast for me, and help me through this dreadful pain.’ The hermit promised all he wished, and kept his promise; and when a year and a day had passed, the spirit tapped again at the window, and told him he had gained his release. The tile, with the brand-mark on it, may be seen hanging in the chapel, with an inscription under it attesting the above facts, and bearing date 7th February, 1660.107

At a very short distance further is another interesting little village, Rum by name. It is situated close under the mountains, the soil of which is very friable. A terrible landslip occurred in 1770; the noise was heard as far as Innsbruck, where it was attributed to an earthquake. Whole fields were covered with the débris, some of which were said to be carried to a distance of a mile and a half; the village just escaped destruction, only an outlying smithy, which was buried, showed how near the danger had come. If time presses, this excursion may be combined with the last, and the Loreto-Kirche taken on the way back to Hall.

CHAPTER VI.

NORTH TIROL – UNTERINNTHAL (RIGHT INN-BANK).

SCHWATZ

The world is full of poetry unwrit;

Dew-woven nets that virgin hearts enthrall,

Darts of glad thought through infant brains that flit,

Hope and pursuit, loved bounds and fancies free —

Poor were our earth of these bereft…

Aubrey de Vere.

It is time now to return to speak of Schwatz, of which we caught a glimpse across the river as we left Viecht;108 and it is one of the most interesting towns, and centres of excursions, in Tirol. It was a morning of bright promise which first brought us there by the early hour of 8.15. To achieve this we had had to rise betimes; it was near the end of August, when the mid-day sun is overpowering; yet the early mornings were very cool, and the brisk breezes came charged with a memory of snow from the beautiful chains of mountains whose base we were hugging. The railway station, as if it dared not with its modern innovation invade the rural retreat of primitive institutions, was at a considerable distance from the village, and we had a walk of some fifteen or twenty minutes before we came within reach of even a chance of breakfast.