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

227

My readers will perhaps not recognize at first sight that this is a corruption of Frau Bertha, the Perchtl whom we met in North Tirol. In the Italian dialects of the Trentino she is also called la brava Berta and la donna Berta.

228

‘Your servant! Mistress Bertha of the long nose.’ Such was supposed to be the correct form of addressing the sprite.

229

Many of these concern the earthly wanderings of Christ and his apostles. I have given one of the most sprightly and characteristic of Schneller’s, too long to be inserted here, in The Month for September, 1870, entitled ‘The Lettuce-leaf Barque.’

230

Gathered for the above-named collection by Herr Zacchea of the Fassathal, in the Val di Non, Lederthal, and Val Arsa.

231

I have mentioned the only other wolf-stories that I have met with in the chapter on Excursions round Meran; and at p. 31 of this volume.

232

Cox’s Aryan Mythology, vol. i. p. 405.

233

I have thought this one of the best specimen tales, as the two stories of the Three Wishes and the Three Faithful Beasts are leading ones in every popular mythology. I have named a good many variants in connexion with their counterparts in the Folklore of Rome, and a more extensive survey of them, together with a most interesting analysis of their probable origin, will be found in Cox’s Mythology of Aryan Nations, vol. i. pp. 144 and 375. I had thought that these, being strung together in the text version, was owing to a freak of memory of some narrator who, having forgotten the original conclusion of the former story, takes the latter one into it; but, curiously enough, in the note to the last-named page of Mr. Cox’s work, he happens actually to establish an intrinsic identity of origin in the two stories. The Three Wishes story has also a strangely localized home in the Oetzthal, which, though properly belonging to the division of North Tirol, I prefer to cite here, for the sake of its analogies. Its particular home is in the so-called Thal Vent, on the frozen borders of the Gletscher described by Weber, as appalling to a degree in its loneliness, and in the roaring of its torrents, and the stern rugged inaccessibility of its peaks. Here, he says, three Selige Fräulein (Weber, like Schneller, translates everything inexorably into German; this may have been an Enguana) have their abode in a sumptuous subterranean palace, which no mortal might reach. They are also called die drei Feyen, he says, forming a further identification with the normal legend, but he does not account for the penetration of the French word into this unfrequented locality. They were kind and ancillary to the poor mountain folk, but the dire enemies of the huntsman, for he hunted as game the creatures who were their domestic animals (here we have the nucleus of a heap of various tales and legends of the pet creatures of fairies and hermits becoming the intermediaries of supernatural communication). The Thal Vent legend proceeds that a young shepherd once won the regard of the drei Feyen; they fulfilled all his wishes, and gave him constant access to their palace under the sole condition that he should never reveal its locality to any huntsman. After some years the youth one day incautiously let out the secret to his father, and from thenceforth the drei Feyen were inexorable in excluding him from their society. He pleaded and pleaded all in vain, and ultimately made himself a huntsman in desperation. But the first time he took aim at one of their chamois, the most beautiful of the three fairies appeared to him in so brilliant a light of glory, that he lost all consciousness of his actual situation and fell headlong down the precipice.

234

They are called ‘Lustige Geschichte,’ ‘Storielle da rider.’ The Germans have a saying that ‘in jeder Sage haftet eine Sache;’ the ‘Sache’ is perhaps more hidden in these than in others. I have pointed out counterparts of the following at Rome and elsewhere in Folklore of Rome.

235

Capitello, in Wälsch-Tirol, is the same as Bildstöcklein in the German provinces – a sacred image in a little shrine.

236

Bears exist to the present day in Tirol. Seven were killed last year. A prize of from five-and-twenty to fifty florins is given for killing one by various communes.

237

A distinct remnant of Etruscan custom. It is singular, too, that Mr. I. Taylor finds ‘faba’ to have been taken by the Romans from the Etruscans for a bean, but though the custom of connecting beans with the celebration of the departed is common all over Italy, I do not think the Etruscans provided their dead with beans except along with all other kinds of food (supra p. 130–1 note).

238

The little book of Costumi spoken of above, mentions the ‘Zocco del Natale’ as in use also in Lunigiana; it is generally of olive-tree, and household auguries are drawn from the crackling of leaves and unripe berries. It cites a letter of a certain Giovanni da Molta, dated 1388, showing that the custom has not undergone much change in five hundred years.

239

Two travellers, two prosperous ones, and a cardinal? —Answer. Sun and moon; earth and heaven; and the ocean.

240

There is a meadow overblown with carnations, yet if the Pope came with all his court, not one sole carnation would he be able to carry off? —Answer. The heaven beaming with stars.

241

Plate upon plate; a man fully armed; a lady well dressed; a stud well appointed? —Answer. Heaven and earth; the sun; the moon; the stars.

242

There is a palace with twelve rooms; each room has thirty beams, and two are ever running after each other through them without ever catching each other? —Answer. The palace is the year, the rooms the months, the beams the days, and day and night are always following each other without overlapping.