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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.

My own strong desire to be brought quite within the influence of Tirolean traditions perhaps deadened my sensations of hunger and weariness, but it was not so with all of our party; and it was with some dismay we began to apprehend that the research of the primitive is not to be made without some serious sacrifice of ‘le comfortable.’

Our walk across the fields at last brought us to the rapid smiling river; and crowning the bridge, stood as usual S. John Nepomuk, his patient martyr’s face gazing on the effigy of the crucified Saviour he is always portrayed as bearing so lovingly, seeming so sweetly all-enduring, that no light feeling of discontent could pass him unrestrained. Still the call for breakfast is an urgent one with the early traveller, and there seemed small chance of appeasing it. Near the station indeed had stood a deserted building, with the word ‘Restauration’ just traceable on its mouldy walls, but we had felt no inclination to try our luck within them; and though we had now reached the village, we seemed no nearer a more appetising supply. No one had got out of the train besides ourselves; not a soul appeared by the way. A large house stood prominently on our right, which for a moment raised our hopes, but its too close proximity to a little church forbad us to expect it to be a hostelry, and a scout of our party brought the intelligence that it was a hospital; another building further on, on the left, gave promise again, because painted all over with frescoes, which might be the mode in Schwatz of displaying a hotel-sign; but no, it proved to be a forge, and like the lintels marked by Morgiana’s chalk, all the houses of Schwatz – as indeed most of the houses of Tirol – were found to be covered with sacred frescoes. At last a veritable inn appeared, and right glad we were to enter its lowly portal and find rest, even though the air was scented by the mouldering furniture and neighbouring cattle-shed; though the stiff upright worm-eaten chairs made a discordant grating on the tiled floor, and a mildewed canvas, intended to keep out flies, completed the gloom which the smallness of the single window began.

A repeated knocking at last brought a buxom maid out of the cow-shed, who seemed not a little amazed at our apparition. ‘Had she any coffee! coffee, at that time of day —of course not!’ True, the unpunctuality of the train, the delivery of superfluous luggage to the care of the station-master, and our lingering by the way, had brought us to past nine o’clock – an unprecedented hour for breakfast in Schwatz. ‘Couldn’t we be content with wine? in a couple of hours meat would be ready, as the carters came in to dine then.’ Meat and coffee at the same repast, and either at that hour, were ideas she could not at first take in. Nevertheless, when we detailed our needs, astonishment gave way to compassion, and she consented to drop her incongruous propositions, and to make us happy in our own way. Accordingly, she was soon busied in lighting a fire, running to fetch coffee and rolls – though she did not, as happened to me in Spain, ask us to advance the money for the commission – and very soon appeared with a tray full of tumblers and queer old crockery. The black beverage she at last provided consisted of a decoction of nothing nearer coffee than roasted corn, figs,¹⁰⁹ or acorns; and the rolls had the strangest resemblance to leather; but the milk and eggs were fine samples of dairy produce, for which Schwatz is famous, and these and the luscious fruit made up for the rest.

I remember that the poet-author of one of the most charming books of travel, in one of the most charming countries of Europe,¹¹⁰ deprecates the habit travel-writers have of speaking too much about their fare; and in one sense his remarks are very just. Where this is done without purpose or art, it becomes a bore; but ‘love itself can’t live on flowers;’ and as, however humiliating the fact, it is decreed that the only absolutely necessary business of man’s life is the catering for his daily bread, it becomes interesting to the observant to study the various means by which this decree is complied with by different races, in different localities. It is especially noteworthy that it is just in countries made supercilious by their culture that these matters of a lower order engross the most attention, and just those who consider themselves the most civilized who are the most dependent on what have been termed mere ‘creature comforts.’ These poor country folks, whom the educated traveller often passes by as unworthy of notice in their benighted ignorance and superstition – while they would not forego their salutation of the sacred symbol by the way-side, which marks their intimate appreciation of truths of the highest order – put us to shame, by their indifference to sublunary indulgences. We had come to Tirol to study their ways, and I hope we took our lesson on this occasion, well. We were not feasted with a sumptuous repast, such as might be found in any of the monster hotels, now so contrived, that you may pass through all the larger towns of Europe with such similarity to home-life everywhere, that you might as well never have left your fireside; but we were presented with an experience of the struggle with want; of that hardy face-to-face meeting with the great original law of labour, which our modern artificial life puts so completely out of sight, that it grows to regard it as an antiquated fable, and which can only be met amid such scenes.

The matutinal peasants were packing up their wares – which when spread out had made a picturesque market of the main street – by the time we again sallied forth, and we were nearly losing what is always one of the prettiest sights in a foreign town. At the end rose the parish church, with a stateliness for which the smallness of the village had not prepared us; but Schwatz has a sad and eventful history to account for the disparity.

Schwatz was once a flourishing Roman station, and even now remains are dug out which attest its ancient prosperity; but it had fallen away to the condition of a neglected Häusergruppe by the fourteenth century, when suddenly came the discovery of silver veins in the surrounding heights. A lively bull,¹¹¹ one day tearing up the soil with his horns in a frolic, laid bare a shining vein of ore. The name of Gertraud Kandlerin, the farm-servant who had charge of the herd to which he belonged, and brought the joyful tidings home to Schwatz, has been jealously preserved. From that moment Schwatz grew in importance and prosperity; and at one time there was a population of thirty thousand miners employed in the immediate neighbourhood. The Fuggers and Hochstetters of Augsburg were induced to come and employ their vast resources in working the riches of the mountains; and native families of note, laying aside the pursuit of arms, joined in the productive industry. Among these were the Fiegers, one of whom was the counsellor and intimate friend of the Emperor Maximilian, who followed his remains to their last resting-place, at Schwatz, when he died in ripe old age, leaving fifty-seven children and grandchildren, and money enough to enrich them all. His son Hanns married a daughter of the Bavarian house of Pienzenau; and when he brought her home, tradition says it was in a carriage drawn by four thousand horses. Many names, famous in the subsequent history of the country, such as the Tänzls, Jöchls, Tannenbergs, and Sternbachs, were thus first raised to importance. This outpouring of riches stimulated the people throughout the country to search for mineral treasures, and everywhere the miners of Schwatz were in request as the most expert, both at excavating and engineering. Nor this only within the limits of Tirol; they had acquired such a reputation by the middle of the sixteenth century, that many distant undertakings were committed to them too. They were continually applied to, to direct mining operations in the wars against the Turks in Hungary. Their countermines performed an effective part in driving them from before Vienna in 1529; and again, in 1739, they assisted in destroying the fortifications of Belgrade. Clement VII. called them to search the mountains of the Papal State in 1542; and the Dukes of Florence and Piedmont also had recourse to their assistance about the same time. In the same way, many knotty disputes about mining rights were sent from all parts to be decided by the experience of Schwatz; and its abundance attracted to it every kind of merchandise, and every new invention. One of the earliest printing-presses was in this way set up here.

But a similarity of pursuit had established a community of interest between the miners of Schwatz and their brethren of Saxony; and when the Reformation broke out, its doctrines spread by this means among the miners of Schwatz, and led at one time to a complete revolution among them. Twice they banded together, and marched to attack the capital, with somewhat communistic demands. Ferdinand I., and Sebastian, Bishop of Brixen, went out to meet them on each occasion at Hall, and on each occasion succeeded in allaying the strife by their moderate discourse. Within the town of Schwatz, however, the innovators carried matters with a high hand, and at one time obtained possession of half the parish church, where they set up a Lutheran pulpit. Driven out of this by the rest of the population, they met in a neighbouring wood, where Joham Strauss and Christof Söll, both unfrocked monks, used to hold forth to them.

A Franciscan, Christof von München, now came to Schwatz, to strengthen the faith of the Catholics, and the controversy waged high between the partisans of both sides; so high, that one day two excited disputants carried their quarrels so far before a crowd of admiring supporters, that at last the Lutheran exclaimed, ‘If Preacher Söll does not teach the true doctrine, may Satan take me up into the Steinjoch at Stans!’ and as he spoke, so, says the story, it befell: the astonished people saw him carried through the air and disappear from sight! The credit of the Lutherans fell very sensibly on the instant, and still more some days after, when the adventurous victim came back lame and bruised, and himself but too well convinced of his error.

Nevertheless the strife was not cured. Somewhat later, there was an inroad of Anabaptists, under whose auspices another insurrection arose, and for the time the flourishing mining works were brought to a stand-still. At last the Government was obliged to interfere. The most noisy and perverse were made to leave the country, and the Jesuits from Hall were sent over to hold a mission, and rekindle the Catholic teaching. Peace and order were restored: four thousand persons were brought back to the frequentation of the sacraments; but the Bergsegen,¹¹² add the traditions, which had been the occasion of so much disunion, was never recovered. From that time forth the mining treasures of Schwatz began to fail; and after a long and steadily continued diminution of produce, silver ceased altogether to be found. Copper, and the best iron of Tirol, are still got out, and their working constitutes one of the chief industries of the place; the copper produced is particularly fit for wire-drawing, for which there is an establishment here. Another industry of Schwatz is a government cigar manufactory,¹¹³ which employs between four and five hundred hands, chiefly women and children, who get very poorly paid – ten or twelve francs a-week, working from five in the morning till six in the evening, with two hours’ interval in the middle of the day. There are pottery works, which also employ many hands; and many of the women occupy themselves in knitting woollen clothing for the miners. The pastures of the neighbourhood are likewise a source of rich in-comings to the town; but with all these industries together, Schwatz is far below the level of its early prosperity. Instead of its former crowded buildings, it now consists almost entirely of one street; and instead of being the cynosure of foreigners from all parts, is so little visited, that the people came to the windows to look at the unusual sight of a party of strangers as we passed by. In place of its early printing-press, its literary requirements are supplied by one little humble shop, where twine, toys, and traps, form the staple, and stationery and a small number of books are sold over and above; and where, because we spent a couple of francs, the master thereof seemed to think he had driven for that one day a roaring trade.

Other misfortunes, besides the declension of its ‘Bergsegen,’ have broken over Schwatz. In 1611 it was visited by the plague, in 1670 by an earthquake; but its worst disaster was in the campaign of 1809, when the Bavarians, under the Duke of Dantzic, and the French, under Deroi, determined to strike terror into the hearts of the country-people by burning down the town. The most incredible cruelties are reported to have been perpetrated on this occasion, many being such as one cannot bear to repeat; so determined was their fury, that when the still air refused to fan the flames, they again and again set fire to the place at different points; and the people were shot down when they attempted to put out the conflagration. General Wiede was quartered in the palace of Count Tannenberg, a blind old man, with four blind children; his misfortunes, and the laws of hospitality, might have protected him at least from participation in the general calamity; but no, not even the hall where the hospitable board was spread in confidence for the unscrupulous guest, was spared. Once and again, as the inimical hordes poured into, or were driven out of, Tirol, Schwatz had to bear the brunt of their devastations, so that there is little left to show what Schwatz was. The stately parish church, however, suffered less than might have been expected: in the height of the conflagration, when all was noise and excitement, a young Bavarian officer, over whom sweet home lessons of piety exercised a stronger charm than the wild instincts of the military career which were effecting such havoc around, collected a handful of trusty followers, and, unobserved by the general herd, succeeded in rescuing it before great damage had been done.