it does boast of being in the shape in which it is fashioned, the heart of Europe – is sung of in popular Sage as the result of some poetically conceived agency; humdrum physical forces transformed by the wand of imagination into personal beings; now bountiful, now retributive; now loving; now terrible; but nearly always rational and just.
To the use of those who care to find such gleams of poetry thrown athwart Nature’s work the following pages are dedicated. The traditions they record do not claim to have been all gathered at first hand from the stocks on which they were grown or grafted. A life, or several lives, would hardly have sufficed for the work. In Germany, unlike Italy, myths have called into being a whole race of collectors, and Tirol has an abundant share of them among her offspring. Not only have able and diligent sons devoted themselves professionally to the preservation of her traditions, but every valley nurtures appreciative minds to whom it is a delight to store them in silence, and who willingly discuss such lore with the traveller who has a taste for it.
That a foreigner should attempt to add another to these very full, if not exhaustive collections, would seem an impertinent labour of supererogation. My work, therefore, has been to collate and arrange those traditions which have been given me, or which I have found ready heaped up; to select from the exuberant mass those which, for one reason or another, appeared to possess the most considerable interest; and to localise them in such a way as to facilitate their study both by myself and others along the wayside; not neglecting, however, any opportunity that has come in my way of conversing about them with the people themselves, and so meeting them again, living, as it were, in their respective homes. This task, as far as I know, has not been performed by any native writer.3
The names of the collectors I have followed are, to all who know the country, the best possible guarantee of the authenticity of what they advance; and I subjoin here a list of the chief works I have either studied myself or referred to, through the medium of kind helpers in Tirol, so as not to weary the reader as well as myself with references in every chapter: —
Von Alpenburg: Mythen und Sagen Tirols.
Brandis: Ehrenkränzel Tirols.
H. J. von Collin: Kaiser Max auf der Martinswand: ein Gedicht.
Das Drama des Mittelalters in Tirol. A. Pickler.
Hormayr: Taschenbuch für die Vaterländische Geschichte.
Meyer: Sagenkränzlein aus Tirol.
Nork: Die Mythologie der Volkssagen und Volksmärchen.
Die Oswaldlegende und ihre Beziehung auf Deutscher Mythologie.
Oswald v. Wolkenstein: Gedichte. Reprint, with introduction by Weber.
Perini: I Castelli del Tirolo.
Der Pilger durch Tirol; geschichtliche und topographische Beschreibung der Wallfahrtsorte u. Gnadenbilder in Tirol u. Vorarlberg.
A. Pickler: Frühlieder aus Tirol.
Scherer: Geographie und Geschichte von Tirol.
Simrock: Legenden.
Schneller: Märchen und Sagen aus Wälsch-Tirol.
Stafler: Das Deutsche Tirol und Vorarlberg.
Die Sage von Kaiser Max auf der Martinswand.
J. Thaler: Geschichte Tirols von der Urzeit.
Der Untersberg bei Salzburg, dessen geheimnissvolle Sagen der Vorzeit, nebst Beschreibung dieses Wunderberges.
Vonbun: Sagen Vorarlbergs.
Weber: Das Land Tirol. Drei Bänder.
Zingerle: König Laurin, oder der Rosengarten in Tirol. Die Sagen von Margaretha der Maultasche. Sagen, Märchen u. Gebräuche aus Tirol. Der berühmte Landwirth Andreas Hofer.
I hope my little maps will convey a sufficient notion of the divisions of Tirol, the position of its valleys and of the routes through them tracked in the following pages. I have been desirous to crowd them as little as possible, and to indicate as far as may be, by the size and direction of the words, the direction and the relative importance of the valleys.
Of its four divisions the present volume is concerned with the first (Vorarlberg), the fourth (Wälsch-Tirol), and with the greater part of the valleys of the second (Nord or Deutsch-Tirol.) In the remoter recesses of them all some strange and peculiar dialects linger, which perhaps hold a mine in store for the philologist. Yet, though the belief was expressed more than thirty years ago4 that they might serve as a key to the Etruscan language, I believe no one has since been at the pains to pursue this most interesting research. In the hope of inducing some one to enter this field of enquiry, I will subjoin a list of some few expressions which do not carry on their face a striking resemblance to either of the main languages of the country, leaving to the better-informed to make out whence they come. The two main languages (and these will suffice the ordinary traveller for all practical purposes), are German in Vorarlberg and North Tirol, Italian in Wälsch-Tirol, mixed with occasional patches of German; and in South-Tirol with a considerable preponderance of these patches. A tendency to bring about the absorption of the Italian-speaking valleys into Italy has been much stimulated in modern times, and in the various troubled epochs of the last five-and-twenty years Garibaldian attacks have been made upon the frontier line. The population was found stedfast in its loyalty to Austria, however, and all these attempts were repulsed by the native sharp-shooters, with little assistance from the regular troops. An active club and newspaper propagandism is still going on, promoted by those who would obliterate Austria from the map of Europe. For them, there exists only German-Tirol and the Trentino. And the Trentino is now frequently spoken of as a province bordering on, instead of as in reality, a division of, Tirol.
Although German is generally spoken throughout Vorarlberg, there is a mixture of Italian expressions in the language of the people, which does not occur at all in North-Tirol: as fazanedle, for a handkerchief (Ital. fazzoletto.)
gaude, gladness (Ital. gaudio.)
guttera, a bottle (Ital. gutto a cruet.)
gespusa, a bride (Ital. sposa).
gouter, a counterpane (Ital. coltre).
schapel, the hat (peculiar to local costume), (Ital. cappello, a hat).
The k in many German words is here written with ch; and no doubt such names as the Walgau, Walserthal, &c., commemorate periods of Venetian rule.
Now for some of the more ‘outlandish’ words: —
baschga’ (the final n, en, rn, &c. of the German form of the infinitive is usually clipped by the Vorarlbergers, even in German words, just as the Italians constantly clip the final letters of their infinitive, as anda’ and andar’ for andare, to walk, &c.) to overcome.
batta’, to serve.
pütze’ or buetza’, to sew or to piece.
häss, clothing.
res, speech.
tobel, a ravine.
feel, a girl; spudel, an
I published much of the matter of the following pages in the first instance in the
See Steub ‘Über die Urbewohner Rätiens und ihren Zusammenhang mit den Etruskern. Münich, 1843,’ quoted in Dennis’
