LEGEND OF THE BLUMISALPE.
There was a time when around this mountain, now covered with perpetual snow, swarms of bees produced aromatic honey; fine cows, pasturing the entire year in the green fields, filled the dairy-women’s pails with rich milk; and the farmer by trifling labor obtained abundant harvests. But the inhabitants of this fertile country, blinded by the splendor of their fortune, became proud and haughty. They were intoxicated with the charms of wealth; they forgot that there are duties attached to the possession of wealth—the duties of hospitality and of charity. Instead of using their treasures judiciously, they employed them solely in ministering to a more luxurious idleness, and in a continual succession of festivities. They closed their ears to the supplications of the unfortunate, and sent the poor from their doors; and God punished them.
One of these proud, rich men built on the verdant slopes of the Blumisalpe a superb château, intending to reside there, surrounded by his unworthy associates. Every morning their baths were filled with the purest milk.
The terraced steps of the gardens were made, according to the legend, of finely-cut blocks of excellent cheese. This Sardanapalus of the mountains had inherited all his father’s vast domains, and, whilst he revelled in this manner in his rich possessions, his old mother was living in want in the seclusion of the valley. One day the poor old woman, suffering from cold and hunger, supplicated his compassion. She told him that she was living alone in her cabin, unable to work; indigent, without assistance; infirm, without support. She begged him to grant her the fragments of his feast, a refuge in his stables; but, deaf to her entreaties, he ordered her to leave. She showed him her cheeks, wrinkled by grief more than by age; her emaciated arms, that had carried him in his infancy; he threatened to command his attendants to drive her away.
The poor woman returned to her cabin, overwhelmed with grief by this cruel outrage. She tottered through his beautiful grounds with bowed head, and sighs that she could not restrain burst from her oppressed heart, and bitter tears streamed from her eyes. God counted the mother’s tears.
She had scarcely arrived at her hut when the avenging storm came.
The château of the ignominious son was struck by lightning, his treasures were consumed by the flames, from which he himself did not escape, and his companions perished with him.
Those fields, that once yielded so abundantly, are now covered with a mass of snow that never melts. On the spot where his mother vainly implored his compassion, the rent earth has opened a frightful abyss; and where her tears then flowed now, drop by drop, fall the tears of the eternal glaciers.