Not many years ago a very rough mountain lane led from Tarenz to Imst, which was called the G’stoag; the post-road now runs over this spot, and still bears the same name.
The tailor, Anton Gurschler, of Strad, once returned home from Grieseck, near Tarenz, where he had been to visit his sweetheart. It was getting on for the ghost hour, and as he arrived near the smith’s shop, called Hoada-Schmiede, near G’stoag, he ran up against a little chapel, which is consecrated to the holy Vitus, and, having hurt himself in the violence of the shock, he was very angry, and began to swear, for he wanted to know who had pushed him so savagely. At that moment a carriage with lights drove up, and in it were sitting some women, whom the tailor immediately recognized perfectly well. They stopped the carriage, alighted, and offered to dance with him, and turned him round and round, without his being able to resist them. Then, as they released him, one of them whispered in his ear, “If you say one word about this, you had better look out for yourself;” and then they drove off like a flash of lightning. The tailor was stupefied with amazement, and, in his anger, he recounted to his friends at home all that had befallen him, in which, however, he did very wrong, for he grew thin and ill, and went out at last like the spark of a candle.
To another man, a shoemaker of Tarenz, whose name was Jennewein Lambach, happened the following circumstance:—He was on his way to the castle of Starkenberg, close by his village, and on passing by the church, he neither stopped a moment, nor crossed himself, as it is the custom in the country to do. It was yet dark, for the shoemaker had got up earlier than he was aware of; all at once he heard the sounds of magnificent music, to which he listened for a long time with delighted ears, and then, to his astonishment, he heard the church clock strike midnight. He shuddered with fright, for he knew that something must be wrong, and hurried on as fast as his legs would carry him to Starkenberg, where he was engaged to work; but as there he could find no peace of mind, on account of his strange accident, he returned home again in the afternoon. While he was sitting drinking a glass of wine with the innkeeper Marrand, of Tarenz, a woman of the village entered the room, and said to him mockingly, “The music last night must have pleased you very much, for you listened like a stupid.” The shoemaker was struck dumb and could not reply, for it came to his mind that what he had heard in the preceding night had been hags’ music, and that that very same woman had been amongst the number of the witches. From that time he shunned the creature as much as possible, but never told any one what had happened to him on that eventful evening. He then bought himself an alarm clock, which he set up close to his bed, so that he never went again too early to his work, and thus by his silence he no doubt escaped the dreadful fate of the poor tailor.
THE HEXELER.
In the village of Hall, in the valley of the Inn, close to Innsbruck, lived a man who was a peasant doctor, cattle doctor, and fisherman, in one person; he was also a noted witch-finder, and, as such, held in terrible dread by all those who had “red eyes.” His name was Kolb, but he was generally called the “Hexeler” (hag hunter), or “Hexenkolb.”
One day Kolb was engaged fishing in the lake, called Achenthaler-See, when suddenly thunderclouds as black as ink collected over his head, and on a sign which he made with his hand, a weather hag fell down into the water. The hag seized the side of Kolb’s little boat, who, however, beat the rudder down upon her hands, with the intention of drowning her, but she implored him to save her, promising that she would renounce her witchcraft. “As to me,” said Kolb, “I will save you if you will give up your wicked trade; but you must hand over to me your sorcery book, so that I shall know all your hellish artifices, and be able to discover their antidotes.” After a long dispute, during which the hag was nearly drowned, she gave him a book, in which her most secret charms were written down.
After that incident, Kolb became one of the first “Wonder Doctors” in the Tyrol. When he was asked to cure somebody, the sufferer was compelled to come to him during the night, and it was only on special occasions that he consented to visit the house of the sick. When he was called to the assistance of a bewitched person, he made exactly at midnight the smoke of five different sorts of herbs, and, while they were burning, the bewitched was gently beaten with a martyr-thorn birch, which had also to be cut during the same night, and through which means, at each stripe that was given, the hag who had bewitched the person received the most terrible blow, so that the blood flowed at each stroke. Kolb went on beating in this way, until the hag appeared and took off the charm. But, during the operation, no one was allowed to speak, and the necromancer alone treated with the witch. If any one had spoken but one word, the Hexeler’s power would have gone for that night, and all his work would have been useless.