One day, in the common room of a farm belonging to a well-to-do peasant, he made in each of the four corners a different sort of weather at the same moment. In one corner the sun shone, in the second it was dark, and the wind was whistling gloomily; in the third, soft warm rain was falling; and in the fourth, a terrific storm of thunder, lightning, and hail was going on. At another time, he forced fowls, which were on the opposite side of the Eisach valley, to fly over to him and lay eggs at his feet, of which he made a present to the farm-people who had been kind to him.
It was generally believed that his art came from the devil, which, however, has been contradicted by the fact that he tormented and dared the old gentleman far more than any one had ever done before, and it is recounted as perfectly certain that once he forced him to clear a way through a forest, through which it was impossible for even a goat to pass, and with such rapidity that he could ride behind on a fast-galloping horse. Another time he forced his Satanic Majesty to catch an enormous mountain oak, which he pitched down to him from a height of four thousand feet.
Matz-Lauter was also much dreaded as a weather-maker, and often boasted that hating mankind, he took pleasure in harming them; and he confessed that only the ringing of consecrated bells had any control over his power, and if round about there had not been the bells of the chapel of St. Anton, near Feldthurns, those of the church of Laien, the enormous clock of the chapel of Latzfons, and the shrill sounds of the belfry of the chapel of St. Peter, a little pilgrimage about two miles from Latzfons, and a mile or so from his own hut, he would long since have reversed the huge mountain, which stands over the village of Latzfons, and buried in its ruins all who lived on or beneath it.
One day Matz-Lauter was found by some huntsman dead on the mountain, and directly the news spread, every one wanted to climb up and see his body; but it had disappeared, and even now every peasant of the neighbourhood is certain that the devil carried off the body of the sorcerer, after having first claimed his soul.
THE MOUNTAIN GHOST OF THE VIVANNA.
About six miles from Graun, above the Endkopf, in the dominions of the Frauenpleiss, which ancient legends report as the residence of several fairies, lies the Grauner-Alp, which is also called the Vivanna, and which belongs to the parish of Graun. Jacob Wolf, a huntsman of Graun, ordinarily called “Kob,” started one evening, towards the close of the autumn, on a hunting excursion, and climbed up the Vivanna, intending there to pass the night, so that he might be ready to follow the game at an early hour on the following morning. He entered the hut which stands upon the Alp, and after having laid down upon a bundle of dry grass for his night’s rest, he heard the door slowly open, and a little old shrunken woman entered, whose attire was very like that of a Sennin, and who seemed to be quite at home there. She lighted a fire, took cream and flour from a little hole in the wall, and set to work to make cakes. As soon as she had finished them, she called out, “Now we are going to eat, and the one down yonder on the grass must be of the party too.”
The huntsman was quite frightened and dared not move, but as the little woman called out a second time with her shrill voice, which sounded almost like a command, he picked up his courage, and approached the spot where the old hag was standing. But, oh, terror! at that moment, in the midst of a most fearful noise, there all at once entered through the door a whole tribe of spitting, growling, and miauling cats, pigs and bucks, besides every description of other wild beasts.
The huntsman sprang quickly back into his corner, seized his rifle, which he had fortunately charged with a crossed bullet, and fired right into the middle of the devil’s army, which was entirely dispersed in one moment. No more was either to be seen of the old hag, and her cakes stood burning before the fire, and smelling of all sorts of fearful abominations. The huntsman fled from the spot as quickly as ever he could, and rushed down into the valley, giving up all idea of his hunting excursion. But in the morning he found out that, in his hasty retreat, he had left his hunting-sack behind; and so he set off in broad daylight, accompanied by another man, to the scene of his fearful adventure, where they found the sack, with all its contents, bitten and torn to pieces. When recounting this story, Kob always used to say, “The hell company would have served me the same trick, had I not run off as quickly as I did.”