THE DRAGON OF ZIRL.
Close to the bridge of Zirl, on the route to Inzing, in the Tyrol, lies the famous Dragon Meadow. The men of Inzing and Zirl remember still very well that when they were boys, an enormous thick long worm was washed by the swollen river Wildbach out of a cavern which stood on its banks, and which was called Hundstall. In this cavern the monster had resided for centuries, and had done endless damage in the surrounding country to both man and beast; he was generally called the dragon, and he killed and devoured all living creatures that ventured in his neighbourhood.
Through the cavern in the summer time flows a little stream which in the winter is almost quite dry, and so it was too at that time; but still it was strong enough to sweep the monster out, for when in the spring the warm weather suddenly arrived, the little stream became, from the melting snow, a roaring torrent, which undermined the rocky cavern of the dragon in the Hundstall, and swept out huge pieces of rock together with the monster himself, inundated the meadow, and left everything together on the spot which has been called ever since the Dragon Meadow. Even now the breach made in the mountain by the torrent is to be seen.
The brute was a gigantic snake with the head of a dragon, two large ears, and hideous fierce fiery eyes. He was half dead when washed out of his hole, but in spite of that he was seen writhing his huge body about among the rocks. Nobody dare approach him, so they shot him from a distance with cannons. “He was a lindworm,” said the old mountaineer Mader of Zirl, who has hunted there for more than sixty years, and who has faithfully preserved this history. And as something to be especially remembered, he added, “the half-dead lindworm had gasped so fearfully that it had been terrifying to see and listen to him, even from a distance.” “One could not tell either,” he said, “whether he was not spitting venom,” for even now not an atom of green will grow on the meadow where he died.
THE WANDERING STONE.
In the Zillerthal, about half an hour’s walk from the little village of Fügen, in a small valley on the right-hand side of the entrance to the vast forest of Benkerwald, lies a piece of rock some two cubic feet in measure, bearing on its top side a rude cross chiselled in the stone. The rock is noted all over the country, for each time it is removed from its resting-place by some supernatural agency, it returns again to the same spot. Why it wanders in this strange manner nobody knows, but why it stands there is known to every little village child in the surrounding country.
At the end of the last century two peasant women of Fügen were engaged by the day in cutting corn at the adjacent farm of Wieseck, on the Pancraz mountain. The farmer, anxious to get in his corn while the fine weather lasted, promised to increase their wages if they hastened on with their work. At this promise both the girls redoubled their efforts, but at the end of the week instead of paying them alike, the farmer in augmentation of their wages gave to one of them two loaves of bread, while to the other he gave but one. On their way home close to Fügen, and on the spot where now lies the stone, the two women began to quarrel about the bread, and at last the dispute grew so hot that they fell to fight with their sickles, and, like tigresses, the sight of blood seemed only to increase their ferocity; and what seems to be incredible, but which is nevertheless perfectly true, they fought until they both fell down and bled to death on the spot. Here they were buried, and over them was placed the stone which still remains there, but none of the villagers will pass that way after nightfall.
There are numberless people who have convinced themselves of the wonderful property of the ‘Wandelstein,’ and many are the warnings given by the country folk to travellers who seek to pass there after the sun has set.