Once the men of Glarus suddenly came over the border, and noiselessly surrounding a large pasture, drove away all the cows, after tumbling the herdsmen head first into the great kettles of boiling milk where they were busy making cheese. Only one of these men managed to escape death by hiding in the hay. As soon as the raiders vanished, he determined to sound the alarm. Taking his horn, he therefore climbed up into a pine-tree, just above the great Flimser Rock, and calling through this instrument with all his might, told his beloved Trubina, who dwelt on another alp, of the misfortune which had occurred. The strain was such, however, that the unhappy youth burst a blood-vessel, and sank dying from the top of the tree. His life blood ran in a thin stream over the great rock, where it made an indelible red streak, which can still be seen, and which serves to remind people of his heroic deed.
The timely warning he had given enabled Trubina to start a party of Grisons herdsmen after the cattle, which they followed down the mountain to the village of Flims. By careful reconnoitring, they soon ascertained that the cows had been turned into an enclosed orchard, just beside the inn where the raiders were celebrating their capture in the most convivial way.
Stealing unseen into this orchard, the Grisons men slyly fastened all the cow-bells to one steer, which they left in the enclosure, while they noiselessly drove all the rest of the herd home. The revellers, hearing the constant tinkle of cow-bells, deemed their prizes quite safe, and were therefore greatly surprised and chagrined, when after their carousal they found only one bull calf in the enclosure, and saw how cleverly they had been duped.
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On the frontier between Glarus and Uri, and not far from the Klausen Pass, where the great Boundary Race took place, rises a majestic glacier known as the Claridenalp. The people around there claim that this mountain was once fine pasture-land up to the very top, where a small ice-cap served to feed the many streams trickling down through the rich alps into the valley.
Most of the grazing on the Claridenalp once belonged to a young herdsman, who, although he revelled in plenty, cruelly let his old parents starve in the valley below him. This young man was, however, lavish enough when it suited him to be so, for he daily sent rich presents to his sweetheart, who, on the whole, was as selfish and heartless as he.
Finding separation from her unendurable, the young herdsman finally begged her to come up and spend the summer with him in his fine châlet, and receiving a favourable answer, immediately began elaborate preparations for her reception. His cows were groomed until they shone, and decked with bright ribbons and garlands of flowers; his larder stocked with every dainty he could secure, and lest his beloved should bruise her tender feet against a stone, or soil her dainty apparel in walking near the châlet, he paved the space all around it with fine rich cheeses, thus making a soft and smooth, if rather costly floor.
Meeting his sweetheart part way down the mountain, the herdsman joyfully escorted her to the châlet, where she duly admired all his arrangements, and encouraged his extravagance by throwing butter into the fire to keep up a bright flame. The revelry up in the châlet grew more fast and furious hour after hour, and the lovers feasted and sang, while the poor parents, faint from lack of food, lay shivering on their hard pallets down in the valley.
A burst of loud music floating down from the mountain finally roused the old father from his torpor. Sitting up in bed, he then shook his emaciated fist in the direction of the châlet, and solemnly cursed his unnatural son.
That night, an awful storm swept down the mountain, and when morning broke, the people in the valley saw that the Claridenalp had been transformed overnight into the glacier which you now see. Pasture and cattle, herdsman and sweetheart had all vanished, but the spirits of the lovers are said to haunt the site of their mad revelry.