Similar stories, with trifling variations, are told of many other snow mountains in Switzerland. The Plan Nevé, for instance, is said to have become a waste because a herdsman ill-treated his old mother. But the Blümelisalp, once the possession of a rich dairymaid, who built a staircase of cheeses from valley to châlet so she could more easily trip down to the weekly dances, was transformed into the present glacier, because she cruelly gave an aged beggar a drink of milk in which she maliciously stirred some rennet. The milk, turning suddenly into a hard lump of cheese in the poor woman’s stomach, caused her such intolerable suffering that she cursed the cruel giver.

Since then, the alp, once thickly strewn with the many delicate Alpine flowers which gave it its name, has been almost inaccessible. But countless mortals constantly admire it from a distance, and breathlessly watch it flush at sunset, or glitter in all its icy splendour beneath the silvery rays of the full moon.

* * * * *

Helvetia boasts of many other legends connected with nearly every part of her soil; but as they are mostly repetitions of those already quoted they are purposely omitted here. The samples of Swiss folklore already supplied will enable travellers to gain some idea of the old-time village tales which have cast their glamour over “the playground of Europe.” These crude yet often poetical imaginings lend additional charms to scenery which rises before our mental vision whenever we hear or see the magic word “Switzerland.”

Index

Transcriber’s Notes

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left unbalanced.