Legends of Switzerland

by H. A. Guerber

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At Wettingen, the building now occupied by the Normal School was once an old abbey founded in 1227 by Henry, Count of Rapperswyl. This nobleman was so good and pious that he spent most of his time in pilgrimages, thereby winning the nickname of The Wanderer. Returning from the Holy Land, he once found himself in imminent danger of perishing in the waves, and fixing his eyes upon a bright star which suddenly shone through a break in the stormy sky, he made a solemn vow to build a monastery at Wettingen should his life be spared.

This prayer was evidently heard, for the storm soon abated and the ship came safely to land. When the Count of Rapperswyl therefore reached home, he founded the abbey, which, in memory of his vow, and of the star he saw at sea, was called Maria Stella, or Meer Stern, the Star of the Sea.

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The handsome old castle of Hallwyl, the ancestral home of a noble Swiss family of the same name, stands on the road between Lucerne and Lenzburg, near the Lake of Hallwyl.

A lord of Hallwyl had three sons, and as the two elder ones died early, the third had to drop his clerical studies and prepare to fulfil his duties as future head of his house. Although this young man duly married and had a fine son, it seems that he never ceased to regret his interrupted priestly career, but, surrounded by monks of all kinds, spent his time in religious practices and in poring over homilies and church records.

None too strong to begin with, these long vigils and fasts so undermined his health, that he finally became dangerously ill. One day, fearing that he was about to die, he vowed he would send his son on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land should he recover. True to this promise, the lord of Hallwyl no sooner left his bed than he recalled his son, who was fighting under Rudolf of Hapsburg, and bade him set out immediately for the Holy Sepulchre. The young man, who thought his services more needed at home, nevertheless prepared to obey, for a vow was a sacred matter and children in those days rarely ventured to question parental orders.

At parting the old lord of Hallwyl broke his ring in two, telling the young man that when death overtook him he would leave his half to his father confessor. The latter would administer the estates carefully, giving them up to none but the man who established his right to them by producing the other half of the broken ring.

It took twenty years for John of Hallwyl to fulfil his father’s vow. During that time the old man died, and the monks took possession of castle and estates. They were so determined not to give them up again, however, that they not only announced the death of young Hallwyl, but turned out of his castle an orphaned relative to whom he had been betrothed in her infancy according to his mother’s wish. Alone and friendless,—for she refused to yield to the monks’ suggestions and enter a convent,—this young girl would have died of want, had not the lord of Müllinen, a friend of her betrothed, offered her a home with his mother and sister in his own castle.

Clémence gratefully accepted this kind proposal, and as she had been a mere babe when John of Hallwyl started out on his perilous journey, she did not prove faithless to him when she unconsciously fell in love with his noble friend.