Snip, snip, snout,
This tale’s told out.
Do they remind us of a distant home—of a happy childhood? Do they recall fantastic dreams long vanished from our horizon, hopes that have set never to rise again?... Nor is it dreamland altogether. There is a kind of real life in these tales—life such as a child believes in—a life where good is always rewarded; wrong always punished; where everyone, not excepting the devil, gets his due; where all is possible that we truly want, and nothing seems so wonderful that it might not happen to-morrow. We may smile at those dreams of inexhaustible possibility, but in one sense the child’s world is a real world too.’
A singular event, or curious popular fancy, obtained for Absam the honour of becoming a place of pilgrimage at the end of the last century. It was on January 17, 1797; a peasant’s daughter was looking idly out of window along the way her father would come home from the field; suddenly, in the firelight playing on one of the panes, she discerned a well-defined image of the Blessed Virgin, ‘as plain as ever she had seen a painting.’ Of course the neighbours flocked in to see the sight, and from them the news of the wonderful image spread through all the country round; at last it made so much noise, that the Dean of Innsbruck resolved to investigate the matter. A commission was appointed for this object, among their number being two professors of chemistry, and the painter, Joseph Schöpf. Their verdict was that the image had originally been painted on the glass; that the colours, faded by time, had been restored to the extent then apparent by the action of the particular atmosphere to which they had been exposed. The people could not appreciate their arguments, nor realize that any natural means could have produced so extraordinary a result. For them, it was a miraculous image still, and accordingly they put their faith in it as such; nor was their faith without its fruit. It was a season of terrible trouble, a pestilence was raging both among men and beasts; General Joubert had penetrated as far into the interior as Sterzing; everyone felt the impotence of ‘the arm of flesh’ in presence of such dire calamities. The image on the peasant’s humble window-pane seemed to have come as a token of heavenly favour; nothing would satisfy them but that it should be placed on one of the altars of the church, and the ‘Gnadenmutter[22] von Absam’ drew all the fearful and sorrowing to put their trust in Heaven alone. Suddenly after this the enemy withdrew his troops, the pestilence ceased its havoc, and more firmly than ever the villagers believed in the supernatural nature of the image on the window-pane.
Absam has another claim to eminence in its famous violin-maker, Jacob Stainer, born in 1649. He learnt his art in Venice and Cremona, and carried it to such perfection, that his instruments fetched as high prices as those made in Cremona itself. Archduke Ferdinand Karl, Landesfürst of Tirol, attached him to his court. Stainer was so particular about the wood he used, that he always went over to the Gletscher forest clearings to select it, being guided in the choice by the sound it returned when he struck it with a hammer. Towards the end of his life the excitement of the love of his calling overpowered his strength of mind, and the treatment of insanity not being then brought to perfection at Absam, one has yet to go through the melancholy exhibition of the stout oaken bench to which he had to be strapped or chained when violent.[23]
Mils affords the object of another pleasant excursion from Hall, reached through the North, or so called Mils, gate, in an easy half-hour; around it are the old castles of Grünegg and Schneeburg, the former a hunting-seat of Ferdinand II., now in ruins; the latter well-preserved by the present noble family of the name. Those who have a mind to enjoy a longer walk, may hence also find a way into the peaceful shady haunts of the Gnadenwald. Some two hundred years ago there lived about half way between Hall and Mils a bell-founder, who enjoyed the reputation of being a very worthy upright man, as well as one given to unfeigned hospitality; so that not only the weather-bound traveller, but every wayfarer who loved an hour’s pleasant chat, knocked, as he passed by, at the door of the Glockenhof. Among all the visitors who thus sat at his board, none were so jovial as a party of wild fellows, whose business he was never well able to make out. They always brought their own meat and drink with them, and it was always of the best; and money seemed to them a matter of no account, so abundant was it. At last he ventured one day to inquire whence they acquired their seemingly boundless wealth. ‘Nothing easier, and you may be as rich as we, if you will!’ was the answer; and then they detailed their exploits, which proved them knights of the road. Opportunity makes the thief. The proverb was realized to the letter; the Glockengiesser had been honest hitherto, because he had never been tempted before; now the glittering prize was exposed to him, he knew not how to resist. His character for hospitality made the Glockenhof serve as a very trap. The facility increased his greed, and his cellars were filled with spoil and with the skeletons of the spoiled. Travellers thus disappeared so frequently that consternation was raised again and again, but who could ever suspect the worthy hearty Glockengiesser! Though the new trade throve so well, there was one quality necessary to its success in which the Glockengiesser was wanting, and that was caution. Just as if there had been nothing to hide, he let a party of sewing-women come one day from the village to set his household goods in order; and when they retired to rest at night, one of them, who could not sleep in a strange house, heard the master and his gang counting their money in the cellar. Astonished, she crept nearer, and over-heard their talk. ‘We should not have killed that fellow,’ said one; ‘he wasn’t worth powder and shot.’ ‘Pooh!’ replied another, ‘you can’t expect to have good luck out of every murder. Why, how often a cattle-dealer kills a beast and doesn’t turn a penny out of it.’ The seamstress did not want to hear any more; she laid her charge at the town-hall of Hall next morning; the officers of justice arrested the bell-founder and his associates, and ample proofs of their guilt were found on the premises. Sentenced to death, in the solitude of his cell, he yielded to the full force of the reproaches of his conscience; he made no defence, but hailed his execution as a satisfaction of which his penitent soul acknowledged the justice. However, he craved two favours before his end; the one, to be allowed to go home and found a bell for the lieb’ Frau Kirche in Mils; the second, that this bell might be sounded for the first time at his execution, which by local custom must be on a Friday evening at nine o’clock.[24] Both requests were granted, and his bell continued to serve the church of Mils till the fire of August 1791.
Another walk from Hall is the Loreto-Kirche, intended as an exact copy of ‘the Holy House,’ by Archduke Ferdinand and his wife, the pious Anna Katharina of Gonzaga, who endowed it with a foundation for perpetual Masses for the repose of the souls of the reigning House of Austria; it was at one time a much visited pilgrimage, so that though it had three chaplains attached to it, monks from Hall had often to be sent for to supplement their ministrations. Ferdinand and Anna often made the pilgrimage on foot from Innsbruck, saying the ‘stations’ as they went, at certain little chapels which marked them by the way, and of which remains are still standing. It would be an interesting spot to trace out: I regret that we neglected to do so, and I do not know whether it is now well kept up.
Starting again by the North gate of Hall, and taking the way which runs in the opposite direction from that leading to Mils, you come, after half an hour’s walk through the pleasant meadows, to Heiligen Kreuz; its name was originally Gumpass, but it had its present name from the circumstance of a cross having been carried down stream by the Inn, and recovered from its waters by some peasants from this place, by whom it was set up here. So great is the popular veneration for any even apparent act of homage of Nature to ‘Nature’s God,’ that great crowds congregated to see the cross which had been brought to them by the river; and it was found necessary in the seventeenth century to erect the spot into a distinct parish. Heiligen Kreuz is much resorted to for its sulphur baths, also by people from Hall as a pleasing change from their smoky town, on holidays.
Striking out towards the mountains, another half-hour brings you to Taur, a charming little village, standing in the shelter of the Taureralpe. Almost close above it is the Thürl, a peak covered to a considerable height with rich pasture; at its summit, a height of 6,546 ft., is a wooden pyramid recording that it was climbed by the Emperor Francis I., and called the Kaisersäule. There are many legends of S. Romedius connected with Taur, one of which is worth citing, in illustration of the confidence of the age which conceived or adapted it, in the efficacy of faith and obedience. S. Romedius was a rich Bavarian, who in the fourth century owned considerable property in the Innthal, including Taur. On his return from a pilgrimage to Rome, he put himself at the disposal of S. Vigilius, the apostle of South Tirol, who despatched him to the conversion of the Nonsthal, where he lived and died in the odour of sanctity. He was not unmindful of his own Taur, but frequently visited it to pour out his spiritual benedictions. He was once there on such a visit, when he received a call from S. Vigilius. Regardless of his age and infirmities, he immediately prepared for the journey over the mountains to Trent. His nag, old and worn out like his master, he had left to graze on the pastures at the foot of the Taureralpe, so he called his disciple David, and bid him bring him in and saddle him. Great was the consternation of the disciple on making the discovery that the horse had been devoured by a bear. Saddened and cast down, he came to his master with the news. Nothing daunted, S. Romedius bid him go back and saddle the bear in its stead. The neophyte durst not gainsay his master, but went out trusting in his word; the bear meekly submitted to the bidding of the holy man, who bestrode him, and rode on this singular mount into Trent. It is only a fitting sequel that the legend adds, that at his approach all the bells of Trent rang out a gladsome peal of welcome, without being moved by human hands.
The lords of Taur gave the name to the place by setting up their castle on the ruins of an old Roman tower (turris; altromanisch, tour). S. Romedius is not the only hero from among them; the chronicles of their race are full of the most romantic achievements; perhaps not the least of these was the construction of the fortress, the rambling ruins of which still attest its former greatness. Overhanging the bank of the Wildbach is the chapel of S. Romedius, inhabited by a hermit as lately as the seventeenth century, though the country-people are apt to confuse him with S. Romedius himself![25] One dark night, as he was watching in prayer, he heard the sound of tapping against his cell window. Used to the exercise of hospitality, he immediately opened to the presumed wayfarer: great was his astonishment to see standing before him the spirit of the lately deceased parish priest, who had been his very good friend. ‘Have compassion on me, Frater Joshue!’ he exclaimed; ‘for when in the flesh I forgot to say three Masses, for which the stipend had been duly provided and received by me, and now my penance is fearful;’ as he spoke he laid his hand upon a wooden tile of the hermit’s lowly porch, who afterwards found that the impression of his burning hand was branded into the wood. ‘Now do you, my friend, say these Masses in my stead; pray and fast for me, and help me through this dreadful pain.’ The hermit promised all he wished, and kept his promise; and when a year and a day had passed, the spirit tapped again at the window, and told him he had gained his release. The tile, with the brand-mark on it, may be seen hanging in the chapel, with an inscription under it attesting the above facts, and bearing date 7th February, 1660.[26]