At a very short distance further is another interesting little village, Rum by name. It is situated close under the mountains, the soil of which is very friable. A terrible landslip occurred in 1770; the noise was heard as far as Innsbruck, where it was attributed to an earthquake. Whole fields were covered with the débris, some of which were said to be carried to a distance of a mile and a half; the village just escaped destruction, only an outlying smithy, which was buried, showed how near the danger had come. If time presses, this excursion may be combined with the last, and the Loreto-Kirche taken on the way back to Hall.
[1] Ball’s Central Alps.
[2] Pasture-ground lying at the base of a mountain.
[3] Alpine herdsman.
[4] Respecting the curious idea of the kalte Pein, consult Alpenburg, Mythen Tirols; Vernalken, Alpensagen; Beckstein, Thuringer Sagenbuch. See also Dr. Dasent’s remarks about Hel in Popular Tales from the Norse; and Dante (notably Inferno, cantos vi. xxii. xxiv.) introduces cold among the pains of even the Christian idea of future punishment.
[5] Here we have quite the Etruscan idea of providing against after-death needs with appliances connected with the mortal state. Dennis (Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria, vol. i. p. 34) mentions more material traces of Etruscan beliefs at Matrei, on the north side of the Brenner. Somewhat further south more important remains still have of late years been unearthed, as we shall have occasion to note by-and-by.
The story in the text, in its depiction of self-devotion, has much analogy with a Chinese legend told to me by Dr. Samuel Birch, of the British Museum, concerning a man who sacrifices his own life in order to put himself on fighting terms with a cruel spirit which torments that of his dead companion. In its details it is like the story I have pointed out in Folklore of Rome (the ‘Tale of the Pilgrim Husband,’ pp. 361–3 and xvii), as the most devious from Christian teaching of any of the legends I have met with in Rome; and it is particularly noteworthy in connexion with Mr. Isaac Taylor’s summary of the Etruscan creed (Etruscan Researches, p. 270). ‘The Turanian creed was Animistic. The gods needed no gifts, but the wants of the ancestral spirits had to be supplied: the spirits of the departed were served in the ghost-world by the spirits of the utensils and ornaments which they had used in life.’) And in effect we find in every collection of the contents preserved at the opening of Etruscan tombs, not only gems and jewellery and household utensils, but remains also of every kind of food.
[6] There is something like this in Dean Milman’s Annals of St. Paul’s Cathedral:—‘“Others,” adds Bishop Braybroke, “by the instigation of the devil, do not scruple to play at ball, and other unseemly games, within the church (he is speaking of St. Paul’s), breaking the costly painted windows, to the amazement of the spectators.”’ Speaking of the post-Reformation period, the Dean adds: ‘If, when the cathedral was more or less occupied by sacred subjects, the invasion of the sanctuary by worldly sinners resisted all attempts at suppression; now, that the daily service had shrunk into mere forms of prayer, at best into a mere ‘Cathedral Service,’ ... it cannot be wondered at that the reverence, which all the splendour of the old ritual could not maintain, died away altogether as Puritanism rose in the ascendant.’ Mr. Longman, however (The Three Cathedrals, p. 54–6), quotes the very stringent regulations which were issued for the repression of such practices: perhaps the legend constructor would say, these afford the reason why, though St. Paul’s was profaned like the church of Achensee, it did not ‘likewise perish.’
[7] Nork (Mythologie der Volksagen, vol. ix. p. 83) gives other significations to horse-shoes found in the walls of old churches, but does not mention this instance. Concerning the origin of the superstition about vampires, see Cox’s Mythology of the Aryan Nations, vol. i. p. 363; also p. 63 and p. 429.