A SUMMER IN THE TYROL.
The Tyrol is—or was, when we knew it—one of the most primitive countries in Europe. Entirely Catholic, it comes up to the ideal of the faith of the middle ages far better than even the most historic cities of Italy, that by-gone cradle of our faith. It is not sufficiently overrun with tourists to be corrupted by them, and their stay in any of its towns is seldom long. Before the Brenner Railroad was opened, it was almost, practically speaking, as secluded a spot as the interior of China.
Twenty years ago, hardly any language but a patois of German was understood by the Tyrolese, and when a couple of English explorers made a tour among the mountains, journeying on foot nearly the whole of the way, they were amused one night by finding their old English valet seated in the kitchen of a very unpretending Gasthaus, with his bare feet stamping on the floor within a cabalistic-looking circle drawn in white chalk. The old man had been frantically but vainly endeavoring to make the natives understand his master’s need of—a foot-bath! One of the travellers was luckily able to come to his assistance in good Hanoverian German, which itself, however, was only just barely comprehensible to the simple mountaineers.
Although we have no personal reminiscences of that style of travelling which skims over half a continent in a two months’ tour, yet the local knowledge we acquired by a four months’ residence in one town of the Tyrol will perhaps not be entirely uninteresting. Innsbruck, although the capital of the province, is nothing more than a large village with two or three roomy and tidy but very old-fashioned inns, and a church or two not remarkable for either beauty or antiquity. Besides the inns, which were too much embedded among streets and houses to be suitable to our taste, there were, outside the town, a few cheap “places of entertainment,” where lodging could be had for next to nothing, and where unlimited quiet might be enjoyed. One was a “Schloss,” anciently some baronial or monastic dependency, very picturesque and inaccessible, and on the inside very susceptible of English home comfort, but for an invalid this could not be thought of. The road that led to it was enough to jolt any springs to pieces, and once a carriage had safely got up, it seemed impossible that it should ever get down again. So this had to be given up despite the romantic name and position of the “Schloss.” Lower down, and on the turnpike road, just beyond the bridge over the Inn (which gives the town its name), was another house, partly a châlet, comfortable enough and very quiet. It was delightfully primitive. A wide wooden staircase led right up from the entrance door on the left hand, and never, on the darkest night, was there by any chance a light to guide you over it. The first floor consisted of a wide passage with rooms on each side, like a monastery, and a large Saal, or public room, with a clean boarded floor and a billiard table. Beyond this were three or four other rooms. Our party took the whole floor, including the Saal, which during our stay was to be a private room. Sufficient furniture was brought in to make one corner of it look civilized, and it served for drawing, dining, and billiard room alike. Nothing cooler nor more rustic could have been imagined, and, to add to the pleasantness of this retreat, the windows opened on a balcony, just like those on the toy Swiss châlets we have so often seen. There was a chapel in the house, and the proprietor claimed that he had a right to have Mass said there every Sunday. However problematical this sounded, Mass was said notwithstanding, but under a legitimate permission obtained for our own party. There in the little dark closetlike room, with a congregation of servants and stray guests or laborers out in the corridor beyond, Mass was offered every Sunday and very often on week-days. Sometimes the Jesuits from the town would officiate, sometimes the parish priest of the little church half a mile further up the country. The Jesuit church, standing on the edge of the town, among great lindens and elm-trees, was a large, tawdry renaissance building, where brick and stucco did duty for the marbles of Italy, and artificial flowers and gilded finery reigned supreme. There was not one feature worth noticing about the whole church, and even the Madonna shrine was but a sad burlesque on the wonderful idea it symbolized. But, on the other hand, the priests worked hard and earnestly, services were frequent and well attended, the confessionals crowded, and the communions numerous. There were real sympathy and sound counsel to be had there; strength to be gathered from the exhortations given in secret, and instruction in all necessary religious knowledge to be reaped from the plain and practical sermons delivered in public. The devotion of the Tyrolese is as simple as it is deep; it has no need of exalting externals to draw it to God, it is so full of vitality and manliness that it does not ask for the æsthetic helps whose absence often makes such a void in our own devotion, and we cannot choose but admire it, though it is vain for our weaker if more cultured Christianity to endeavor to imitate it.
The parish church outside the town to which we have referred was much smaller and poorer than that of the Jesuits, but a great feeling of peace came over you as you entered it, and as, pacing to and fro under its low, simple roof, you thought of the many holy and acceptable peasant lives that had been lived under its shadow, and ended joyfully within its churchyard. It stood on a small but abrupt hill, which, from the singular flatness of the vale of Innsbruck, looked higher than it was. Iron crosses with rude metal rays or crowns attached to them replaced in this Tyrolese cemetery the broad gravestones to which our northern eye is so well accustomed, and so it is throughout all Germany and Switzerland. About a mile further than this church stood a little private chapel, near a deserted villa, or, as the French would call it, a château. This chapel was always open, and was our invariable resting-place every day during a long stroll into the country. A high gate of rusty and intricate iron-work divided the main chapel from the lower and narrower part accessible to the public at all times, and remains of gilding and heraldic colors denoted the connection, in the past at least if not in the present, of this little oratory with some old family of high standing. Here and there a group of cottages that hardly made a hamlet was dotted on the green landscape, and the only sound to be heard was the tinkling of the great square cow-bells, or the peculiar jödel of the mountaineer, a cry now made familiar to the outside world by “Tyrolese minstrels” (or their spurious personifiers). The Tyrol is famous for its wild flowers, as are all Alpine tracts, the gentian and the wild rhododendron[177] predominating. All kinds of summer meadow flowers grow well in the green pasture lands near Innsbruck, and the forget-me-not lines the frequent brooks with thick fringes of blossom.[178]
Water-mills are very often found on the line of these mountain brooks, and as only the old-fashioned appliances are known, the places where they are built are fortunately not disfigured by business-looking arrangements or alarmingly active squads of men. One of these picturesque mills we well remember, standing over a beautiful, foaming brook, and surrounded by hay-fields. It was a very silent, lonely walk, and used to be almost a daily one with us, until the old farmer to whom the mill and hay-field belonged once waylaid us at the door of his cottage and began expostulating in no very choice language, and ordering us not to trample his hay any longer unless we liked to pay him for the damage. The old fellow was very small and wizened, and whether the garment he had on was a smock-frock or a night-shirt it was difficult to determine, though the certainty of his unmistakable nightcap was apparent.
Of course, like all thoroughly Catholic countries the Tyrol is full of wayside shrines, with rude daubs reminding the passer-by of some religious event or point of Christian doctrine. Besides these, however, one thing cannot fail to strike a stranger as he walks through the lands round Innsbruck. On every house or building that is not an absolute “shanty” appears in the flaming colors sacred to the chromos of the cheap press the figure of a young Roman soldier pouring water out of a common jug on a most terrific and disproportionate conflagration. This is meant to represent St. Florian, a saint much honored in the Tyrol, and to whom tradition attributes a particular sovereignty over fire. The buildings, both farm and dwelling-houses, that abound most in that part of the country, are of wood, and very liable to the kind of destruction over which St. Florian has power. Hence his image is painted on the outer wall by way of a preservative, a kind of “insurance,” that may make stockholders smile, but that will bring in more of those riches garnered up where “the rust doth not eat, nor the moth consume,” than their long-headed thriftiness will ever be able to gather.
Pilgrimages, among a people so devout as the Tyrolese, are numberless. Every village has its chapel where of old miracles were wrought or some proof of divine favor was manifested. Five or six miles from Innsbruck is one of these hamlets, called Absam, where the shrine is of a somewhat peculiar nature. Among the several visits we paid to it was one on the day of the Assumption. The road leads through fields of flax, one of the crops most cultivated in the Tyrol. Its tiny blue flowers were thickly spread over the fields, and August seemed thus to have put on a fitting livery with which to greet the blue-mantled Queen whose triumph is commemorated on the 15th of that month. The village church at Absam is small and otherwise uninteresting. The altar, over which hangs the miraculous image, is covered with ornamental ex-votos, while larger votive offerings, curious little commemorative pictures, and plain tablets adorn the walls for a long space beyond. The image itself is on glass, a common thick pane, of very small dimensions, with the veiled head of the Virgin scratched in dark outline upon it. Tears are coursing down her cheeks, and the expression is wonderfully strong and sweet. It is strange that these few rude lines should be able to speak so energetic and unmistakable a language, but then we must remember the legend which calls this image the work of an angel. It was suddenly found in the church one morning, four or five centuries ago, and was immediately transferred from the window to a private chamber. A great deal of religious litigation and examination had to be gone through before it was allowed to be placed in a shrine and publicly venerated. Since then cures have been yearly obtained in this church, which has become famous through the Tyrol. We do not remember another instance of a miraculous image being graven on glass. It has none of the attributes of stained glass, neither in color nor in style, and is all of one piece. It is now framed in a showy gilt frame with a royal cross-surmounted crown ornamenting the top. Both pictures and prints of it are to be procured in the village, and also representations on glass, two or three inches square, but whose likeness to the original are perhaps not entirely reliable.
This was not the only shrine we visited while at Innsbruck. The pilgrimage of Waldrast included a picturesque journey half-way up the Brenner pass, and through some very wild and beautiful Alpine scenery among the lesser peaks. We slept at a little inn at the foot of Waldrast, so as to be able to make the most of the early morning. The day was beautiful; it was in the beginning of September, and just that season when, in Europe, summer and autumn seem to make but one. A thin mist hung over the mountain tops, the path was rugged and winding, and there were frequent brooks and fences to jump over or climb. Heather grew in purple masses under foot, and the growth of trees varied from oak to chestnut, till it left the higher and more barren ground to the pines alone. After two or three hours’ good walking, we reached the chapel, which is only one level lower than the uncovered mountain top. It had grown quite chilly despite the sun which was advancing on his way. We were just in time to hear Mass, if we remember right, and had but little time to spare for refreshment. There is a Gasthaus opposite the church, a little solitary, whitewashed, low-roofed cottage, very clean and comfortable. It is pretty full all the summer, but entirely deserted, even by its keeper, during the winter. We asked to see the priest. He turned out to be a Servite, and told us that the church belonged to his order. There was next to it a bare-looking house with one (and the larger) portion in ruins, a gaunt shell with no roof and full of débris inside. It had been a monastery, but circumstances, chiefly of a persecuting nature, had obliged the monks to abandon the place. One of their community, however, was always there, to attend to the shrine and receive the still numerous pilgrims; he himself had never left the place for ten years, and, saving the visitors to the shrine, never saw a human being. During six months out of twelve he could safely say he was a hermit. We asked him how he spent his time. “I have a small library,” he answered, “and read a great deal, but when I have more time than I can fill by reading, or my office, or even the work of the church, I turn carpenter.”
And he took us into a workshop, littered over with shavings and sawdust, where among planks and rough logs of wood were various useful things of his own making. We particularly noticed a little wooden sleigh, and asked him its use.