Dedicated to the people of St. Gallen for their first centenary celebration
by J. Kuoni, teacher.
With 16 illustrations after photographs by Schobinger & Sandherr in St. Gallen.
St. Gallen 1903
“Who will believe such stupid stuff today?” This exclamation of astonishment can be encountered wherever one asks about sagas.
Do not worry! We do not expect anyone to believe such things again; but our time takes pleasure in bringing the old four-poster beds, the chests, etc., out of the junk room into the light of day, and no zealot thinks of putting them back into use. The useless things are bought for a heavy sum of money and kept under lock and key in large luxury buildings. Why? They are cultural-historical monuments from our fathers’ days.
But the legends are also such monuments; indeed, they go back much further than most of the things in the historical museums. They are rooted in the deepest Germanic paganism, which has accompanied Christian feeling and thinking through all the centuries, sometimes more conspicuously, sometimes more secretly.
The two female devils who met St. Gallus on his first visit to the Steinach have a physical form as good as the bear; the obdurate paganism and the wild animals of the vast forest may have given the messengers of the faith many a sour day. An eerie seriousness speaks from all these old legends. Nor should we be surprised that Wiborada’s cell was swarmed by evil spirits in a hundred different guises; the forces of nature are even stronger today than the individual human being and spread horror and terror, even if we were so eagerly told at school that everything was due to natural causes and that only divine omnipotence sent, guided and turned everything. Just as the minnelied and the heroic epic, carried from castle to castle, became powerful means of binding and educating the higher classes, so all the sagas were a common treasure of education for the broad strata of the people, that is, here as well as there, old, genuine gold!
Legends are therefore not lies! They are the expression of former feelings and thoughts, they are the household chronicles of our fathers, where we find the most intimate entries; they are an important part of the people’s religion, of which Sailer says that it is the philosophy of the people. In this way, the folk superstition became a living law book, which in its own way wanted to cultivate the good and fight the evil.
Two examples of how such traditions were once the common property of the whole people.
In Lake Bründlen, on Mount Pilate, the governor Pilate is said to dwell as an unholy spirit because he was banished there. He behaves calmly if you do not tease him, but if you call him or even throw stones into the water, he comes out and showers the area with the most terrible storms. In 1518, four men who may be counted among the most learned of their time – Vadian, Grebel, Mykonius, Hylotectus – applied to the Lucerne authorities for permission to visit the lake and to investigate the truth of what was said about it. They believed in the truth of what was told, and also believed that thunderstorms and storms rose from the lake.
Cysat (1545-1614), Roman knight, count palatine, apostolic protonotary, scribe of the city and republic of Lucerne, a man of extraordinary erudition, writes of the “mountain blossoms or herdmen” who dwell on the Nigi and Pilate, and cites many respectable witnesses who claim to have encountered them. “In my younger years, I myself knew an old gentleman, Heinrich Omlin, who was the mayor of Obwalden during his lifetime and a renowned hunter in his youth. I have heard him tell in the presence of distinguished persons that he once had
something happened to him once with a male oath, when he went after the chamois in the mountains to hunt some. When the latter reproached him and ordered him not to continue his venture, he scornfully agreed and, because of his smallness, paid no attention to his prohibition; then he, who was after all a strong man, was seized and thrown over a rock, where he lay half dead for some hours until he was found by his own, refreshed and carried home.”
Cysat assumes “that such were not natural, real men, but spirits, and that from the number of those who were cast out of heaven with Lucifer, as some want to believe, who refer to those creatures’ own confessions to some men.”
The countless witch trials prove how much all classes of people were seized by the unfortunate witch craze soon after. A terrible nightmare lay over all mankind, a “Schrättlig” that could not have appeared more cruel.
Fortunately, those times are now over; the Enlightenment has broken the spell, so that at least the judicial system no longer takes any notice of those supernatural powers. In our mountain valleys it still smoulders lively, albeit quite harmlessly, under the ashes; in the hill country, however, only very sparse remnants can be found. So it was high time to dig for this old gold before it was completely buried. –
It was not our intention to compete with scholars in the field, to scientifically arrange the material we had found and to explain it down to the smallest detail; we were interested in creating a handy, easily understandable folk book, but first and foremost in providing schools with valuable material for teaching local history. The storyteller makes the lessons interesting, makes the homeland dear to the children and thus to the people, if he searches for and finds his material on the local soil and knows how to create it.
But are the legends really the right material? – We have intentionally drawn a wide circle, we have also included folk traditions that do not really belong to the sagas, and we would have liked to offer many more of them if we had had more space. Every little detail from the homeland is interesting; everything stimulates thought and research. Even the actual legends are by no means as stale and lacking in content as the sober-minded intellectual believes; they harbour a deep meaning. Then we would like to calm the anxious minds that fear we might revive superstition in a misplaced zeal. Nothing could be further from our intention! We want to instruct and enlighten. The legends of St. Gallen are worthy of serious examination, for they display a diversity and profundity that may well astonish.
It will be most difficult to meet the objection that the majority of the legends are all too serious in character, that many of them even sound gruesome, and that it would be a real salvation for all the people if such things were really allowed to fall into oblivion instead of being refreshed in the popular mind. This can only be true where our intention is misunderstood and where the essence of the legend is not correctly recognised. Nor do we fear a threat to religious thought, but rather hope to strengthen it. Everything supernatural in the world of legends is of pagan origin, but in no way hinders the Christian faith, but only allows it to shine in a much more beautiful light, since we can easily come to understand how much the pagan cult of our fathers burdened the believing heart and how happy we are to have escaped these horrors. We know that the loving hand of a good heavenly Father determines our destinies, without whose will not a hair falls from our head; our ancestors, however, saw themselves surrounded by many hostile powers, which had to be made favourable to them by cunning or force if they wanted to survive. The God of the Christian world is the God of love, who looks with favour on every good will; in addition, he is the Almighty, whose arm is never too short. The world of legends, however, is still dominated by the pagan concept of God, which arouses fear and trembling everywhere.
The supreme god of the ancient Germans was Wodan (Wotan/Odin -Ed.), the storm god, who pervades everything, sets everything in destructive motion. He rides on a milk-white horse, is wrapped in a wide, blue, stained cloak and wears a broad-brimmed hat; sometimes he rides alone, sometimes at the head of the wild hunt, thus with a large retinue. An owl flies in front of the procession, ravens and dogs follow with their lights. Whoever meets the procession must lie face down on the ground, then he will not be carried away. If you look out of the window at Wodan’s train, you will receive a stupefying blow, or you will go blind, even mad. Where Wodan grazes his horse, it winds continually.
The description is taken from nature and fits the thunderstorm perfectly. Wodan’s coat is the sky, his hat the grey clouds, the ash-licking dog that gets lost in the kitchen and fireplace is the wind. They cannot be resisted. The sulphur-smelling horse bone he throws to the people is the lightning.
It is Wodan who lives on in countless legends before all the other gods. According to popular belief, his furious army still appears, especially in the twelve nights from 21 December to 3 January, the “Lost Days”, on which the weather for the coming twelve months can be read. But the Wuetihee, Wüetihö, Muotiseel and whatever else it is called also appears at other times. In the Oberland it is the Gräggi and the Bachgschrei, in Toggenburg the Tuutier. Wodan is also the white horse rider who appears here and there under various names and who must not be absent from the rural carnival. Wodan sleeps in distant castle ruins and guards the treasures there; from time to time – usually once every 100 years – he wakes up and looks around for redemption. Owls, ravens and dogs are his companions and messengers. But Wodan is also the hunter, the singer, the minstrel, the wild flagellant, the tufted one, who roams mountain and valley and is everywhere and nowhere; Wodan’s figure can also be recognised in the eternal Jew. So it is Wodan again who leads the Frisian people and rushes with them from distant Alpine valleys in a sharp ride to the old Nordic homeland. The Frisian people have become the night people and the people of the dead, who wander through the village calling out the death candidates. Folklore often associates it with the plague, and it is conceivable that the popular mind was particularly receptive to such a fantasy in those difficult times. Many a corpse may have been carried away at night, and many a family may have secretly left the house under the cover of darkness and sought a place of refuge somewhere; thus the frightened person got to see many things that seemed gloomy enough in their effect. But in grandfather’s time, where the night people were said to have been seen and heard, they were illusions. How often one dreams and can hardly convince oneself that one has only dreamed. Now pay attention to the strange accompanying phenomena in all the legends of the night people, and you will immediately notice where the spook is. The St. Gallic sagas are still on a small scale in this case; elsewhere the night folk do not appear unwillingly with music and dancing, and all the participants carry their heads under their arms or a cooking ladle in their hands. To the children of the German districts comes at Christmas the servant Ruprecht, to our children in Switzerland St. Nicholas, who can also be traced back to Wodan, and this annually recurring service of love in the nursery may be more pleasant to the old heathen god than many other things that are attributed to him. The hay that the little ones put out for him is still a clear enough reminder of the mounted god of our old fathers. And where the sensible legend has Christ and Peter travelling through the country and the old warrior servant or some other jolly fellow finding happiness, we have Wodan to think of again. Finally, it should be noted that many of the spooky ghost stories also belong here; in general, Wodan lives on in countless memories among all German peoples.
Donar or Thor was the name of the Germanic god of thunderstorms. He rides on a chariot through the clouds, hurls his hammer and throws his lightning bolts. Two goats pull the chariot, His favourite tree is the oak, which attracts the lightning. Our fifth day of the week, Thursday, has been given the name by Donar, who also has a powerful curse. The figure of the devil in the saga is due to Donar; the giants and dragons also live on in him. Hammer, oak, buck, cock, stag beetle, hazel, robin and squirrel have also kept their place in many sagas; they all belong to the red-bearded Donar.
Ziu, the god of war, was considered one-eyed and one-handed. This one eye reminds us of the one light of the sky, the sun. One-eyed people and animals are still known in the legends today. Ziu is commemorated by the third day of the week, Tuesday (Zius Day, Iistig). Friday commemorates Freyr and Freya. The boar was sacred to Freyr; the pig, like the goat, is a devilish animal that often accompanies the nocturnal haunting. Freya’s favourite animal is the cat that pulls her cart.
The stork and the elder are consecrated to Holda, Holla or Holla, the mother of the gods, who lives on in fairy tales and is often mentioned in the nursery. She sits in the nursery and looks after the unborn. All Indo-Germanic peoples understood the liquid element as the life-creating and life-sustaining element. The earthly water comes from the heavenly water, which flows down in the rain. The sea is only the earthly form of the sea of clouds; the Ganges is the celestial stream of the Milky Way descended from heaven; the springs and fountains are only the images of the heavenly springs and fountains. That is why the children who come down from heaven are brought to the parents from wells and ponds by the stork, who is sacred to the water and the clouds. The elder is also still sacred today; its wood must not be burnt, otherwise there will be misfortune in the house or stable. An elder bush at the corner of the house or barn protects against heathenism, i.e. against damage. If a piece of cattle on the pasture got the “Bölle”, you put an elder stick across its mouth. The carpenter used the elder stick to measure the coffin, and the carter who drove the hearse to the churchyard used the elder stick instead of the scourge. – In the Christian view, the role of the Holda has passed to Mary, the Mother of God; she sits with the little ones in the deep well, gives them porridge and plays with them.
The children’s song speaks of three Marys:
Rite, rite, Roßli:
Z’ Bade stoht e Schlößli,
Z’ Chur stoht e goldigs Hus,
Lueged drei Marie drus.
Die erst spinnet Side,
Die zweit schnetzlet Chride,
Die dritt schnidet Haberstrau;
Bhüet mer Gott mis Chindli au.
The three Maries or Virgins are the three Norns or Goddesses of Fate. The first spins silk, i.e. the thread of life; the second sprinkles the hair with the snow of old age; the third prepares the bed of straw, the deathbed.
Hel was the name of the Germanic goddess of death, who rode a pale, three-legged steed. According to the Christian view, the dead who were not allowed to enter bliss were handed over to her; hell is named after her. The companion of the goddess of death is the Helnhund, who guards the entrance to hell; he has a large maw and a blood-stained breast. – Hel and her dog appear very often in the sagas and always as frightening figures,
In addition to the gods, our pagan forefathers knew a myriad of demigods who also live on happily in “the world of legends. Among them is the water sprite, who sits in the depths and reaches out with his hooked stick for the legs of boys to pull the disobedient and careless into the water. To them also belong the mermaids and water maidens, who enchant the listener with their wonderful song and also cause him to take the unfortunate leap into the depths. This also includes the giants and dwarfs, and in general everything that is gifted with supernatural powers, including the witches, who are not Christian but pagan. The dances, the consumption of horse meat, the drinking from horses’ hooves, the raising of horses’ heads – all of which are attributed to the witches – clearly point to the pagan sacrificial customs. The witches belong to Donar and Wodan at the same time; that is why they like to dance under oak trees and ride on brooms, benches, beanstalks, cooking spoons, dykes, hay and oven forks; they milk their neighbour’s cattle, “spoil” everything that has life, and make storm, hail and mice. Everything that the Christian church consecrates banishes the fiends, especially bread, and strangely also the horseshoe, which is nailed to the door with the open side facing outwards. Even where the letters C M B (Caspar, Melchior, Baltasar) are written on the door, they are not allowed to enter.
Thus the places to which the saga attaches itself, the ravines, the rocks, the caves, the streams and bridges, the wells and springs, the trees and herbs, the people and animals involved, are everywhere chosen with forethought; for all these things are closely related to the ancient Germanic world of the gods, as can be proved with all certainty today. From this circumstance we derive the confident hope that with our small contribution to St. Gallic folklore we will not plant fear, but welcome enlightenment, and that our handout will not be misunderstood on any side. Legends are old coins: they have lost their value, but not their exchange rate; this has even multiplied under the rolling wheel of time.
Finally, we would like to express our sincere thanks to all our collaborators, as well as to the Historical Society of the Canton of St. Gallen and especially to the high government of the canton, who have supported us with considerable financial contributions.
St. Gallen, September 1902.
J. K.
Tales from the Swiss Mountains / Märchen aus den Schweizer Bergen 