Chapter V · NORTH TIROL—UNTERINNTHAL. (LEFT INN-BANK.)

The hilles, where dwelled holy saintes,

I reverence and adore

Not for themselfe but for the saincts

Which han been dead of yore.

And now they been to heaven forewent,

Their good is with them goe;

Their sample onely to us lent,

That als we mought doe soe.—Spenser.

We have hitherto been occupied almost exclusively with the right bank of the Inn. We will now return to Jenbach, as a starting-point for the beauties of the left bank.

Near the station of Jenbach is a ‘Restauration,’ which bears the singular title of ‘zum Tolerantz.’ In the town, which is at some little distance on the Käsbach stream, the ‘Post’ affords very decent accommodation; The dining-room of the more primitive ‘Brau’ is a neat building in the Swiss style, and commands a prospect which might more than compensate for even worse fare than it affords. Jenbach had its name from being situated on the further side of the Inn from that on which the old post-road had been carried. There are extensive iron-foundries and breweries, which give the place a busy aspect, and an air of prosperity.

The most flourishing town of the Mariathal is Achenrain, where there are extensive brass-works. Mass is said for the out-lying operatives in the Castle-chapel of Lichtenthurm. The village of Mariathal is very snugly situated, almost hidden by its woods from the road. Its chief feature is the deserted convent of Dominicanesses founded in the thirteenth century by Ulrich and Konrad v. Freundsberg; their descendant, Georg v. Freundsberg, celebrated in the Thirty Years’ War, whom we learn more about when we come to Schwatz, also endowed the nuns liberally, bidding them pray for him; his effigy may still be seen in the church of Mariathal; and the convent, even in its present condition, is a favourite pilgrimage. Hence a rocky defile of wild and varied beauty, and many miles in length, leads into the Brandenbergerthal, which reaches to the Bavarian frontier. Its highest point is the Steinberg, to be recognized in the distance by its pyramidal form, which is situated within what the Germans graphically term a cauldron (Gebirgskessel) of mountains, and is shut off from all communication with the outer world by the snow during the winter months. The Brandenbergers have been famous for their patriotism and defence of their independence during all the various conflicts with Bavaria, and they love to call their native soil the Heimaththal and the Freiheitthal. The only tale of the supernatural I have met with as connected with this locality is the following; it has a certain wild grasp, but its moral is not easy to trace; it is analogous, however, to many traditions of other places.

To the north-east of this valley, and still on the left bank of the Inn, is the favourite pilgrimage of Maria-Stein. I have not learnt its origin, but there is a tradition that, in 1587, Baron Schurff, to whom the neighbouring Castle of Stein then belonged, being desirous to take the precious likeness of the Blessed Virgin honoured there to his Bavarian dwelling, thrice attempted the removal, and on each occasion it was found by the next morning restored to its original sanctuary, which is in a chapel at the top of a high tower. The castle was a dependency of the Freundsbergers of Schwatz, till the family died out. It was subsequently bestowed by the Archduke Sigismund on one of his supporters, to whom he gave also the title of Baron Schurff. Afterwards it came into possession of Count Paris von Klotz, who gave it to form a presbytery and school for which it is still used. Among its treasures was a Slave codex of Homilies of the early fathers; Count Klotz had a reprint made from it at Vienna. A little lake (Maria Steinersee) at no great distance affords excellent fish called Nasen, whence the neighbouring dale is called Nasenthal; and from several points there are most enjoyable views of the höhe Salve and the little towns of Wörgl, Kirchbühel, and Häring across the river.

Jenbach affords also numerous mountain walks through the Achenthal: a favourite one is over the Mauriz Alp, to Maurach, which has many points of interest to the geologist. For those who are not fond of pedestrianism, there is a splendid drive along the road—one of the old highways to Bavaria and the north of Europe. An accident is of very rare occurrence; but some parts of it are rather frightful. For those whose nerves are proof against the fears suggested here and there, there is immense enjoyment to be found, as it winds its way along the romantic woody Käsbachthal, round—indeed through—the wild and overhanging rocks, or, supported on piles, runs close along the edge of the intensely blue Achen lake, under the over-arching Spiel-joch, steep as a wall. The first place to halt at is Skolastica, where there is a pretty, much-frequented swimming-school; and whence even ladies have ascended the Unnutzjoch over the Kögl. It is often crowded in the season, as also are all the little towns round the lake—Achenthal, Pertisau, Buchau. Several excellent varieties of fish, which are the property of the Monastery of Viecht, and the pleasure-fares across the waters, afford means of subsistence to a little population of boatmen, who have made their nests on the rocks wherever there is a foot of level ground. Pertisau, however, is on a green smiling spot, and is a relief to the majestic wildness of the rest of the surrounding scenery. A very extraordinary effect may be observed at a short distance out from Buchau. The mountain outline on the right hand appears to be that of a regular fortress, with all professional accessories, bidding defiance to the neighbourhood: it is only as the boat approaches quite near, that you see it is only one of those tours de force with which nature often surprises us; as, for example, in the portrait of Louis XVI. in the outline of the Traunstein, seen from Baura.

From the village of Achenthal the road runs, through the Bavarian frontier, to the well-known baths and Bavarian royal Lustschloss—until 1803 a Benedictine monastery—of Tegernsee, through Pass-Achen, celebrated in the patriotic struggles of 1809.

The lower eastern ridge of the Harlesanger or Hornanger Alpe, is, on account of its stern and barren character, called the Wildenfeld. This is how it received its name. Ages ago, it was a very paradise of beauty and fruitfulness. All the choicest Alpine grasses grew there in abundance; but with these riches and plenty the pride of the Senners and milkers waxed great too; and as a token of their reckless wastefulness, it is recorded that they used rich cheeses for paving-stones and skittles. One ancient Senner, like another Lot, raised his feeble but indignant voice against them, but they heeded him not. One day, as he mused over the sins of his people, a bright bird, with a plumage such as he had never seen before, fluttered round him, warbling, ‘Righteous man, get thee hence! righteous man, get thee hence!’ The old man saw the finger of God, and immediately followed the guiding flight of the bird to a place of safety, while a great peak from the Harlesanger fell over the too prosperous Joch, buried its impious inhabitants, and spread desolation all around. There is now a pilgrimage chapel.

The unpretending village of Stans, situated in the midst of a very forest of fruit-trees, at no great distance from Jenbach, is the birth-place of Joseph Arnold, one of the religious artists, of whom Tirol has produced so many. Without winning, of some it may be said without meriting perhaps, much fame for themselves in the world, without attaining the honour of founding a school, they have laboured painstakingly and successfully to adorn their village temples, and keep alive the faith and devotion of their countrymen. Almost where-ever you go in Tirol you find praiseworthy copies of paintings, whose titles are connected with the celebrated shrines of Italy, modestly reproduced by them, or some fervent attempt at an original rendering of a sacred subject, by men who never aspired that their names should reach beyond the echoes of their own beloved mountains. The prior of Viecht, Eberhard Zobel, discovered the merits of Joseph Arnold and drew him from obscurity, or rather from one degree of obscurity to another less profound, had him instructed according to the best means within his attainment, and gave him occupation in the monastery. His homely aspirations made him content with the sphere to which he was native, and he never went far from it. The altarpiece in the church of Stans, representing St. Lawrence and St. Ulric, is his work and his gift.

From Stans there is a path through the grand scenery of the Stallenthal, leading to the shrine of St. Georgenberg. For a time the pretty villages of the Innthal are lost to sight, and you pass a country known only to the wild game, the hunter, and the pilgrim; the bare rocky precipices relieved only here and there with woods, while the Stallen torrents run noisily below. Who could pass through such a neighbourhood and not think of the crowds of pilgrims who, through ages past, have approached the sacred spot in a spirit of faith and submission, bearing their sins and their sorrows, the burden of their afflictions, moral and physical, and have gone down to their homes comforted?

A wonderful shrine it is: a rock which might seem marked out ‘from the beginning’ to be a shrine; shut out by Nature from earthly communication; piercing the very sky. You stand beneath it and long for an eagle’s wings to bear you aloft: there seems no other means of access. Then a weary winding path is shown you, up which, with many sloping returns upon your former level, and crossing the roaring stream at a giddy height, you at last reach an Absatzbrücke—a bridge or viaduct—over the chasm, uniting the height you have been climbing, with the cliff of S. George. It is a long bridge, and only made of wood; and you fancy it trembles beneath your anxious tread, as you span the seemingly unfathomable abyss. A modest cross, which you cannot fail to observe at its head, records the marvellous preservation of a girl of twenty-one, named Monica Ragel, a farm-servant, who one fine morning in April 1831, in her zeal to gather the fairest flowers for the wreath she was weaving for the Madonna’s altar, attempted to climb the treacherous steep, and losing her footing slipped down the cliff, a distance of one hundred and forty feet. The neighbours crowded to the spot, with all the haste the dangerous footing would admit, and though they had no hope of finding her alive. She was so far uninjured, however, that she was able to resume work within the week.

He did not come back alone. From the great storehouse of Rome he had brought a treasure of sacred art—a picture of the Madonna, for which his own hands wrought a little sanctuary. From far and near pious people came to venerate the sacred image; and ‘Unsere liebe Frau zur Linde,’ was the watch-word, at the sound of which the sick and the oppressed revived with hope.

The execution of this idea was commenced in 1705. The abbot, Celestin Böhmen, a native of Vienna, had formerly held a grade of officer in the Austrian artillery. Nothing could exceed the zeal with which he took the matter in hand; and plans were laid out for raising the building on the most extensive and costly scale. So grand an edifice required large funds; and these were not slow to flow in, for St. Georgenberg was beloved by all the country round. When he saw the vast sums in his hand, however, the old spirit of the world, and its covetousness, crept over him again, and a morning came when, to the astonishment of the brotherhood, the abbot was nowhere to be found—nor the gold! The progress of the work was effectually arrested for the moment; but zeal overcame even the obstacle presented by this loss, and by 1750 Abbot Lambert had brought to completion the present edifice, in late Renaissance style, which, though imposing and substantial, forms but one wing of Celestin Böhmen’s plan.

If the spirit of the world came over Abbot Celestin in the cloister, the spirit of the cloister came back upon him in the world; and it was not many years before he came back, full of shame and contrition, making open confession of his fault, and placing himself entirely in the hands of his former subjects. Though at this time the monks were yet in the midst of their anxieties for the means for carrying on the work, they suffered themselves to be ruled by a spirit of Christian charity, and refused to give him up to the rigour of the law; and he ended his days with edifying piety at Anras, in the Pusterthal.

A great festival was kept at Viecht, in 1845, in memory of the consecration, which was attended by sixty thousand persons, from Bavaria as well as Tirol.

The library contains an interesting collection of MSS. and early printed books in many languages, and is particularly rich in works illustrative of Tirolean history. In the church are some of Nissl the elder’s wood-carvings, which are always worth attention. The confessionals are adorned with figures of celebrated penitents, by his hand; and other noteworthy works will be found in a series of nine tableaux, showing forth the Passion; also the crucifix over the high altar, and four life-sized carvings. In all these he was assisted by his pupils, Franz Thaler, of Jenbach, who afterwards came to have the charge of the Vienna cabinet of antiquities, and Antony Hüber, the most successful of his school. Perhaps the finest specimen of all is a dead Christ, under the altar, remarkable for the anatomical knowledge displayed. Like many another mountain sanctuary isolated and exposed to the wind, this monastery has more than once been ravaged by fire; in 1868 it was in great part burnt down, and the church-building zeal of Tirol is still being exercised with great energy and open-handedness in building it up again. A festival was held there in October 1870, when five bells from the foundry of Grassmayr of Wilten were set up to command the echoes of the neighbourhood; great pains are now being taken to make the building fireproof.

Passing the ruin of Volandseck, the still inhabited castle of Thierberg (the third of the name we have passed since we entered Tirol) and the village of S. Michael, you come to S. Martin, the parish church of which owes its endowment to a hermit of modern times. There was in the village a convent, deserted, because partly destroyed by fire. In 1638, George Thaler, of Kitzbühel, a man of some means and position, came to live here a life of sanctity: he devoted six hours a-day to prayer, six to sleep, and the rest to manual labour. He maintained a chaplain, and an old servant who waited on him for fifty years. At his death, he left all he possessed to supply the spiritual needs of the hamlet. After leaving S. Martin’s, the scenery grows more pleasing: you enter the Gnadenwald, so called, because its first inhabitants were servants of the earlier princes of Tirol, who pensioned them off with holdings of the surrounding territory. It occupies the lowland bordering the river, which here widens a little, and affords in its recesses a number of the most romantic strolls. Embowered on its border, near the river, stands the village of Baumkirchen, with its outlying offshoot of Fritzens now surpassing it in importance, as it has been chosen for the railway-station. The advance of the iron road has not stamped out the native love for putting prominently forward the external symbols of religion. I one day saw a countryman alight here from the railway, who had been but to Innsbruck to purchase a large and handsome metal cross, to be set up in some prominent point of the village and it was considered a sufficiently important occasion for several neighbours to go out to meet him on his return with it. Again, on the newer houses, probably called into existence by the increased traffic, the old custom of adorning the exterior with frescoes of sacred subjects is well kept up. This is indeed the case on many other parts of the line; but at Fritzens, I was particularly struck with one of unusual merit, both in its execution and its adaptation to the domestic scene it was to sanctify. I would call the attention of any traveller, who has time to stop at Fritzens to see it: the treatment suggests that I should give it the title of ‘the Holy Family at home,’ so completely has the artist realized the lowly life of the earthly parents of the Saviour, and may it not be a comfort to the peasant artizan to see before his eyes the very picture of his daily toil sanctified in its exercise by the hands of Him he so specially reveres?

An analogous incident, which I observed on another occasion, comes back to my memory: it happened, I think, one day at Jenbach. The train stopped to set down a Sister of Charity, who had come to nurse some sick person in the village. The ticket-collector, who was also pointsman, was so much occupied with his deferential bowing to her as he took her ticket, that he had to rush to his points ‘like mad,’ or his reverent feelings might have had serious consequences for the train! So religious indeed is your whole entourage while in Tirol, that I have remarked when travelling through just this part in the winter season, that the very masses of frozen water, arrested by the frost as they rush down the railway cuttings and embankments, assumed in the half-light such forms as Doré might give to prostrate spectres doing penance. The foot-path on to Hall leads through a continuance of the same diversified and well-wooded scenery we have been traversing hitherto; but if time presses, it is well to take the railway for this stage, and make Hall or Innsbruck a starting-point for visiting the intervening places.

Hall is the busiest and most business-like place we have come to yet, and the first whose smoky atmosphere reminds us of home. There is not much to choose between its two inns the ‘Schwarzer Bär’ and the ‘Schwarzer Adler.’ The industry and the smoke of Hall arises from the salt-works, from which Weber also derives its name (from ἁλός, salt; though why it should have been derived from the Greek he does not explain). The first effect which strikes you on arriving, after the smokiness, is the sky-line of its bizarrely-picturesque steeples, among the most bizarre of which is the Münzthurm (the mint-tower), first raised to turn into money the over-flowing silver stores of Sigismund the Monied; and last used to coin the Sandwirthszwänziger, the pieces of honest old Hofer’s brief but triumphant dictatorship. The town has in course of time suffered severely from various calamities: fire, war, pestilence, inundation, and, on one occasion, in 1670, even from earthquake; the church tower was so severely shaken, that the watchman on its parapet was thrown to the ground; the people fled from their houses into the fields, where the Jesuit fathers stood addressing them, in preparation for their last end, which seemed imminent. Loss of life was, however, small; nevertheless, the Offices of the Church were for a long time held in the open air. Notwithstanding all these reverses, the trade in salt, and the advantageous municipal rights granted them in earlier times, have always enabled the people to recover and maintain their prosperity. In the various wars, they have borne their part with signal honour. One of their greatest feats, perhaps, occurred on May 29, 1809. Speckbacher had led his men to a gallant attack on the Bavarians at Volders, blowing up the bridge behind him, and then marched to the relief of Hall; the Bavarians were in possession of the town and bridge, and as they had several pieces of artillery, it was not easy for the patriots to carry it; nevertheless, as their ammunition was failing, and Speckbacher having refused to agree to a truce, because he saw the advantage accruing to him through this deficiency, they destroyed the Hall bridge, as they thought, and retreated homewards under cover of the night. Speckbacher discovered their flight early in the morning, and lost no time in addressing his men on the importance of at once taking possession of their native town: the men were as usual at one with him, and not one shrank from the perilous enterprise of regaining the left bank by such means as the tottering remains of the bridge afforded!

Joseph Speckbacher, who shares with Andreas Hofer the glories of ‘the year nine,’ was a native of Rinn, a village on the opposite bank; but he is honoured with a grave in the Pfarrkirche, at Hall, bearing the following inscription, with the date of his death, 1820:

Im Kampfe wild, doch menschlich;

In Frieden still und den Gesetzen treu;

War er als Krieger, Unterthan und Mensch,

Another object of interest, in the same churchyard, is a wooden crucifix, carved by Joseph Stocker in 1691; as well as the monuments of the Fiegers, and other high families of the middle ages. In the church itself is a ‘Salvator Mundi’ of Albert Dürer, on panel; the altarpiece of the high altar is by Erasmus Quillinus, a pupil of Rubens. One of the chapels, the Waldaufische Kapelle, was built in 1493–5, by one Florian von Waldauf, to whom an eventful history attaches. He was a peasant boy, whom his father’s severity drove away from home: for a long time he maintained himself by tending herds; after that he went for a soldier in the Imperial army, where his talents brought him under the special notice of the Emperor Frederick, and his son Maximilian I., who took him into their councils and companionship. Maximilian made him knight of Waldenstein, and gifted him with lands and revenues. His love of adventure took him into many countries. On one journey, being in a storm at sea, the memory of his early wilfulness overcame him, and he vowed that if he came safe to land, he would build a chapel in his Tirolean home. He subsequently fixed on the Pfarrkirche of Hall, as that in which to fulfil his vow, being the parish church of the castle of Rettenberg which Maximilian had bestowed on him, and enriched it with a wondrous store of relics, which he had collected in his journeyings. Above 40,000 pilgrims flocked from every part of Tirol, to assist at the consecration; and a goodly sight it must have been, when singing and bearing the relics aloft, they streamed down the mountain side and across the river, the last of the procession not having yet left the gates of Castle Rettenberg, while the foremost had already reached the chapel.

There are other churches in Hall; where that of S. Saviour now stands was once a group of crazy cottages; but one day, in the year 1406, in one of them a poor man lay dying, and the priest bore him the holy Viaticum, which knows no distinction between the palace and the hovel: the furniture was as rickety as the tenements themselves; the only table, on which the priest had deposited the sacred vessels, propped against the wall for support, gave way by some accident, and the Santissimo was thrown upon the floor. Johann von Kripp, a wealthy burgher, hearing of what had befallen, bought the cottages, and in reparation for the desecration, built a church on the spot, with the dedication, zum Erlöser.

The town is well provided with educational and charitable institutions; the latter comprising a mad-house worth seeing, under Professor Kaplan, and a deaf and dumb school. The Franciscan monastery is, I think, the only unsuppressed religious house. In the Rathhaus is preserved a quaint old picture, representing the Emperor Sigismund, in hunting costume, coming to ask the assistance of the men of Hall against a conspiracy he had discovered in Innsbruck, assistance which loyal Hall was not slow to supply. Its situation made it a place of some importance to the defences of the country; and the regulations for calling the inhabitants under arms were very complete, so that this service was promptly rendered.

In Absam itself once lived a noble family of the name of Spaur, which had a toad for a bearing on their shield, accounted for in the following way:—‘A certain Count Spaur had committed a crime by which he had incurred the penalty of death; his kinsmen having put every means in motion to get the sentence remitted, his pardon was at last accorded them on the condition that he should ride to Babylon the Accursed, and bring home with him a monstrous toad which infested the tower. So the knight rode forth to Babylon the Accursed, and when he drew near the tower the monstrous toad came out and seized the bridle of the knight’s horse; the knight, nothing daunted at the horrid apparition, lifted his good sword and hewed the monster to the ground, bringing the corpse back with him as a trophy.’

What audacious tales! Could anyone out of a dream put such ideas together? No writer of fiction, none but one who believed them possible of accomplishment! ‘Who can tell what gives to these simple old stories their irresistible witchery?’ says Max Müller. ‘There is no plot to excite our curiosity, no gorgeous description to dazzle our eyes, no anatomy of human passion to rivet our attention. They are short and quaint, full of downright absurdities and sorry jokes. We know from the beginning how they will end. And yet we sit and read and almost cry, and we certainly chuckle, and are very sorry when

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.’

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.

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.