Note 2 — Chapter V · NORTH TIROL—UNTERINNTHAL. (LEFT INN-BANK.)
Reading edition
‘One of the Jochs surrounding the Brandenbergerthal was celebrated for its rich grasses; on its “alm”2 the cattle often found pasturage even late in the winter. The Senner3 here watching his flocks was visited one Christmas Eve by an old man in thick winter clothing, with a mighty pine-staff in his hand; he begged the Senner on the coming night to heat his hut as hot as ever he could, assuring him he would have no cause to regret his compliance. The Senner thought it was a strange adventure, but congratulated himself that it might be the means of propitiating the goblins, of whose pranks in the winter nights he was not without his fears. So he heaped log upon log all day, till the hut was so hot he could hardly bear it. Then he crept under a bench in the corner where a little chink gave a breath from the outer air, and waited to see what would come to pass. Towards midnight he heard steps approaching nearer and nearer, and then there was a sound of heavy boots stamping off the snow. Immediately after, seven men stepped into the room in silence. Their boots and clothes were all frozen as hard as if they had been carved out of ice, and their very presence served to cool down the air of the hut to such an extent that the Senner was now obliged to rub his hands. When they had stood a considerable space round the fire without uttering a word, they all seven left the hut as silently and solemnly as they had entered it. The Senner now crawled out of his hiding-place, and a loud cry of joy burst spontaneously from his lips, for his hat, which he had left on the table, was full of bright shining golden zwanzigers. These seven, the legend goes on to say, ‘were never seen but this once. They were the seven Goldherds of the Reiche Spitze (on the Salzburg frontier); for up there there are exhaustless treasures, but whatever a mortal takes of them during life, he must suffer the Cold Torment and keep watch over it after death; and of such there have been seven in the course of the world’s ages.’