Note 20 — Chapter V · NORTH TIROL—UNTERINNTHAL. (LEFT INN-BANK.)

Returning through the dark forests of pine and the steep cliffs of the Hallthal, otherwise called the Salzthal, you are arrested by the hamlet of Absam, which in your hurry to push forward you overlooked in the morning. Before reaching it you observe to the east, on an eminence rising out of the plain, Schloss Melans, now serving as a villa to a family of Innsbruck. The peasants have a curious story to account for the rudely sculptured dragons which adorn some of the eave-boards of their houses, though no singular mode of ornamentation, and by others accounted for differently.20 They say that in olden time there was a wonderful old hen which laid her first egg when seven years old, and when the egg was hatched a dragon crept out of it,21 which made itself a home in the neighbouring moor, and the people in memory of the prodigy carved its likeness on their houses.