The Jaufen-fairy

Under the summit of the Jaufen, a mountain in Passeier, about 8000

feet high, used to reside a fairy who fell passionately in love with

a young Baron of the castle of Jaufenburg, which lies at the foot of

the aforesaid mountain, and was formerly the residence of the lords

of Passeier. But whether the heart of the Baron was no longer free,

or whether the fairy’s love frightened him, cannot be said; but he

never responded to the attention of his fairy admirer, who took his

coolness so much to heart that she pined away and transformed herself

into a beggar woman, in which form she wandered along all the lanes and

passes through which the Baron generally took his way, the image of

injury and grief. One day she hid herself in a chalk-burner’s hut at

which the Baron often stopped, as the man had been his former servant.

When the young nobleman arrived and asked for a draught of water, the

transformed fairy brought it to him after having dropped a pearl into

the glass. While the Baron drank, the fairy assumed her real form, and

now she appeared to him most beautiful, for the pearl had bewitched the

water so that it coursed through his whole frame like fire, inspiring

him with a never-before-felt sensation. The beautiful cup-server who

stood before him seemed the acme of his ideal. He set her before him on

his charger and galloped off to the Jaufenburg.

But a wonderful thing came to pass; his beautiful bride suddenly

disappeared from his side, and he could not imagine where she had gone.

He rode day and night and never reached his castle. The poor exhausted

charger at last fell beneath the weight of his infatuated master, and

died. Then the Baron sought his home on foot, but without avail; he

found himself in a strange country where he knew nobody and nobody knew

him. He became so poor that he was obliged to sell his rich attire, and

at last was forced to beg his way through the country. Miserable, weak,

and ill, he reached one evening the hut of the smith in the Kalmthal,

where, half dead with hunger and exposure, he fell down upon a heap of

straw.

The fairy now saw good to bring to an end the hard penance which she

had imposed upon him for his first slighting of her. She appeared to

him again in all her grace and splendour. All his magnificent attire

was restored to him; his charger stood waiting for him at the door of

the hut, and all the hardship through which he had passed appeared

to him but as a dreadful dream. He now conducted his fairy bride

back to the Jaufenburg, united himself to her for ever, and lived

happy and blessed, though without any heir. After his death the fairy

disappeared, and the Jaufenburg descended by marriage to the family Von

Fuchs, and, later on, the beautiful castle fell into the hands of a

rich peasant and crumbled to ruins under his keeping.