Frau Hütt
In the times of the giants, whom all Tyrolians believe to have resided
in the Tyrol during the life of Noah, there lived high on the mountain,
on whose foot the capital of the Tyrol has since been built, a giant
Queen, whose name was Frau Hütt. Her empire was composed of magnificent
forests and Alpine meadows, as beautiful, and even still more
beautiful than the far-famed Rose Garden of King Laurin, and her palace
was so rich and magnificent that from every part of the surrounding
valleys it looked like a tower of diamonds.
Frau Hütt had a son, whom she loved beyond all measure, and one day
it happened that the giant boy went to pull up a pine-tree, for the
purpose of making himself a walking-stick; but as the pine was standing
on the borders of a deep mossy swamp, the ground gave way under his
feet, and he fell, together with the tree, into the quagmire. His
enormous strength fortunately helped him out of this unlooked-for bath,
but he arrived home as black as a nigger, and his clothes infected the
whole palace of his mother, who comforted her dear son, and ordered the
servants to undress him, and clean his mud-covered body with crumbs of
bread and cake. But the servants had scarcely commenced to execute this
sinful command when a heavy thunderstorm came on and enveloped all in a
dreadful darkness, while violent earthquakes shook the whole mountain.
The palace of Frau Hütt was shattered into one vast ruin, and then
enormous mountains of rock and thundering avalanches began to fall,
and in the space of a few hours all the paradisiacal Alp-land, which
formed the empire of Frau Hütt was destroyed, the forests were swept
away, the beautiful fields and uplands were covered with rocks and
stones, and round about nothing was to be seen but a large desert, upon
which not even one little piece of grass has ever grown since.
Frau Hütt was changed into a rock, and there she stands up to the
present day, holding her petrified son in her arms, and thus she must
remain until the end of the world.