The Sunken Forests

Near the village of Kitzbühel used to stand a magnificent forest, about

which two peasants had a law-suit of several years’ duration, which

finished with the judge being corrupted by one of the two peasants, to

whom he awarded the Alp, and sent the defendant off, without the least

hope of ever regaining his right.

The losing party, who through this iniquitous proceeding had become

a poor man, could not rest, and constantly bewailed his misfortune,

saying that he had been cheated and unjustly condemned. But the other,

hearing the constant complaining of the poor injured man, one day

called out, “Well, then, by all the devils, keep on crying. If I have

unlawfully gained the forest, may it sink three thousand feet beneath

the ground.” These words had scarcely gone out of his mouth, when an

earthquake took place, together with a fearful thunderstorm, and the

majestic forest sank beneath his feet, and black waves directly rolled

over it. Though enormously deep as the See is, during certain weather

the forms of trees can be distinctly seen far down below.

The same is the case with the Lanser-See, upon whose bottom trees are

also to be seen growing. Where now this See stands, there used to be a

magnificent forest of pines, about which, too, a dispute took place,

though not between two peasants, but between a peasant and a nobleman,

and the trial was conducted in such a manner that the nobleman gained

the forest away from the poor man, to whom it really belonged; for,

according to the old Tyrolian saying, “Noblemen do not bite each

other.”[7] But the poor peasant, in his anger, cursed the forest, root

and branch, and it sank into the depths of the earth. Next morning it

was no longer to be seen, but a deep See stood in its place, which,

after the village of Lans, not far from the renowned castle of Ambras,

has taken the name of Lanser-See.

[7] “Die Edelleute beissen einander nicht.”