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Sacred Trees 1 2 5
The Austrian Tyrol has its superstitions about trees.
Everyone reverences the elder bush. The people say that
the hat should be taken off to it as well as to the lime and
the ash tree. At Verdins, near Meran, after felling a tree,
the peasant carves three crosses upon the stump, in order
that neither devil nor witches may sit upon it.
There is a legend in the Etsch Thai (Adige Valley) that
once upon a time a plague raged there, and that thousands of
people perished, until a peasant chanced to hear a bird which
was perched on an elder bush sing the following words :
" Hattest du gess'n Kranebilt and Bibernell,
Warst du g'storb'n nit so g'schnell."
" Had'st thou tdXtnji/niper berries and Pimpernella peregrina,
Thou wouldst not have died so quickly."
The peasant, it is said, took the hint, ate juniper berries,
and after that no one died of the plague.
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