Tramötsch

Brixen and Milland are closely connected to Mount Plose - not only according to the well-known advertising slogan about the "double pleasure", but also in real life. Mount Plose is on top, Bressanone/Millan is at the bottom, and both are connected to each other for better or worse by the River Tramötsch. Therefore, for the inhabitants of Bressanone/Millan it might be important to know, for example, what is happening about the greening of the ski slopes on Mount Plose - or at least about the conditions on the Tramötsch Slope. It is undisputed that the company Neue Plose AG is very concerned about the effective greening of the slopes. Whether, however, it really is true - as the former director of the Plose AG, Reinhold Knollseisen, insisted repeatedly - that the farmers from Rutzenberg were arguing about who is allowed to mow the Tramötsch Slope. Anyhow, it can in any case be regarded as a myth, which is now arising on Mount Plose and has inspired the author to the following legend.

The lush grass on the Tramötsch Slope

At the beginning of the 90s, the farmers from Rutzenberg were arguing about the grass on the Tramötsch Slope, which everyone wanted stocked in his own barn. Finally, they agreed that every farmer could keep as much grass as he was able to mow alone from midnight until sunrise.

The farmer Unterziffler Joggl was particularly keen on the lush grass; he knew how to prepare a potion from toadstools and poisonous mushrooms, and he knew powerful spells - this way, he wanted to gain an advantage. At St. John's Night he climbed up to the Kofler Lawn to the seventh station of the Freienbühel Path; on the crossroad at midnight he lit a fire, cooked his potion from poisonous mushrooms, and summoned with all sorts of unholy spells the Evil One. The devil, lured by the hellish activities, soon appeared, embarked on the proposed trade and promised the farmer Unterziffler Joggl for this one night a year superhuman powers. Powers, which Joggl in the following years was using to mow the Tramötsch Slope from Val Croce all the way to the farm Niederrutzner in one go. In return - as usual in this kind of trade - the devil asked for Joggl's soul once he would die. Joggl was young and strong and did not think about dying, "until then, plenty of water will flow down the river to Millan" he thought. His neighbours from Rutzenberg could not explain how Joggl managed every year to mow the more than four thousand meters of the Tramötsch Slope in one night, but year after year they had to watch as he cut the lush grass from under their feet. From the rich hay, the cows of the Unterziffler farm gave three times as much milk, and Joggl was soon the largest and richest farmer in St. Andrä.

But he had not considered that due to the superhuman effort every St. John’s Night, every time he would age by seven years, and after a few years, as a 50 year old, he certainly was no longer a man in his prime, but already old and frail like a ninety-year old man, and the hay-greedy Joggl died much sooner than he had thought. At Joggl's funeral, when the pastor was preparing to bless the coffin in front of the farm and sprinkled it with holy water, a flash hit the sawbuck with an eerie bang. The coffin tore apart, and the corpse and coffin boards burned before the eyes of the horrified bereaved with a sulphur-stinking blue-green flame. Everybody ran in horror. In no time, also the barn and the residential building caught fire, and the stately manor burned to the ground in a flash. Since then, as reported by the farmers from Rutzenberg, at St. John's Night a scary reaper with a fiery scythe haunts the Tramötsch Slope.

florhelbx, translation in english by Plose Ski AG