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Mountain people have still their superstitions; since the introduction of railways many of the old legends and popular myths have died out, but even what is left is interesting to the student of folk-lore,—indeed, we might say, to every one.

Sir A. Geikie, speaking of Scotch mountain scenery says,—

"To the influence of scenery of this kind on the mind of a people at once observant and imaginative, such legends as that of the Titans should in all likelihood be ascribed. It would be interesting to trace back these legends to their cradle, and to mark how much they owe to the character of the scenery amongst which they took their rise. Perhaps it would be found that the rugged outlines of the Bœotian hills had no small share in the framing of Hesiod's graphic story of that primeval warfare wherein the combatants fought with huge rocks, which, darkening the air as they flew, at last buried the discomfited Titans deep beneath the surface of the land. Nor would it be difficult to trace a close connection between the present scenery of our own country and some of the time-honoured traditionary stories of giants and hero kings, warlocks and witches, or between the doings of the Scandinavian Hrimthursar, or Frost Giants, and the more characteristic features of the landscapes and climate of the North."[4]

The following passage from Ruskin brings out more strongly the effects of mountains on men,—a subject to which he has given much attention:—

"We shall find, on the one hand, the mountains of Greece and Italy, forming all the loveliest dreams, first of Pagan, then of Christian mythology, on the other, those of Scandinavia, to be the first sources of whatever mental (as well as military) power was brought by the Normans into Southern Europe. Normandy itself is, to all intents and purposes, a hill country.... We have thus one branch of the Northern religious imagination rising among the Scandinavian fiords, tempered in France by various encounters with elements of Arabian, Italian, Provençal, or other Southern poetry, and then reacting upon Southern England; while other forms of the same rude religious imagination, resting like clouds upon the mountains of Scotland and Wales, met and mingled with the Norman Christianity, retaining even to the latest times some dark colour of superstition, but giving all its poetical and military pathos to Scottish poetry, and a peculiar sternness and wildness of tone to the Reformed faith, in its manifestations among the Scottish hills."[5]

The Alps, like most other mountainous countries, have their fair share of legends, some of which are very grotesque. We have selected the following, as related by Professor Bonney.[6] The wild huntsman's yell is still heard in many places by the shuddering peasants as his phantom train sweeps by the châlet. There is also the wild goat-herd, a wicked lad, who crucified an old he-goat and drove his flock to worship it; lightning consumed him; and now he wanders forever over the Alps, miserably wailing.

When the glacier of Gétroz burst, the Archfiend himself was seen swimming down the Rhone, with a drawn sword in one hand and a golden ball in the other; when opposite to Martigny he halted, and at his bidding the waters rose and swept away part of the town. A vast multitude of imps was seen about the same time on a mountain in the Val de Bagnes by two mendicant friars from Sion, who, hearing of this unlawful assembly, had gone out as detectives to learn what mischief was hatching.

Many places also have their spectral animals, the Valois, according to Tschudi, being the headquarters of these legends. There are also pygmies to be seen in the lonely mountains, like the Norwegian trolls, and brownies who make or mar the house, according as the goodwife is neat or a slattern.

Many Alpine stories have reference to the sudden destruction of pastures by the fall of rocks or ice. Here is one from the Clariden Alps:—