The saga of Pfeifer Huisele

Pfeifer Huisele was born in Flading in the Ratschings Valley in 1620. His parents were poor farming folk, and his childhood was one of hardship and poverty. Even as a child, Pfeifer Huisele was a good-for-nothing and a trickster. He grew up to become a workshy farmhand, although not short of a quick wit and a canny shrewdness. The working life did not hold much appeal for him, and so he made a pact with the devil: Huisele became a sorcerer, with power over animals, people and the weather. He could even transform into animals. And this, one day, was to be his undoing.

It was a hot summer day, and a raging thirst came upon Pfeifer Huisele. The sorcerer turned himself into a fly, flew to the nearest farmhouse and crawled through the keyhole into the dairy. As he drank the milk, he fell into the bowl and could not make his way back to the side. To his horror, he heard the farmer’s wife approaching; when she spotted the fly struggling in the milk, she picked him up in her index finger and flung him to the floor. Now that he was back on firm land, Huisele’s strength and power came back to him, and he managed to make good his escape.

After countless such wrongdoings and trickery against the poor farmers, the devil himself seized Huisele. And still today, you can see the large ditch that the devil ripped out of the earth in fury when he was done with Huisele.