After taking his regime of terror too far on a stormy winter evening, the Bailiff of Brunegg dedicated a sin so large on a hunt that will ship him right into a haunted afterlife.
Excessive within the canton of Aargau, the place the shadow of Brunegg Citadel falls throughout the land, a legend as chilly because the alpine wind lingers via generations. The fortress was constructed on a hill on the fringe of the Jura mountains within the thirteenth century, most likely as a part of the Habsburg border defences.
When darkish clouds collect and the holy season approaches, these dwelling close to the fortress in Brunegg village on the foot of Chäschtebärg mountain swear they hear a distant thundering, like hooves pounding throughout frozen earth, echoing from above. That is no storm. It’s the Bailiff of Brunegg, rising as soon as once more for his everlasting, damned hunt.
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This grim story, recorded within the nineteenth century by folklorist Ernst L. Rochholz in Swiss Legends from Aargau, paints a chilling portrait of cruelty, hubris, and supernatural justice. And even at the moment, locals will inform you: when winter bites and silence settles heavy over the land, hear for the decision of “Hop-Hop!” could come using down the slopes.
The Tyrant of Brunegg Citadel
The story begins in Brunegg Citadel, an imposing stronghold nestled within the rural Swiss countryside. The fortress, although quiet now, as soon as housed a bailiff, or Landvogt as it’s in German. In the course of the medieval interval in Switzerland, a bailiff, identified in German as a “Vogt,” performed a major administrative and judicial function. The bailiff was sometimes a nobleman appointed by a better authority, similar to a king, duke, or lord.
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He was a person of energy, authority, and, based on legend, unrepentant cruelty. One fateful winter, as snow blanketed the land and bitter chilly pierced even the stone partitions of his maintain, the bailiff resolved to go looking.
With a black horse, a pack of snarling hounds, and a retinue of servants, he charged into the deepening snowdrifts. The chilly was so fierce, the breath of man and beast froze within the air. Because the storm worsened, their ft froze, their limbs stiffening with frostbite.
However the bailiff, obsessed along with his hunt and blinded by ego, wouldn’t flip again.
Homicide for Heat
As his followers collapsed round him, the bailiff stumbled upon a lone woodcutter working within the forest, maybe hoping to outlive the winter with what little firewood he might collect. Quite than ask for assist or supply mercy, the bailiff murdered the person outright, slicing him open and warming his frozen ft within the steaming stomach of the corpse.
This ugly act was the final straw.
As if in divine retribution, the sky darkened and a livid snowstorm erupted over Brunegg. Blinding winds swept via the forest and fields. The bailiff, his canines, and his remaining attendants had been by no means seen once more. All had been buried in snow, swallowed complete by the wrath of the mountain. The fortress, excessive on its hill, stood silent.
Every winter, the folks on the foot of Brunegg Citadel declare they hear phantom hooves galloping above. The hounds bark. The bailiff’s voice rings out with a sinister “Hop-Hop!” — urging his invisible canines onward. However all the time, on the spot the place the woodcutter died, the sound ceases.
It’s stated that the bailiff’s ghost is cursed to hunt eternally, by no means in a position to move that spot, doomed to repeat the sins of his remaining journey via blizzard and blood.
A Tyrant Reborn: Gessler or Ghost?
Apparently, well-read Swiss residents have lengthy drawn parallels between the Bailiff of Brunegg and one other notorious tyrant of legend, Albrecht Gessler, the ruthless official from the story of William Inform, the hero of Swiss independence. Albrecht Gessler, often known as Hermann, was a legendary 14th-century Habsburg bailiff at Altdorf, whose brutal rule led to the William Inform rise up and the eventual independence of the Outdated Swiss Confederacy.
Gessler is the person who famously compelled Inform to shoot an apple off his personal son’s head — a narrative of oppression, defiance, and eventual retribution.
No sources that predate the earliest references to the Inform legend of the late fifteenth century seek advice from a bailiff Gessler in central Switzerland, and it’s presumed that no such particular person existed. Some consider the Bailiff of Brunegg is Gessler, or at the least a folkloric echo is one other instance of how abuse of energy and cruelty earn not solely rise up however everlasting punishment in Swiss legend.
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References:
The Bailiff of Brunnegg: A Swiss Legend
