The Valleys of Tirol: Their traditions and customs and how to visit them

From Grigno there is a path which few persons however will be tempted to follow, across the so-called Canal San Bovo, to Primiero, a country which has already been so ably laid open to the tourist that I need not attempt a fresh description of its beauties. If any one penetrates its recesses as far as the village of Canal San Bovo, I think they will not be sorry to have been advised to ask for a certain Virginia Loss, who has a touching story to tell them of her adventures. On a stormy day, the last of October 1869, she was making her way, though only thirteen, with her mother and another woman, along the dangerous path leading hither from the Fleimserthal, following their occupation of carriers. They had passed Panchià and Ziano, and were in the midst of the verdant tract known as the Sadole. The fierce wind that blew exhausted her poor mother’s strength, and she saw no help but to lay down her burden by the way, and try to reach home with bare life. Domenica Orsingher, the other woman, however, who had already got on a good way beyond her, no sooner learned what she had done than, considering what a loss it must be to her, with a humble heroism went back to fetch the pack intending to carry it in addition to her own! The next day some men travelling by the same path found her body extended by the wayside. She had died of cold and exhaustion.

The land is strong with such as these,

Her heroes’ destined mothers.

Further along they found Elisabetta Loss and her daughter huddled together. On carrying the bodies to Cauria they succeeded in reviving only the child. Virginia has a tragic story to tell of; of how her mother sank to her rest, and her own unavailing and inexperienced efforts to call her to life; then the horror of the approaching night, the snow storm in which she expected to be covered up and lost to sight, yet had not strength to move away; and, worst of all, the circling flight of crows and ravens which she spent her last energies in driving with her handkerchief from her mother’s face; and yet the presence of death, solitude and helplessness, made the approach of even those rapacious and ill-omened companions seem almost less unwelcome. The insensibility which ensued was probably the most welcome visitant of all.

Le Tezze is a smaller village than Grigno, but one that has done good service to the patriotic cause, having many a time stayed the advance of invading hosts; and never more successfully than in the latest Garibaldian attempt on the Trentino, upon the cession of Venice by Austria after Sadowa. The tombs of the bold mountaineers who fell while driving back the tenfold numbers opposed to them are to be seen appropriately ranged along the stony declivity they defended so well. These graves are yearly visited by their brethren on the 14th of August.

 
They fell devoted and undying,
The very gale their deeds seems sighing;
The waters murmur forth their name,
The woods are peopled with their fame,
The silent pillar, lone and gray,
Claims kindred with their sacred clay.
 

Le Tezze is the last Tirolean village of the valley, and the seat of the Austrian custom-house against Italy. On the other side of this frontier is the interesting Italian town of Primolano, whence there is an easier way into Primiero-thal than by crossing the Canal San Bovo. Val Sugana retains more of the German element than any other district of Wälsch-Tirol.

Judicarien or Giudicaria bifurcates westwards and south-westwards from the Etschthal opposite Val Sugana. Its first (south-west) division is called the Sarcathal and reaches to the Lago di Garda. Though no part of the beautiful Italian lake actually belongs to Tirol the town of Riva overlooks it; the country round is most productive in wine, silk, lemons, figs, and other fruits. Its pleasant climate, the warmest in all Tirol, is due not only to its southern latitude, but also to its being the lowest land of the principality. Innsbruck is 1,820 feet above the sea-level, Riva but 220. From the western division of Giudicaria there branch out northwards Val Rendena, north-westwards Val Breguzzo and Val Daone, and southwards Val Bona. The Val di Ledro or Lederthal, forms a parallel return towards the Garda-See. Here an attempt at invasion headed by Garibaldi was repulsed by the Innsbruck Student-brigade in 1866 at a pass called Bezzecca.

Giudicaria is little explored yet it contains some choice scenery and traditions. Castel Madruzz, which can be visited from Trent, is one of its most ancient and important castles. From the twelfth to the seventeenth century, the family which inhabited it and bore its name takes a foremost place in Tirol’s history. In the church are shown the portraits of seven of the family ascribed to Titian. From 1530 to 1658 four of its members occupied the See of Trent, and were successively invested with the Cardinalitial dignity. Cardinal Karl Madruzz became the last of his house. All his kindred having died without heirs, he applied to Rome for permission to marry – a dispensation which we have seen once before accorded in favour of a Tirolese prince. Cardinal Madruzz preferred his suit successively before Urban VIII., Innocent X., and Alexander VII., and at last obtained it, coupled with the proviso that he should only marry in his own station. As this did not accord with his intentions, the favour so tardily granted was never acted on. This fine castle had fallen into sad neglect but it is being restored. From its deserted terraces a glorious view is obtained, which takes in the two lakes of Toblino to the north, and Cavedine to the south, both being fed by the same torrents. Round the Lago di Cavedine lie the flowery slopes which bear the name of Abraham’s Garden. The Lake of Toblino is broken into by a picturesque promontory, bearing the castellated villa of the Prince-Bishops of Trent; though on flat ground, the round turrets at the angles with their pointed caps afford a wonderful relief to the landscape. The village is called Sta. Massenza, from the mother of S. Vigilius, who died here in the odour of sanctity, 381. Her relics were translated to Trent, 1120. At the foot of the height on which stands Schloss Madruzz is a double chapel, on the model of the Holy House of Loreto, the legend being inscribed on the walls.

At the westernmost reach of Giudicaria, the Rendenathal branches off towards Val di Sole. It was the cradle of the evangelization of Tirol, for here S. Vigilius suffered martyrdom, 405, and the valley is rife with traditions of him. He appears to have been stirred with zeal for the propagation of the faith at a very early age; and his piety and earnestness were so apparent that he was consecrated Bishop of Trent at the age of twenty. He made many conversions, and built a church to SS. Gervasius and Protasius, A.D. 375. But he was not content with establishing the faith here, and sending out missionaries hence; he would wander himself on foot through all the valleys where paganism still lurked, overturning idols and building Christian sanctuaries – more than thirty trace their origin to his work. Nowhere did he meet with so much opposition as in the Rendenathal, which was the last to accept the yoke of Christ. But he was untiring in his apostolic labours, nor could he rest while one token of a false religion remained erect. It is not to be supposed that, though he made many fervent converts, he effected all this without also exciting the opposition and fury of those whose teaching he had come to supersede. Yet though many were the snares set for him, no conspiracy against him succeeded till he had cast down the last idol. It was at Mortaso, one of the remotest villages of this secluded dell, he stood announcing the ‘glad tidings’ of the Gospel from the pedestal of the image he had overthrown, and the population crowded round, earnestly garnering in his words. He had left off preaching, and just raised his hands in benediction, when a body of heathen men and women, who had long determined to compass his end, rushed upon the scene from the surrounding grove, and stoned him with the fragments of the image he had overthrown. His hearers would have defended him, but he knew that his hour was come, for his work was accomplished; and forbidding all strife, he knelt down, and folding his arms on his breast meekly rendered up his spirit, while his constancy won many to the faith. His disciples reverently gathered his remains and bore them to Trent; but as soon as his murderers were aware of their intent, they set out to follow them. The Christian party, delayed by the weight of their burden, found that their pursuers were fast gaining ground. In this strait, says the legend, they called upon the rocky wall before them —

Apritevi, O sassa,

Che S. Vigilio passa,

and behold before them suddenly appeared a cleft in the rock, through which they passed in safety, and which is pointed out to this day. Another narrow cleft is pointed out near Cadine, which is said to have been rent asunder at his bidding, when once, at an earlier stage of his labours, he deemed it right to flee from those who would have taken his life. The Acqua della Vela now passes through it, and a dent is shown which is said to mark the place where the saint impressed his hand on the obedient stone. It was this suggested to the bearers of the bier to make a similar appeal on behalf of his relics. It is commonly reported that in Mortaso the bread never rises properly; and they couple with it this tradition, that when the pieces of the broken idol sufficed not for all who would attack the saint, the women brought out loaves from the oven to complete the work.

The Rendenathal also preserves the memory of S. Julian, called also Sent Ugiano and San Zulian in local dialect. His legend says he lived with his parents in an outlying house. On one occasion, at the time of day when they were usually at work in the fields, he heard the sound of persons entering the house, and turned and slew them, and only found afterwards that it was his parents whose lives he had taken.²¹² Struck with horror he devoted himself to a life of penance, and made a vow to live so far from the habitations of men that he should no more hear the cheerful crowing of the cock or the holy chime of the church bells. After his death the people found that angels had planted roses on his grave which bloomed in winter, and they observed that no venomous reptile ever rested on it, while earth taken from it cured their sting. So they built a chapel in his honour on the border of the little lake which bears his name, at the opening of Val Génova. Another interesting church in the same locality is that of Caresolo. Its exterior walls are adorned with frescoes bearing date 1519, and inside is an inscription recording that it was restored by the munificence of Charles Quint. At Pelugo, near Tione, where the Rendenathal branches off, he found the castle in possession of a Jew, and so indignant was he to find a once Christian fortress so occupied, that he had him immediately ejected and the place exorcised. Here, as also at Massimeno and Caderzone, all inconsiderable mountain villages, new churches were consecrated during the Bishop of Trent’s visitation in August 1869, showing that the spirit of S. Vigilius had not died out. In the Pfarrkirche at Condino is a Muttergottesbild, presented in 1620 by a parishioner who averred he had seen it shed tears. Of the church of Campiglio the legend runs, that when it was building, the people being much distressed by a dearth, and their means hardly sufficing, the angels used to bring stone, wood, and other materials in the night; and one pillar is pointed out which was raised before the eyes of the builders in broad day by invisible hands. The inn here occupies a hospice built by the Templars, hence its imposing appearance. Colini, who was locally called the Hofer of Wälsch-Tirol, for his brave leadership of his countrymen in ‘the year nine,’ kept it till his death in 1862. At Pinzolo is a thriving glass-house, supported by Milanese capital and Venetian art and industry.

Riva, at the head of the Garda-See, is one of the most charming spots in Tirol. Its German name of Reif is not a mere corruption of the Italian name; it is an old German word, having the same signification, of a shore. The parish church is a really handsome edifice, and a great ornament to the town and neighbourhood. Outside the town is a curious octagonal church of the Immaculate Conception, built to enclose a wonder-working picture of the Blessed Virgin, by Cardinal Karl von Madruzz, who also founded a House of Friars Minor to attend to the spiritual necessities of the many pilgrims who came to visit it. The churches of S. Roch and S. Sebastian were built on occasion of visitations of the plague in 1522 and 1633. The neighbourhood supplies the whole of Tirol with twigs of olive to use in the office of Palm Sunday, and all kinds of southern produce grow on the banks of the lake. It was long considered the highest latitude at which the olive-tree would grow, but it has since been successfully cultivated as far north as Botzen. In order to gain a full enjoyment of the beautiful scenery around, the Altissimo di Nago should be ascended by all who have the courage for a six or seven hours’ climb. From San Giacomo, however, where there is a poor Wirthshaus and chapel, reached in not more than two hours, the scene at sunrise is one of inconceivable beauty. Behind are ranges beyond ranges and peaks beyond peaks of lordly alps. Before you lies the blue Lago di Garda, and the vast Lombard plains studded with fair cities, amid which you will not fail to distinguish Milan, which some optical illusion brings so near that it seems it would take but an easy morning’s walk to reach it.

On the way hence to Mori, at about half distance, lies Brentonico, with a new church perched picturesquely as a mediæval one on a bold scarped rock. The old parish church has a fine crypt. The Castello del Dosso Maggiore is a noble ruin. There is a bridge over a deep defile in the outskirts, called the Ponte delle strege– the Witches’ Bridge – being deemed too daring for human builders. Mori, though named from its mulberry trees, is more famed for its tobacco, which is reckoned the best grown in Tirol.

Wälsch-Tirol has many traditions, customs and sayings, which differ from those of the rest of the Principality, more resembling those of Italy, and some of which it cannot be fanciful to trace back to an Etruscan connection. Some bear the impress of the Roman occupation, and all are strung together by an overpowering Germanic influence.

The most prominent group – and their special home, I am assured, clusters round the Dolomite mountains – are those concerning certain beings called ‘Salvan’ and ‘Gannes;’ and traditions about ‘Orco.’ A local collector of such lore, to whom I am chiefly indebted for the above fact, is inclined to identify the ‘Salvan’ with ‘Orco;’ but I think it can be shown that they are distinct ideas. Both are only ordinarily, not always malicious, but the ‘Salvan’ is one of a number of sprites, Orco has the dignity of being one by himself. The Salvan in some respects takes the place of the wild man of the North, and of the satyr whom I also found called in Rome ‘salvatico’ and ‘selvaggio.’²¹³ ‘Orco’ clearly takes the place of Orcus in Italy; and that of the ‘Teufel’ in German legend. Yet so are the traditions of neighbouring peoples intermingled, that the Germans, not content with their own devil, have sprightly imitations of Orco in their ‘Nork’ and Lorg, softened in the intermediate Deutsch Tirol into Norg.²¹⁴ In Norway the same appellation is found, hardened into Nök, Neck, Nikr,²¹⁵ which seems to bring us round to our own ‘Old Nick;’ for in Iceland he is ‘Knikur,’ and, perhaps, he gave his name to Orkney.²¹⁶

It is curious, in tracing the seemingly undoubtable connection between the Norg and Orco, to observe that though the Norg possesses almost invincible strength, and often prevails against giants, yet in stature he is always a dwarf, while Orco himself is considered a giant. But then it is the one essential characteristic of Orco which forms the link between all conceptions of him, whether men call him Orco, Nork, or Nyk, that he is a deceiver ever; a liar from the beginning; whenever he appears it is continually under some ever-changing, not-to-be-expected form, and only the wise guess what he is before it is too late.²¹⁷ Thus it happened to two young lads of Mori, who had been up the mountains to visit their sweet-hearts, and coming back, they met Orco prowling about after his manner when all good people are safe in bed asleep – this time in the form of an ass. The Mori lads, never thinking but that it was a common ass, jumped on its back. They soon found out their mistake, for Orco quickly resented their want of discrimination, and cantered off with them past an old building which had once been a prison, and skilfully chucked them both in at the window. It was some days before they contrived to crawl out again, and not till they were nearly starved.

But we have in English another affinity with ‘Orco,’ besides ‘Old Nick;’ we have seen him take the place of our ‘ogre’ in deed as well as in name in the Roman fairy tales, and in Italy he is also the bugbear of the nursery which we have almost literally in ‘Old Bogey.’ And now Mr. I. Taylor has found another affinity for him if he be justified in identifying our ‘ogre’ with “the Tatar word, ‘ugry,’ a thief.”²¹⁸

To return to Orco’s place in Tirol, we find his name assumes nearly as many transliterations as his external appearance assumes changes. In Vorarlberg they have a Dorgi or Doggi (i being the frequent local abbreviation for the diminutive lein, —klein), there considered as one personation of the devil. The Doggi spreads over part of Switzerland, and overflows into Alsace as the Doggele.²¹⁹ In the zone of Tirol where the Italian and German elements of the population mingle, there is a class of mischievous irrepressible elfs called Orgen; soft, and round, and small, like cats without head or feet, who establish themselves in any part of a house performing all sorts of annoyances, but who are as afraid of egg-shells as the Norgs in other parts are said to be. Their chief home is in the Martelthal, south of Schlanders in the Vintschgau, and their name is devoted to the brightly shining peak seen from it – the Orgelspitz. In the Passeyer, on the north side of the Vintschgau, they go by the name of Oerkelen.

Since we have seen him, too, divested of his ‘r’ in Doggi from Vorarlberg to Alsace, and the Germans have already given him an L in Lorg, he assumes a mysterious likeness to Loki himself, and as a sample of how elastic is language, and how misleading are mere sounds, though for no other purpose, it might be said, we had found in this Doggi a relation of the dog who guards the entrance to the regions of Orcus!

The Salvan and Gannes, as described by the local observer above alluded to, seem to partake very much of the character of the good and evil genii of the Etruscans, though the traditions that remain of them refer almost exclusively to their action on this side the grave. ‘Their Etruscan appellation,’ says Mr. Dennis, ‘is not yet discovered;’²²⁰ when it is, it will be very satisfactory if it has any analogy with ‘Gannes.’²²¹ The Gannes were gentle, beauteous, beneficent beings, delighting in being helpful to those they took under their protection; harmful to none. The Salvans were hideous, wild, and fierce, delighting in mischief and destruction, with fiery serpents for their chief companions. They seem to have done all the mischief they could as long as their sway lasted, but they were scared by advancing civilization; and I have a ludicrous description of how they stood gazing down in stupid wonderment from their Dolomite peaks, when the first ploughs were brought into use in the valleys.

Schneller, who with all his appreciation of Wälsch-Tirol, looks at its traditions too much through German spectacles, gives us some little account of these beings too.²²²

He has also a ‘Salvanel,’ who seems a male counterpart of his Gannes, helpful and soft-natured, with no vice save a tendency to steal milk. In return he teaches mankind to make butter and cheese, and other useful arts, and is specially kind to little children; his name bears some relation with the local word for the ‘Jack-’o-lantern’ reflection from glass or water. But he found also the ‘Salvan’ in his pernicious character under the names of ‘Bedelmon,’ ‘Bildermon,’ and ‘Salvadegh.’ But the most pernicious spirit that came in his way was the ‘Beatrik,’ who is an unmitigated fury,²²³ and the natural enemy and antagonist of a gentle, helpful, beauteous spirit called Angane, Eguane, and Enguane, but possessed with his German ideas, he saw in the being so designated nothing but ‘a witch, or perhaps a fairy-natured being.’²²⁴ In another page he pairs them off more fairly with the ‘Säligen Fräulein’ of Germany. Here is a story of their ways which was given me, but I do not know if it was founded on his at page 215, or independently collected: – A young woodman was surprised one day to meet, in the midst of his lonely toil, a beautiful maiden, who nodded to him familiarly, and bid him ‘good day’ with more than common interest. Nor did her conversation end with ‘good day;’ she found enough to prattle about till night fell; and then, though the young woodman had been sitting by her side instead of attending to his work, he found he had a bigger faggot to carry home than he had ever made up with all his day’s labour before. ‘That was a sweet maiden, indeed,’ he mused on his way home. ‘And yet I doubt if she is all right. But her talk showed she was of the right stuff to make a housewife; but then Maddalena, what will she say? ha! let her say what she will, she won’t stand comparing with her! I wonder if I shall see her again! And yet I don’t think she’s altogether right, either.’ So he mused all through the lonely evening, and all through the sleepless night; and his first thought in the morning was of whether he should meet that strange maiden again in the wood. In the wood he did meet her, and again she wiled away the day with her prattle; and again and again they met. Maddalena sat at home weeping over her spinning-wheel, and wondering why he came no more to take her for a walk; but Maddalena was forgotten, and one day it was her fate to see her former lover and the strange maiden married in the parish church. The woodman was not surprised to find his seiren the model of a wife. The house was swept so clean, the clothes so neatly mended, the butter so quickly churned, that though all the villagers had been shy of the strange maiden, none could deny her excellent capacity. The woodman was very well satisfied with his choice; but as he had always a misgiving that there was something not quite right with her, he could not help nervously watching every little peculiarity. It was thus he came to notice that it was occasionally her custom to lay her long wavy tresses carefully outside the bedclothes at night; he thought this odd, and determined to watch her. One night, when she thought him asleep, and he was only feigning, he observed that she took a little box of salve from under her pillow, and rubbing it into her hair, said, Schiva boschi e schiva selva (shun woods and forests), and then was off and away in a trice. Determined to follow her, he took out the box of salve, and rubbing it into his hair, tried to repeat her saying, but he did not recall it precisely, and said instead, Passa boschi e passa selvi (away through woods and forests), and away he went, faster than he liked, while his clothes and his skin were torn by the branches of the trees. He came, however, to the precincts of a great palace, where was a fresh green meadow, on which were a number of kine grazing, and some were sleek and well-favoured, while some were piteously lean; and yet they all fed on the same pasture. The palace had so many windows that it took him a long while to count them, and when he had counted them he found there were three hundred and sixty-five. He climbed up and looked in at one of them – it was the window of a great hall, where a number of Enguane were dancing, and his wife in their midst. When he saw her, he called out to her; but when she heard his voice, instead of coming she took to flight, nor could he overtake her with all his strength for running. At last, after pursuing her for three days, he came to the hut of a holy hermit, who asked him wherefore he ran so fast; and when he had told him, the hermit bid him give up the chase, for an Enguane was not a proper wife for a Christian man. Then the woodman asked him to let him become a hermit too, and pass the remainder of his life under his guidance. To this the hermit consented; so he built him a house, and they lived together in holy contemplation. One day the woodman told the hermit of what he had seen when he went forth to seek his wife; and the hermit told him that the palace with three hundred and sixty-five windows represented this temporal world, with its years of three hundred and sixty-five days; but the fresh green meadow was the Church, in which the Redeemer gave His Flesh for the food of all alike; but that while some pastured on it to the gain of their eternal salvation, who were represented by the well-favoured kine, there were also the perverse and sinful, who eat to their own condemnation, and were represented by the lean and distressed kine.²²⁵

It is less easy to collect local traditions in Wälsch-Tirol than in any other part of the principality, but legends and marvellous stories exist in abundance; and so long as the institution of the Filò (or out-house room where village gossips meet to spend their evenings in silk-spinning and recounting tales) last, they will not be allowed to die out:²²⁶ it is said that there are some old ladies who can go on retailing stories by the week together! And though by the nature of the case these gatherings must consist almost exclusively of women, yet it is thought uncanny not to have any man about the place; in fact, that in such a case Froberte²²⁷ is sure to play them some trick. They narrate that once when this happened, one of the women exclaimed, ‘Only see! we have no man at all among us; let’s be off, or something will happen!’ All rose to make their escape at the warning, but before they had time to leave, a donna Berta knocked and came in. ‘Padrona! donna Berta dal nas longh,’²²⁸ said all the women together, trying to propitiate her by politeness; and the nearest offered her a chair. ‘Wait a little, and you’ll see another with a longer nose than I,’ replied Froberte; and as she spoke, a second donna Berta knocked and entered, to whom the women gave the same greeting. ‘Wait a bit, and you’ll see another with a longer nose than I,’ said the second donna Berta; and so it went on till there were twelve of them. Then the first said, ‘What shall we be at?’ To which the second made answer, ‘Suppose we do a bit of washing:’ and the others agreeing, they told the women to give them pails to fetch water with; but the women, knowing that their intention was to have suffocated them all in the wash-tubs, gave them baskets instead. Not noticing the trick, they went down to the Etsch with the baskets to fetch water, and when they found that all their labour was in vain, they ran back in a great fury; but in the meantime the women had all escaped to their home, and every one was safe in bed with her husband. But a Froberte came to the window of each and cried, ‘It is well for you you have taken refuge with your husband!’ The next night the women were determined to pay off the brava Berta for the fright they had had, so they got one of their husbands to hide himself in the crib of the oxen; had he sat down with them, the Froberte would not have come at all. Not seeing him, Froberte knocked and came in, and they greeted her and gave her a chair, just as on the previous night; and the whole twelve soon arrived. Before they could begin their washing operations, however, the man sprang out of the crib, and put them to flight with many hard blows; so that they did not return for many a long day. The last day of Carneval was called il giorno delle Froberte, probably because many wild pranks in which sober people allow themselves to indulge on that day of licence were laid on the shoulders of Mistress Bertha. But it is also said, that since the sitting of the Holy Council of Trent, the power for mischief of these elves has grown quite insignificant. Here are some few specimens of the multifarious stories of the Filò.²²⁹ Once there was a man and his wife who had two daughters: one pretty, but vain and malicious; the other ugly, but docile and pious. The mother made a favourite of the pretty daughter, but set the ugly one to do all the work of the house; and though she worked from morning to night, was never satisfied with her. One day she sent her down to the stream to do the washing; but the stream was swollen with the heavy rains, and had become so rapid that it carried off her sister’s shift. Not daring to go home without it, she ran by the side of the stream, trying to fetch it back. All her pains were vain; the stream went on tumbling and roaring till it swelled out into a big river, and she could no longer even distinguish the shift from the white foam on which it was borne along. At last, hungry and weary, she descried a house, where she knocked with a trembling hand, and begged for shelter. The good woman come to the door, but advised her not to venture in, for the Salvan would soon be home; but the child knew nothing about the Salvan, but a great deal about the storm, and as one was brooding, and night coming on, she crept in. She had not been long inside, when the Salvan came home, also seeking shelter from the storm. ‘What stink is this I smell of Christian flesh?’ he roared; and the child was too truthful to remained concealed, and so came forward and told all her tale. The Salvan was won by her artlessness, and not only allowed her a bed and a supper, but gave her a basketful of as much fine linen as she could carry, to make up for her loss. When her pretty sister saw what a quantity of fine linen the Salvan had given her, she determined to go and beg for some too; but when the Salvan saw her coming, he holloaed out, ‘So you’re the child who behaves so ill to your sister!’ and he gave her such a rude drubbing, that she went back with very few clothes on that were not in rags.