Tradition: Swiss Mythology
Alternative Names: The Mountain Sprite of Roll
Category: Dwarf
The Myth
The dwarf of Roll was a little mountain sprite who lived among the mountains above Lake Thun. One evening, just before the inhabitants of the town of Roll went to bed, the little dwarf came down from the mountain and asked the townspeople for lodging. The people of Roll turned him away, refusing to offer the stranger a place to stay. Only the inhabitants of Rallig Castle welcomed him and gave him shelter for the night.
The following morning, the dwarf climbed to the summit of the pointed Giebelfluh cliff and delivered a terrible warning to the people below:
“City of Roll, come with your people!
The pointed peace is split;
mallet and path are held,
come on, to the Stampach!”
But the people of Roll paid no attention to his words. Soon afterward, the great cliff began to break apart. A massive section of the fractured mountain tore loose and came crashing down upon the town, burying Roll and its inhabitants beneath the enormous landslide. The destruction was so complete that only a wasteland remained where the town had once stood.
The inhabitants of Rallig Castle were the only people spared, saved because they had shown hospitality to the little mountain dwarf when everyone else had rejected him. Even afterward, the ruined place remained almost empty, with only a shepherd and his flock moving across the sparse pasture where the town had once stood.
Sources
Theodor Vernaleken. “Roll.” In Kinder- und Hausmärchen in den Alpenländern. Vienna, 1863. Reproduced by SAGEN.at. https://www.sagen.at/texte/sagen/vernaleken/roll.html