Tradition: Swiss Mythology
Alternative Names: The White Lady
Category: Fairy
The Myth
The fairies of the Jura near Vallorbe were beautiful women who lived in a great subterranean grotto hidden among the steep cliffs. They were tall and graceful, wearing long white dresses that covered their feet, and their most remarkable feature was their abundant golden hair, which flowed around their shoulders like a cloak. They possessed beautiful voices and could sing the local songs of Vallorbe and Romainmôtier. One fairy could sometimes be seen on Palm Sunday leading a white lamb when the coming year would be prosperous, or a black goat when hardship and famine were approaching. Another bathed at midnight in the blue pool of the Orbe spring, guarded by two powerful wolves. During the cold winter months the fairies sometimes entered the deserted village smithy after the apprentices had gone home, warming themselves by the fire until a rooster’s crow warned them that the blacksmiths were returning.
Among the people of Vallorbe lived an eighteen-year-old blacksmith’s apprentice named Donat. He was handsome, skilled, and daring, but also boastful, cheeky, and unable to keep a secret. Having heard many stories about the fairies in the cliffs, he secretly decided to enter their grotto. One Sunday morning he climbed through the rocks and brambles and entered the cave, eventually reaching a second chamber where he found a simple bed of moss and bracken. He fell asleep there, only to awaken before a beautiful white-clad fairy with golden hair and two delicate greyhounds beside her. She offered him a place beside her and promised that she would make him happy for a hundred years, teach him the secrets of precious metals and healing herbs, and introduce him to her sisters in the caves of Montcherand. Donat accepted. She gave him two purses, promising to place a gold coin in one and a pearl in the other each day that he pleased her. At midday, a small locked tomb opened and allowed him into her hidden dining chamber, where she served him an extraordinary feast of trout, venison, cream, honey, wine, and mountain fruits. She entertained him with stories and songs, but after every meal she disappeared through a particular door and strictly forbade him from following her. She warned that if he entered the chamber without permission, she would be forced to send him away forever.
Donat’s curiosity eventually became stronger than his obedience. On the sixteenth day, after the fairy had been especially kind to him, he followed her through the forbidden door, which she had deliberately left slightly open. Inside he found her sleeping peacefully on a bed of red velvet. Her white dress had shifted slightly, revealing that one of her feet had no heel and was shaped like a goose’s foot. One of her greyhounds suddenly barked, waking her. The fairy saw Donat and sadly told him that he had failed her test. Had he remained faithful for the entire month, she would have made him her husband and shared her power, secrets, and riches with him. Instead, she ordered him to return to his life at the smithy, though she allowed him to keep the two purses and warned him never to reveal what he had seen. As he left the grotto, a voice called after him: “Donat, secrecy or punishment!” But when Donat returned to Vallorbe, he immediately boasted to the other apprentices about the fairy, her treasures, and even her strange foot. When they mocked him and demanded proof, he opened the two purses. The gold he had been given had become nothing but lingonberry leaves, while the pearls had turned into juniper berries. Overcome with shame, Donat left Vallorbe, and nothing more was ever heard of him.
Sources
“Feengrotte.” SAGEN.at – Traditionelle Sagen aus der Schweiz. Reproduced by SAGEN.at.
https://www.sagen.at/texte/sagen/schweiz/allgemein/feengrotte.html