From Oberaudorf along the Luegsteinsee lake and a good bit further south to the beginning of the Mühlau, there is a mostly vertical rock face, the Luegsteinwand. In the old days, a lookout post was set up on top of the ridge, which could send fire and smoke signals to the Auerburg when danger was approaching from the south or east, because from up there you can see far out, "luegen", into the Inn valley. "Luegen" means to keep a lookout, and that's where the rock face gets its name.
Above the Luegsteinsee - it was created in 1933 by men who had joined together in the "voluntary labour service" to bridge unemployment through useful activity and was previously a swampy spot - there are two caves in the grey wall, a small one behind the forest at the foot of the rock face and a large one about halfway up it. In the latter, a fireplace, food remains and utensils were found under rubble, proving that this spacious cave had already served as a dwelling or shelter for the hunters roaming the forests at that time around the year 1300 BC. Being inaccessible without a ladder, it also provided excellent protection from wild animals or enemies. The following legend explains why this rock cave is called "Count's Hole":
On the Auerburg, which rose up on the castle hill until its destruction by Kitzbühel miners after the lost war of succession in 1747, a young count's son grew up a long time ago. His parents owned the land on the Inn with its people, animals and dwellings. Gradually the desire for property and power arose in him and the urge to rule became overpowering. But father and mother did not let go of the reins. One day, the son used a trick to lure the count and countess into the keep, in whose foundation walls the dungeon was built. He pushed his parents down into the prison hole, blocked the thick oak door with heavy bolts and locks and left them to their terrible fate. Now the cruel parricide was master of castle and land and people.
One day a gypsy came to the Auerburg. This was, of course, a welcome change for the castle inhabitants in their daily routine. The gypsy pretended to be able to tell the future from the palm lines. Everyone rushed to find out from her what was in store for them. The dashing young lord of the Auerburg was, of course, particularly interested. He had the fortune teller come to his chamber. She knew how to announce all kinds of good and pleasant things to the young count, but also mentioned some things he should beware of. After reading from the Count's left and right hands, she finally took both of his hands at the same time and compared the lines and folds of one hand with those of the other. Suddenly she let go of both hands and stared straight ahead in silence. "What is it?" asked the count. The gypsy turned her gaze slowly towards him, looked at him piercingly and then shook her head. Once more she grasped the young lord's hands to check them again. But then she released his hands, shook her tangled black hair again and said, "No, it's nothing, nothing at all!". But the count had become suspicious and ordered her: "Tell the truth, woman, the whole truth! I want to know it! "Oh no!" said the gypsy. "We all have to die one day. After all, it's nothing special." "I'll put this silver cup in your knapsack," promised the inquisitive one, "if you also tell me what you think you know about my end. Well, said the fortune teller, it didn't necessarily have to be that way or mean bad things. She saw him, the count, burdened with a debt, and in connection with this she thought she recognised that he could be threatened by lightning. But this seemed ridiculous to the count, for he had never been afraid of thunderstorms. He had long since forgotten the other thing, the death of his parents from starvation. Here in the castle behind its four or five foot thick walls, no storm, no lightning could harm him.
The count gave the gypsy the promised reward and let her go on her way, not without telling her how little he was bothered by what she had so mysteriously told him at the end. "You can come back here in twenty or twenty-five years and see how well I'm doing! he called after the departing woman.
Many years passed and the Count of Auerburg was not troubled by anything. But a few times, when a thunderstorm broke out over the Audorf basin, he still thought of the gypsy and her prophecy. On such occasions he was in a particularly high-spirited mood. But that was probably only on the outside, inside he began to feel more and more anxious. And once a particularly heavy thunderstorm had passed and lightning had set the wooden roof of the corner tower of the Auerburg on fire, he could no longer stand it in his castle. He ordered the cave in the Luegstein wall to be made homely. Then he left the Auerburg and moved there with his body servant.
He now lived in the cave in the vertical Luegstein wall and believed that lightning could never strike through the fifteen-metre-thick layer of grown rock above his head. In the smaller cave below, he had the horses stabled for himself and his servant. - Even in the twenties, this rock hole was called the "horse stable". - But only when the weather was fine did he saddle the horses to ride out into his countryside or up to the Auerburg to see how things were going.
It was a glorious, cloudless summer day when the unscrupulous count had the riding horses brought out and went for a ride. When he and his servant had just come to the former "three gates" near Cologne south of Mühlbach, the attendant, who had to constantly search the sky for clouds, discovered a little cloud above the Luegsteinwand in their back. Immediately the two riders turned around and galloped back. The clouds quickly moved out from behind the mountain, getting bigger and bigger and darker and threatening. Soon it was a thick, dark, black-grey ball with silver edges. The area darkened and the rain was already pelting down in thick drops. Completely soaked, the count jumped off his horse at the foot of the Luegstein wall. He threw the reins to the servant and grabbed the bars of the ladder leading to the shelter. Not even five rungs had been climbed when the first flash of lightning came out of the storm cloud. Just above the cave in the rock face, it zigzagged along the rock and threw the count off the ladder. When the servant came out of the "horse stable", he found his master lying dead on the ground, struck by lightning.
In the grey rocks above the Count's hole, you can still clearly see the black zigzag track of the lightning strike from above to the entrance of the cave. The fortune-telling gypsy had been right: The avenging lightning bolt had sent the guilt-ridden count into the afterlife, as he deserved.
Source: Einmayr Max, Inntaler Sagen, Sagen und Geschichten aus dem Inntal zwischen Kaisergebirge und Wasserburg, Oberaudorf 1988, p. 19
On the south-eastern slope of the Wildbarren, at an altitude of about 700 m, lies a granite block, a "foundling", which was once transported here by the Inn glacier from Switzerland, where the mountains all around are built up of limestone. The largest edge length of the very irregular prismatoid is 3.20 m, the volume is about 8.3 cbm and the weight is approximately 25 tons.
Many hundreds of years ago, a huge giant lived in a spacious cave on the Wildbarren. A huge grey boulder served him as a table. He used other small boulders as chairs. Immense riches of gold, silver, precious stones and rock crystals covered the floor of the cave and were piled up on its walls. Among finely crafted cups, plates and jewellery, precious stones of the most brilliant colours sparkled. The giant himself, the owner of these treasures, had nothing to wear. Naked, he squatted in his hole in the rock, or he roamed the woods in search of food, or he lay in front of his gloomy dwelling in the warm sunshine. Although people rarely passed near him, he resented his nakedness and shyly hid from the human inhabitants of the mountains and valleys. But where would he get his shirt and trousers?
One day, a tailor went to Stöhr, to the mountain pastures and lonely mountain farms, where they already had sewing and mending work ready for him, as well as many a new garment to be made. The mountain paths were already barely recognisable from the thunderstorms of the last few days. That's why the tailor got a little lost and found himself standing unexpectedly in front of the entrance to the giant shelter. But the cave dweller had already seen the lonely wanderer coming from afar and he now looked out the cave exit so carefully that only his head was visible from outside, so as not to scare the involuntary visitor away from the start. He had recognised from his outfit and luggage that he must be a wandering tailor. He would have chased anyone else away with a roar.
In the softest voice he could muster, he spoke to the startled tailor in a friendly and reassuring manner and asked him to enter his cave. Curious, as tailors who travelled a lot were, the tailor accepted the invitation and soon learned of the giant's sorrow. The tailor encouraged him in his desire when he said: "You seem to be incredibly rich, but you are still a poor wretch, because you don't even have anything to wear!
Then the giant came forward with his request that the tailor should make him clothes so that he would not have to be ashamed and hide from people. It would not be to his detriment if he went to this trouble.
In the meantime, the tailor had taken a good look around the cave, and what he saw there made not only his eyes but also his desire grow ever larger. A cunning plan was already forming in his little head. First, he told the giant how difficult it would be for a tailor to make a suit for such a giant, and what preparations would be needed and how long such work would take. The giant understood all this, but of course he could not be dissuaded from his wish, now that he had a tailor here.
Now the tailor suggested that he should first take measurements of his oversized customer. Then he would go down to the village to procure the necessary amount of fabric and sewing kit, and then he would come back with it and use all his skill to make a nicely dressed lad out of the shaggy, hairy fellow. That was fine with the giant.
Next to his big stone table, the giant sat down on the floor and the tailor climbed around him and he took measurements of the unusual client. As ticklish as it was for the giant, when the little tailor burrowed through his woolly chest hair as if it were a thicket, or when he crawled around like an ant on his mighty shoulders, he gladly let it pass.
At last the tailor, sweating, had come to the end of his task. He promised to come up again the next morning, if he had first provided himself with everything he needed down in the valley. Then he would begin with the actual tailoring work. The giant was satisfied and let the tailor go.
On his way down into the valley, the tailor was spurred on by envy of the giant with his immense wealth and by greed, so that he made his way down to the village in half the time it had taken him uphill. There he got himself a big sack, stuffed it full of the strongest thread there was, and also prepared a bale of cloth in a brightly coloured pattern. Early in the morning he wanted to tuck this under his arm, while he would drag the sack on his back when he returned to the giant tomorrow. Tired, but pleased with himself, he lay down to sleep.
The very next morning, at the first crow of the cock, the tailor jumped off the straw sack, loaded himself with the things provided and trudged up the wild bar. In his greed for the giant's riches, he hardly felt the burden and was soon at his destination. The giant was pleased to see the tailor so early in the day. As the day before, he sat down on the ground next to the stone table in the cave and patiently let the craftsman work on him. The tailor had hung cloth around his shoulders and, for the sake of simplicity, had cut the cloth to fit the giant's body. But with the giant's unheard-of girth, this took hour after hour. And because the giant had been woken up so early by the tailor, he soon fell asleep leaning against the stone table. A loud snore assured the tailor that the giant was now fast asleep. Then he sewed him tightly to the tree roots that had grown around the stone table with the almost untearable twine. Faster and faster he put stitch after stitch and pulled the twine around the giant's body again and again. At last the tailor thought he had done it and that the giant would not be able to free himself so quickly if he woke up. Now he emptied the sack he had brought with him completely and stuffed it full of gold and silver jewellery and whatever else he could grab and gather. In his haste, however, he made so much noise that the sleeper gradually woke up. Just as the tailor was leaving the cave, fully loaded, the thief became quite awake and immediately realised that the greedy little man wanted to rob him. He wanted to jump up and run after the thief with giant strides, but was suddenly caught by the hundred threads of twine. In his enormous rage, the giant mustered all his strength, tensed his muscles again and again, and crack! crack! crack! the bonds burst. In a flash, the giant got to his feet. He could just see the man running away before he disappeared into the mountain forest below. He grabbed his stone table, jumped out of the cave with it and with incredible momentum he hurled the grey stone at the fleeing man. The boulder crushed the thieving tailor and buried him underneath.
The giant has long since emigrated and his cave has fallen into ruin. The tailor's corpse has rotted away. The giant has moved further into the high mountains and fled higher up from the little men he wanted to resemble. They will have caught up with him at his further places of refuge with their civilisation. Perhaps they also destroyed him with it. But the "Grey Stone" still lies on the Wildbarren today.
Source: Einmayr Max, Inntaler Sagen, Sagen und Geschichten aus dem Inntal zwischen Kaisergebirge und Wasserburg, Oberaudorf 1988, p. 64
For centuries, pious pilgrims, laden with their concerns and intentions, have walked from the Audorfer Valley on the Inn across the mountains to the Leitzach Valley in Birkenstein to ask for help from the Virgin Mary in the pilgrimage chapel or to give thanks after their petitions had been granted. Often it was individual pilgrims, sometimes a smaller or larger procession of pilgrims, who took the almost five-hour journey through the Auerbach valley and over the Sudelfeld under their mountain boots, praying. The farmhouse Aschau am Auerbach, which lies on the pilgrimage route and was called "Zum Datzelwurm" more than seven hundred and fifty years ago, did not have this name by chance. For in the nearby Aschauer or Gumpei gorge, a terrible dragon beast once lived, where the Auerbach has eaten its way into the rock for thousands of years. Over two rock steps it plunges into a gorge only a few metres wide, gurgling, rushing, foaming and spraying seventy metres into the depths. The air, permeated by the spraying water, often shimmers in the colours of the rainbow. Below, however, it is dark and damp, and the roar of the water makes it impossible to understand one's own words.
This was the right place for a dragon. Although no one he could get hold of with his terrible claws had ever returned from there, his appearance and appetite were known far and wide. The Tatzelwurm had a huge mouth, bigger than that of a crocodile, and it was peppered with razor-sharp, pointed teeth. It emitted smoke and fire from its nostrils and its scaly carapace shone in all colours. Its body, twisting in all directions, was supported by six sturdy, short legs, and finally it also had large bat wings. It loved to pounce on pilgrims wandering alone and devour them with skin and hair. The monster had also eaten several dairymaids from the surrounding mountain pastures.
Why has the Tatzelwurm not caused any more mischief for a long time and has never been seen again? Perhaps the modern traffic that brings pilgrims to Birkenstein by bus or private car has scared it away?
Source: Einmayr Max, Inntaler Sagen, Sagen und Geschichten aus dem Inntal zwischen Kaisergebirge und Wasserburg, Oberaudorf 1988, p. 117