Alperer

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Alperer (also: Wilder Alber , wilder Ochsner , Almerer , Alperl ) is a legendary figure of a wild, terrifying man or huge black dairy farmer who has to go around because of his sins. He is reminiscent of both the revenant and the wild hunter . It is said to be particularly at home in the fissures south of the Wendelstein . It is said to be able to take many forms, but always of a terrifying kind. Allegedly it was seen as a big dog , whose tail glows fiery but also as a flying, terrible, fiery dragon , with fiery eyes, glowing maws, shoe-length claws and a tail that sparks everywhere sprayed, from which one even assumed to be a metamorphosis of the devil .

According to the legends, the Alperer or Almerer should take the sins that accumulated over the year, but also those committed in the summer on the alpine pastures, by the dairymen, whose huts he temporarily moves into when they withdraw from the alpine pastures in early autumn , accumulate and on Martin's Day or Laurentius Day , heavily laden by the burden of sin, thick and misshapen into the valley, go straight to hell. A farmer who claims to have met the restless once said that the creature that stormed over him almost dragged him down with it.

The fiery element in the Alperer's appearance may be related to the fall of falling stars . This is supported by his frequent appearance around Laurentius (August 10th) and St. Martin's Day (November 11th).

In Tirol it belongs to the tradition that the cattle drive at Michaelmas a disguised as Alperer boy goes along animal skins, so the cattle drive earlier simply as Alberer or Almer driving was described (similar to the Perchtenlaufen ).

Alperer (colloquially "Olperer") is the name of a yodel from the Salzkammergut and Chiemgau regions, which is often sung in the mountain regions of Austria and Bavaria.

Olperer is also the name of a 3.476 meter high striking mountain in the Zillertal Alps (Tyrol).

Web links

Alperer Jodler sung by the Singrunde Osterwitz

literature

  • Norbert Borrmann: Lexicon of monsters, ghosts and demons ; Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-233-4
  • Anton Dörrer: Tyrolean Carnival within the Alpine winter and early spring customs , (= Austrian folk culture; Volume 5), Vienna 1949
  • Leander Petzoldt : Small lexicon of demons and elemental spirits , 3rd edition Munich 2003, page 18 ISBN 3-406-49451-X