7. The dead man in the cellar of the Moosstein

In the past, higher regions of the Lötschental were also inhabited all year round, such as the "Bleetza" or the "Bliejienda", blooming alps below the Telli peaks. Below the village of "zr Bliejiendun", where today the high-altitude trail from Schwarzsee leads to Tellialp, there is a mossy stone called "Moosstein". It looks like one of the Tellialp huts, and in ancient times a childless, elderly couple lived by this stone, together with a greedy farmhand.

The wife was fun-loving and often went to visit her neighbours in the "Balmu" and the "Grryn". The husband often heard that his wife was a terrible gossip, a real "Rätscha". He didn't want to believe this rumour and therefore decided to put it to the test. One evening, he said to his wife: "Darling, I've done something terrible." "What, for God's sake?" asked the wife. "Promise me not to tell anyone a single word, then I'll confess everything to you." The woman, shaking like a leaf and tense as a washing line, swore: "As long as I live! And as long as our little house stands! I'll be as silent as the grave!"
Now the man confessed that he had killed one of them and hidden it in the cellar... The next morning, the depressed woman went over to Telli to see her friend. She sat down at the table, stared at the ceiling and remained silent. The neighbour sensed that something had crept over the gossip woman's liver and asked: "What's wrong with you today?" "Something I'm not allowed to tell anyone!" But because the neighbour made a sacred vow to take the secret to her grave, she found out that the man had strangled and beaten one to death and buried her in the cellar. The secret now spread like wildfire from mouth to mouth, from village to village - always under the strict condition that not a word of it should be divulged.

Barely three days had passed when the valley mayor and the jury stood outside the suspected murderer's house to arrest him. Because they feared the farmer, who carried fir trees and larches home on his shoulders like bundles of wood, they were glad that the farmhand was sitting outside the hut. They put two thalers in his hand and ordered him to tie up the murderer in the parlour. The servant, beaming with possession of the money, went and knew how to bet and gamble with the unsuspecting farmer until he was bound hand and foot. At a whistle from the servant, the gentlemen entered the parlour and asked the man if it was true that he had killed one of them. "Yes, that's true," the man confessed in a strong voice, "I want to show you the dead man." He went into the cellar with the guardians of order and showed them the slain man.

It was an old, emaciated goat that he had slaughtered and salted. The important gentlemen were astonished, scolded and cursed. The farmer calmed them down and said: "So that you haven't sweated in vain and come up here, I'll give you some good advice: never entrust anything to a washerwoman - even if it's your own wife - that shouldn't come into people's hands!" He said to the servant: "You go with these gentlemen. Today you helped them, now they shall help you from today on!"

The farmer then left his cosy hut and his perjured wife. During the night, a terrible thunderstorm rolled in from the Tellis peaks. The wild Gisentella brought stones and debris across the pastures and the next morning, in place of the hut, there was only a rock over which thick moss had grown over the centuries - like a veil of oblivion. To this day, the stone is called the "moss stone".

The Goori means to the point: Nothing spreads faster and more reliably than an "absolute" secret ...