The Rufelidog
Those underways in the witching hour between midnight and one o'clock from Hätzingen to Diesbach may have cause to stop stil at a sound coming from the Rufiruns, a ghastly, clanking and clattering, as if heavy iron chains were being dragged across the stones. More than one traveller has told the following day of how they then stood, astounded at the sight of a hound that was dragging a long iron chain in its wake. Yet although the hound's eyes blazed inside its head and the flaming tongue lolled far out of its maw, it does no further harm to the traveller. That the traveller would be a little fearful of the hound is no surprise.
No one can say for sure what lies behind the hound's existence. It is nonetheless clear that he is being punished for some immoral deed perpetrated during his life. Old people mutter in the corners that perhaps he was a reeve who long ago had dwelt on the Bürgli and treated the people in the village in a disgraceful manner. It is said that he was dissatisfied with the tenth of each inheritance that was his to claim by rights, always demanding a sheep, kid or calf more than was his due, likewise asking more than his fair share of the hay, corn, and barley. It is also said that should a poor farmer come to him, lamenting his suffering and telling of the troubles and hardships he was forced to endure, he would be gruffly turned away by the reeve who had not once lifted a finger to help anyone who came in front of him. What's more, it is said that when beggars approached him, laughing he would release his big, black hound from its chain and watched with pure glee as the poor folk ran down the Büchel with the hound at their heels.
After this, as the story goes, he was not seen for weeks on the Bürgli, or in the village. Cut down in his prime by a miserable iIness, no one accompanied his coffin to the churchyard, nor did the verger ring the bell for him. Since then, the reeve is said to have found no peace in his grave as he is damned, cursed to take on the form of the «Rufelihund». He must drag his chain through the dry canyon until some distant day on which perhaps the Lord God will take pity on him and lead him to a more restful place.