This lime kiln comes from a time when lime was burned in a stone kiln under conditions we just can’t imagine today.  The legend pertaining to this kiln doesn’t come directly from the Montafon but it is very gruesome and is meant to warn people about the consequences of having an affair.

The Walk to the Lime Kiln

Death robbed the farmer Weiden of his beloved wife and their only child of its mother.  After the year of mourning was over, the farmer started looking around for a new wife and soon a pretty, new farmer’s wife had free reign over the Weiden farm.  She took loving care of her step child, Loisele and when she had a son of her own, no-one could say that she treated her child better than her step child.  And so the years passed happily by.
One day the man who ran the lime kiln died and his son, who had just been discharged from the army, took over the business.  When farmer Weiden’s wife saw the jaunty and strikingly handsome young man, she fell head over heels in love with him.  She started to neglect her husband and was mean to her step son even though he was a very well behaved and pious child.  It went so far that she couldn’t control herself anymore and she starting visiting the young man whenever her husband was away from home.  The farmer started to get suspicious and one day he asked his son, Loisl, where his mother went while he was gone.  “To the lime kiln,” said the little boy “and Joegele and I stay here and play.”  The farmer confronted his wife but she denied everything, and in the end she was able to reassure her husband that she wasn’t being unfaithful.
The next time she saw him, the farmer’s wife told her lover that Loisl had told his father what was going on and that she couldn’t come to see him again until the boy was out of the house.  “You have to help me get rid of him,” she said.  The young man was appalled but in the end, agreed to do what she said because he didn’t think he could live without the visits from the pretty farmer’s wife anymore.
„Send Loisl to me tomorrow!  When he gets here I’ll throw him into the kiln,” he said.  The next day, while the farmer was out working in the fields, the blinded woman really sent her step son up to the lime kiln.  When he got to the Muttergottes Chapel, where he often went to pray, he knelt down in front of the picture of the Virgin Mary and prayed from his childlike pious heart.  Then he picked two handfuls of the prettiest flowers he could find and placed them at the feet of the Virgin Mary.  In the meantime, the young Joegele, decided to follow Loisl up to the lime kiln and he got there first.  When Loisl finally got there nobody was around so he went back home.  When the farmer’s wife saw her step son coming down the path she fainted dead away.  Her lover, who didn’t know the boys, had thrown her own son into the lime kiln.