Once upon a time, where today you can see the magnificent glacier of Ruitor, there was a big prairie.
A lot of cows nibbled at the tender grass and the flowers grew easily because of the mild climate.
One day, Jesus, dressed like a poor man, knocked on the door of the rich owner of the pasture to ask for some milk to soak his bread.
The rich man with a heart of stone said: "Rather than give my milk to a idler like you, I'll prefer to pour it out on the meadow!" and ordered his servants to drop it on the grass.
The poor man looked at the milk flow down the prairie and said: "Your meadows will be white for long!".
In the same moment, a lot of big clouds grew dense in the sky and the snow began to fall down. The day after, the grass was completely white and it was still snowing, and the snow continued to fall down for many days.
The rich man was buried by the snow with all his property and his servants.
That was how the marvelous prairie became the big glacier of Ruitor.
A young woman of the valley married a mountain boy who often climbed towards the glaciers to gather the very sweet-smelling wormwood and to hunt the marmots. One day, as he frequently did before, the young husband left for the mountain, but, this time, he never came back.
The poor bride waited for him in the following three days in vain, nobody had seen him on the mountain and no one was aware of where he disappeared; therefore, she packed up her rucksack and she left towards the glacier to find him.
She reached every peak and she searched in all the valleys, she scanned the bottom of every crevasse and finally she found him; but, unfortunately, she found him dead. The poor woman sat on a rocky spur and cried and complained all the night long; at dawn, her hair and her eyelashes were covered by a touch of frost, like a silver down.
"God", said the bride turning her eyes on the sky, "I have no courage to leave from my husband, let me stay here, on this rocky cliff, so that I always can see him in his eternal bed of ice". God had mercy on the bride in love and He changed her into the finest flower of the Alps: the Edelweiss.