Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine Part 6

Still, still shall last the dreadful chase, Till time itself shall have an end; By day, they scour earth?s caverned s.p.a.ce; At midnight?s witching hour, ascend.

This is the horn, and hound, and horse, That oft the ?lated peasant hears; Appalled, he signs the frequent cross, When the wild din invades his ears.

Dwarfs and Gnomes

Beings of the dwarf race swarmed on the banks of Rhine. First and foremost among these are the gnomes, who guard the subterranean treasures, but who on occasion reveal them to mortals. We meet with these very frequently under different guises, as, for instance, in the case of the ?Cooper of Auerbach,? and the Yellow Dwarf who appears in the legend of Elfeld. The Heldenbuch, the ancient book in which are collected the deeds of the German heroes of old, says that ?G.o.d gave the dwarfs being because the land on the mountains was altogether waste and uncultivated, and there was much store of silver and gold and precious stones and pearls still in the mountains. Wherefore G.o.d made the dwarfs very artful and wise, that they might know good and evil right well, and for what everything was good. Some stones give great strength, some make those who carry them about them invisible. That is called a mist-cap, and therefore did G.o.d give the dwarfs skill and wisdom. Therefore they built handsome hollow-hills, and G.o.d gave them riches.?

Keightley, in his celebrated Fairy Mythology, tells of a cla.s.s of dwarfs called Heinzelmannchen, who used to live and perform their exploits in Cologne. These were obviously of the same cla.s.s as the brownies of Scotland, Teutonic house-spirits who attached themselves to the owners of certain dwellings, and Keightley culled the following anecdote regarding them from a Cologne publication issued in 1826:

?In the time that the Heinzelmannchen were still there, there was in Cologne many a baker who kept no man, for the little people used always to make, overnight, as much black and white bread as the baker wanted for his shop. In many houses they used to wash and do all their work for the maids.

?Now, about this time, there was an expert tailor to whom they appeared to have taken a great fancy, for when he married he found in his house, on the wedding-day, the finest victuals and the most beautiful utensils, which the little folk had stolen elsewhere and brought to their favourite. When, with time, his family increased, the little ones used to give the tailor?s wife considerable aid in her household affairs; they washed for her, and on holidays and festival times they scoured the copper and tin, and the house from the garret to the cellar. If at any time the tailor had a press of work, he was sure to find it all ready done for him in the morning by the Heinzelmannchen.

?But curiosity began now to torment the tailor?s wife, and she was dying to get one sight of the Heinzelmannchen, but do what she would she could never compa.s.s it. She one time strewed peas all down the stairs that they might fall and hurt themselves, and that so she might see them next morning. But this project missed, and since that time the Heinzelmannchen have totally disappeared, as has been everywhere the case, owing to the curiosity of people, which has at all times been the destruction of so much of what was beautiful in the world.

?The Heinzelmannchen, in consequence of this, went off all in a body out of the town, with music playing, but people could only hear the music, for no one could see the mannikins themselves, who forthwith got into a ship and went away, whither no one knows. The good times, however, are said to have disappeared from Cologne along with the Heinzelmannchen.?

St. Ursula

One of the most interesting figures in connexion with Rhenish mythology is that of St. Ursula, whose legend is as follows:

Just two centuries after the birth of Christ, Vionest was king of Britain. Happy in his realm, his subjects were prosperous and contented, but care was in the heart of the monarch, for he was childless. At length his consort, Daria, bore him a daughter, who as she grew up in years increased in holiness, until all men regarded her as a saint, and she, devoting herself to a religious life, refused all offers of marriage, to the great grief of her parents, who were again troubled by the thought that their dynasty would fail for want of an heir. Charmed with the rumour of her virtues, a German prince, Agrippus, asked her as a wife for his son, but the suit was declined by the maiden until an angel appeared to her in a dream and said that the nuptials ought to take place. In obedience to this heavenly mentor, St. Ursula no longer urged her former scruples, and her father hastened to make preparations of suitable magnificence for her departure to the Rhine, on whose banks her future home was to be. Eleven thousand virgins were selected from the n.o.blest families of Britain to accompany their princess, who, marshalling them on the seash.o.r.e, bade them sing a hymn to the Most High and dismiss all fears of the ocean, for she had been gifted with a divine knowledge of navigation and would guide them safely on their way.

Accordingly St. Ursula dismissed all the seamen, and standing on the deck of the princ.i.p.al vessel, she gave orders to her eleven thousand maiden followers, who, under the influence of inspiration, flitted over the ships dressed in virgin white, now tending the sails, now fixing the ropes, now guiding the helm, until they reached the mouth of the Rhine, up which they sailed in saintly procession to Cologne. Here they were received with great honours by the Roman governor of the place; but soon they left the city to ascend the stream to Basel on their way to Rome, to which holy city St. Ursula had determined upon making a pilgrimage.

Wherever upon their journey they met the officers of state they were received as befitted their heavenly mission, and from Basel were accompanied by Pantulus, who was afterward canonized, and whose portrait is to be seen in the church of St. Ursula. Once at Rome Pope Cyriacus himself was so affected by their devoted piety that, after praying with them at the tombs of the apostles, he determined on abdicating the pontifical office to accompany them on their return down the Rhine to Cologne.

At Mayence they were joined by Prince Coman, the son of Agrippus, who for love of his betrothed at once forsook the errors of his pagan faith and was baptized. The eleven thousand virgins, with their sainted leader, her husband, and Pope Cyriacus, pa.s.sed rapidly to Cologne, where, however, they were not long destined to live in peace. A horde of barbarians from the North invaded the place, and having gained possession of the city, they slew the virgin retinue of St. Ursula, the venerable Pope, the saint herself, and her spouse Coman, after inflicting the most horrible tortures upon them. Some were nailed living to the cross; some were burned; others stoned; but the most refined cruelties were reserved for the most distinguished victims. Look on the walls of the church of St. Ursula and you will see depicted the sufferings of the young martyr and of her youthful husband. Her chapel yet contains her effigy with a dove at her feet?fit emblem of her purity and faith and loving-kindness; while the devout may, in the same church, behold the religiously preserved bones of the eleven thousand virgins.

Saint or G.o.ddess?

The sainthood of St. Ursula is distinctly doubtful, and the number of her retinue, eleven thousand, has been proved to be an error in monkish calligraphy. St. Ursula is, indeed, the Teutonic G.o.ddess Ursa, or Horsel. In many parts of Germany a custom existed during the Middle Ages of rolling about a ship on wheels, much to the scandal of the clergy, and this undoubtedly points to moon-worship, the worship of Holda, or Ursula, whom German poets of old regarded as sailing over the deep blue of the heavens in her silver boat. A great company of maidens, the stars, follow in her train. She is supposed, her nightly pilgrimage over, to enter certain hills.

Thus in the later guise of Venus she entered the Horselberg in Thuringia, in which she imprisoned the enchanted Tannhauser, and there is good reason to believe that she also presided over the Ercildoune, or Hill of Ursula, in the south of Scotland, the modern Earlston, after which Thomas the Rhymer took his territorial designation, and whose story later became fused with her myth in the old Scottish ballad of Thomas the Rhymer. Thus we observe how it is possible for a pagan myth to become an incident in Christian hagiology.

Satan in Rhine Story

In the legends of the Rhine the picturesque figure of his Satanic majesty is frequently presented, as in the legends of ?The Sword-slipper of Solingen,? ?The Architect of Cologne Cathedral,? and several other tales. The circ.u.mstances of his appearance are distinctly Teutonic in character, and are such as to make one doubt that the Devil of the German peoples has evolved from the cla.s.sical satyr. May it not be that the Teutonic folk possessed some nature-spirit from which they evolved a Satanic figure of their own? Against this, of course, could be quoted the fact that the medieval conception of the Devil was sophisticated by the Church, which in turn was strongly influenced by cla.s.sical types.

Affinity of the Rhine Legends with Romance

But on the whole the legends of the Rhine exhibit much more affinity with medieval romance than with myth or folklore.1 A large number of them are based upon plots which can be shown to be almost universal, and which occur again and again in French and British story. One of the commonest of these concerns the crusader who, rejected by his lady-love, spends hopeless years in the East, or, having married before setting out for the Orient, returns to find his bride the wife of another. The crusader exercised a strong influence upon the literature of medieval Europe, and that influence we find in a very marked degree in the legends of the Rhine. Again, a number of these tales undoubtedly consist of older materials not necessarily mythical in origin, over which a later medieval colour has been cast. Unhappily many of these beautiful old legends have been greatly marred by the absurd sentimentality of the German writers of the early nineteenth century, and their dramatis personae, instead of exhibiting the characteristics of st.u.r.dy medieval German folk, possess the mincing and lackadaisical manners which mark the Franco-German novel of a century ago. This contrasts most ludicrously in many cases with the simple, almost childlike, honesty which is typical of all early Teutonic literature. Had a Charles Lamb, a Leigh Hunt, or an Edgar Allan Poe recast these tales, how different would have been their treatment! Before the time of Schiller and Goethe French models prevailed in German literature. These wizards of the pen recovered the German spirit of mystery, and brought back to their haunts gnomes, kobolds, and water-sprites. But the mischief had been done ere they dawned upon the horizon, and there were other parts of Germany which appeared to them more suitable for literary presentment than the Rhine, save perhaps in drama. Moreover, the inherent sentimentality of the German character, however fitted to bring out the mysterious atmosphere which clings to these legends, has weakened them considerably.

[Note 1: See author?s Dictionary of Medieval Romance (London, 1913), preface, and article ?Romance, Rise and Origin of.?]

The Poetry of the Rhine

Robert Louis Stevenson, exiled in the South Pacific islands, used to speak with pa.s.sionate fondness of the rivers of his native Scotland, the country he loved so dearly, but which the jealous fates forbade him to visit during fully half his life. Garry and Tummel, Tweed and Tay?he used to think of these as of something almost sacred; while even the name of that insignificant stream, the Water of Leith, sounded on his ear like sweet music, evoking a strangely tender and pathetic emotion.

And this emotion, crystallized so beautifully by Stevenson in one of his essays in Memories and Portraits, must have been felt, too, by many other exiles wandering in foreign parts; for surely an a.n.a.logous feeling has been experienced sometimes by every traveller of sensitive and imaginative temperament, particularly the traveller exiled irrevocably from his home and longing pa.s.sionately to see it. Horatius, about to plunge into the Tiber, addressed it as his father and G.o.d, charging it to care well for his life and fortunes?fortunes in which those of all Rome were involved for the time being. Ecce Tiber! was the glad cry of the Romans on beholding the Tay?a cry which shows once again with what ardent devotion they thought of the river which pa.s.sed by their native city; while Naaman the Syrian, told that his sickness would be cured would he but lave his leprous limbs in the Jordan, exclaimed aghast against a prescription which appeared to him nothing short of sacrilegious and insulting, and declared that there were better and n.o.bler streams in his own land. Even the deadly complaint with which he was smitten could not shake his fidelity to these, could not alter his conviction that they were superior to alien streams; and the truth is that nearly every great river?perhaps because its perpetual motion makes it seem verily a living thing?has a way of establishing itself in the hearts of those who dwell by its banks.

The Rhine is no exception to this rule; on the contrary, it is a notable ill.u.s.tration thereof. From time immemorial the name of the mighty stream has been sacred to the Germans, while gradually a halo of romantic glamour has wound itself about the river, a halo which appeals potently even to many who have never seen the Vaterland. Am Rhein!?is there not magic in the words? And how they call up dreams of robber barons, each with his strange castle built on the edge of a precipice overlooking the rushing stream; fiends of glade and dell, sprites of the river and whirlpool, weird huntsmen, and all the dramatis personae of legend and tradition.

The Rhine has ever held a wide fame in the domain of literature. For there is scarcely a place on the river?s banks but has its legend which has been enshrined in song, and some of these songs are so old that the names of their makers have long since been forgotten. Yes, we have to go very far back indeed would we study the poetry of the Rhine adequately; we have to penetrate deeply into the Middle Ages, dim and mysterious.

And looking back thus, and pondering on these legendary and anonymous writings, a poem which soon drifts into recollection is one whose scene is laid near the little town of Lorch, or Lordch. Hard by this town is a mountain, known to geographers as Kedrich, but hailed popularly as ?the Devil?s Ladder.? Nor is the name altogether misplaced or undeserved, the mountain being exceeding precipitous, and its beetling, rocky sides seeming well-nigh inaccessible. This steepness, however, did not daunt the hero of the poem in question, a certain Sir Hilchen von Lorch. A saddle, said to have belonged to him, is still preserved in the town; but on what manner of steed he was wont to ride is not told explicitly, and truly it must have been a veritable Bucephalus. For the nameless poet relates that Sir Hilchen, being enamoured of a lady whom angry gnomes had carried to the top of Kedrich and imprisoned there, rode at full gallop right up the side of the mountain, and rescued the fair one!

?Though my lady-love to a tower be ta?en, Whose top the eagle might fail to gain, Nor portal of iron nor battlement?s height Shall bar me out from her presence bright: Why has Love wings but that he may fly Over the walls, be they never so high??

So the tale begins, while at the end the knight is represented exulting in his doughty action:

?Hurrah, hurrah! ?Tis gallantly done!

The spell is broken, the bride is won!

From the magic hold of the mountain-sprite Down she comes with her dauntless knight!

Holy St. Bernard, shield us all From the wrath of the elves of the Whisper-Thal.?

Andernach

There are several different versions of this legend, each of them just as extraordinary as the foregoing. It is evident, moreover, that matter of this sort appealed very keenly to the medieval dwellers by the Rhine, much of the further legendary lore encircling the river being concerned with deeds no less amazing than this of Sir Hilchen?s; and among things which recount such events a notable instance is a poem consecrated to the castle of Andernach. Here, once upon a time, dwelt a count bearing the now famous name of Siegfried, and being of a religious disposition, he threw in his lot with a band of crusaders. For a long while, in consequence, he was absent from his ancestral domain; and at length, returning thither, he was told by various lying tongues that his beautiful wife, Genofeva, had been unfaithful to him in his absence, the chief bearer of the fell news being one Golo. This slanderer induced Siegfried to banish Genofeva straightway, and so the lady fled from the castle to the neighbouring forest of Laach, where a little later she gave birth to a boy. Thenceforth mother and son lived together in the wilds, and though these were infested by wild robbers, and full of wolves and other ravening beasts, the pair of exiles contrived to go unscathed year after year, while, more wonderful still, they managed to find daily sustenance. And now romance reached a happy moment; for behold, Count Siegfried went hunting one day in the remoter parts of the forest, and fortuitously he pa.s.sed by the very place where the two wanderers were living?his wife and the child whom he had never seen.

?Tis in the woody vales of Laach the hunter?s horn is wound, And fairly flies the falcon, and deeply bays the hound; But little recks Count Siegfried for hawk or quarry now: A weight is on his n.o.ble heart, a gloom is on his brow.

Oh! he hath driven from his home?he cannot from his mind?

A lady, ah! the loveliest of all her lovely kind; His wife, his Genofeva!?and at the word of one, The blackest traitor ever looked upon the blessed sun.

He hath let the hunters hurry by, and turned his steed aside, And ridden where the blue lake spreads its waters calm and wide, And lo! beneath a linden-tree, there sits a lady fair, But like some savage maiden clad in sylvan pageant rare.

Her kirtle?s of the dappled skin of the rapid mountain roe; A quiver at her back she bears, beside her lies a bow; Her feet are bare, her golden hair adown her shoulders streams, And in her lap a rosy child is smiling in its dreams.

The count had never thought to see his wife again. He imagined that she had long since starved to death or been devoured; and now, finding her alive, his pulses quicken. He knows well that only a miracle could have preserved her during all this period of estrangement, and reflects that on behalf of the virtuous alone are miracles worked. Seeing herein ample proof of Genofeva?s innocence, he welcomes her back to his arms and with beating heart bears her to the castle:

Oh! there was joy in Andernach upon that happy night: The palace rang with revelry, the city blazed with light: And when the moon her paler beams upon the turrets shed, Above the Roman gate was seen the traitor Golo?s head.

The Brothers

Doubtless it was the thaumaturgic element in this pretty romance which chiefly made it popular among its pristine audiences, yet it was probably the pathos with which it is coloured that granted it longevity, causing it to be handed down from generation to generation long before the advent of the printing-press.

Pathos, of course, figures largely in all folk-literature, and the story of Count Siegfried is by no means the only tale of a touching nature embodied in the early poetry of the Rhine, another similar work which belongs to this category being a poem a.s.sociated with Liebenstein and Sterrenberg, two castles not far from each other. These places, so goes the tale, once belonged to a n.o.bleman who chanced to have as his ward a young lady of singular loveliness. He had also two sons, of whom the elder was heir to Liebenstein, while the younger was destined to inherit Sterrenberg. These brothers were fast friends, and this part.i.tioning of the paternal estates never begot so much as an angry word between them; but, alas! in an evil day they both fell in love with the same woman?their father?s ward. Such events have happened often, and usually they have ended in bitter strife; but the elder of the young men was of magnanimous temperament, and, convinced that the lady favoured the other?s advances more than his, he left him to woo and win her, and so in due course it was announced that the younger brother and she were affianced. Anon the date fixed for their nuptials drew near, but it happened that, in the interim, the young knight of Sterrenberg had become infected with a desire to join a crusade; and now, despite the entreaties of his fiancee and his father, he mustered a troop of men-at-arms, led them to join the Emperor Conrad at Frankfort, and set off for the Holy Land. Year after year went by; still the warrior was absent, and betimes his friends and relations began to lose all hope of ever seeing him again, imagining that he must have fallen at the hands of the infidel. Yet this suspicion was never actually confirmed, and the elder brother, far from taking the advantage which the strange situation offered, continued to eschew paying any addresses to his brother?s intended bride, and invariably treated her simply as a beloved sister.

Sometimes, no doubt, it occurred to him that he might win her yet; but of a sudden his horizon was changed totally, and changed in a most unexpected fashion. The rover came back! And lo! it was not merely a tale of war that he brought with him, for it transpired that while abroad he had proved false to his vows and taken to himself a wife, a damsel of Grecian birth who was even now in his train. The knight of Liebenstein was bitterly incensed on hearing the news, and sent his brother a fierce challenge to meet him in single combat; but scarcely had they met and drawn swords ere the injured lady intervened. She reminded the young men of their sacred bond of fraternity; she implored them to desist from the crime of bloodshed. Then, having averted this, she experienced a great longing to renounce all earthly things, and took the veil in a neighbouring convent, thus shattering for ever the rekindled hopes of her elder suitor. But he, the hero of the drama, was not the only sufferer, for his brother was not to go unpunished for his perfidy. A strange tale went forth, a scandalous tale to the effect that the Grecian damsel was unfaithful to her spouse. Sterrenberg began to rue his ill-timed marriage, and ultimately was forced to banish his wife altogether. And so, each in his wind-swept castle?for their father was now dead?the two knights lived on, brooding often on the curious events of which their lives had been composed. The elder never married, and the younger had no inclination to take that step a second time.

They never entered court or town, Nor looked on woman?s face; But childless to the grave went down, The last of all their race.

And still upon the mountain fair Are seen two castles grey, That, like their lords, together there Sink slowly to decay.

The gust that shakes the tottering stone On one burg?s battlement, Upon the other?s rampart lone Hath equal fury spent.

And when through Sternberg?s shattered wall The misty moonbeams shine, Upon the crumbling walls they fall Of dreary Liebenstein.

This legend is recounted here to ill.u.s.trate the poetry of the Rhine. A variant of it is given on p. 171.

Argenfels