THE KYFFHÄUSER. 285 had perished in Africa, the lower classes of Frederick's subjects would not believe the story. They would have it that the Emperor was alive, and would return to his dominions, and so stubbornly did they hold fast by that opinion that several pretenders took advantage of it to pass themselves off as the true Barbarossa. The German people still maintain the same faith, for their hero has been seen by many of them in the Kyffhäuser mountain, in the old palatinate of the Saxon imperial house. There, in a cavern, with all his knights and squires around him, he sits to this day, leaning his head upon his arm, at a table through which his beard has grown, or round which, according to other accounts, it has grown twice. When it has thrice encircled the table, he will wake up to battle. The cavern glitters with gold and jewels, and is as bright as the sunniest day. Thousands of horses stand at mangers filled with thorn-bushes instead of hay, and make a prodigious noise as they stamp on the ground and rattle their chains. The old Kaiser sometimes wakes up for a moment and speaks to his visitors. He once asked a herdsman who had found his way into the Kyffhäuser, "Are the ravens [Odin's birds] "still flying about the mountain ?” 286 ARTHUR AS WODEN. The man replied that they were. "Then," said Barbarossa, "I must sleep a hundred years longer." That Frederick and all the rest of the caverned princes and warriors are no other than Woden and his wild host, is clear from many details of the legends concerning them.* People who visit the Emperor in the Kyffhäuser receive just such presents as are given by the wild huntsman,-horses' legs or heads that afterwards turn into gold; and there is a lady in the Kyffhäuser, who is variously called the Princess, the Kaiser's housekeeper, Mademoiselle or Jungfer, and sometimes even Frau Holle (Holda), who is beyond all doubt Woden's wife Fria.† "Arthur too, the vanished king, whose return is expected by the Britons, and who rides at the head of the nightly host, is said to dwell with his menat-arms in a mountain; Felicia, Sybilla's daughter, and the goddess Juno, live with him, and the whole army are well provided with food, drink, horses, and clothes." Such was the belief of mediæval Germany, as stated by Grimm ;‡ for the legend of the British Arthur overspread all Christendom, and was even localized in Sicily, where, as Gervase of Tilbury was * D. M. p. 912. Mannhardt, p. 138. +Ndd. p. 495. On the authority of the Wartburg Krieg. D. M. p. 912. told by the inhabitants, the departed hero had his dwelling in Etna.* To the same legend belongs a tradition of Thomas the Rhymer, the favourite of the Fairy Queen, which is current on the Scottish border, and which has been related by Sir Walter Scott. It is that " of a daring horse-jockey having sold a black horse to a man of venerable and antique appearance, who appointed the remarkable hillock upon Eildon hills, called the Lucken hare, as the place where, at twelve o'clock at night, he should receive the price. He came, his money was paid in ancient coin, and he was invited by his customer to view his residence. The trader in horses followed his guide in the deepest astonishment through several long ranges of stalls, in each of which a horse stood motionless, while an armed warrior lay equally still at the charger's feet. All these men,' said the wizard in a whisper, 'will awaken at the battle of Sheriffmoor.' At the extremity of this extraordinary depôt hung a sword and a horn, which the prophet pointed out to the horse-dealer as containing the means of dissolving the spell. The man in confusion took the horn and attempted to wind it. The horses instantly started in their stalls, stamped, * Liebrecht. "Demonology and Witchcraft," p. 133, and Notes to "Waverley." 288 ENCHANTED HOST IN THE EILDONS. and shook their bridles, the men arose and clashed their armour, and the mortal, terrified at the tumult he had excited, dropped the horn from his hand. A voice like that of a giant, louder even than the tumult around, pronounced these words : Woe to the coward that ever he was born, That did not draw the sword before he blew the horn! A whirlwind expelled the horse-dealer from the cavern, the entrance to which he could never find again." "This legend," Sir Walter adds, "with several variations, is found in many parts of Scotland and England; the scene is sometimes laid in some favourite glen of the Highlands, sometimes in the deep coal-mines of Northumberland and Cumberland, which run so far beneath the ocean. But it is a circumstance worth notice, that although this edition of the tale is limited to the year 1715, by the very mention of the Sheriffmoor, yet a similar story appears to have been current during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, which is given by Reginald Scot." Sir Walter takes it for granted that Thomas the Rhymer was himself the leader of the army for which he purveyed horses, but this is a gratuitous and improbable assumption. The very passage THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS. 289 which he has quoted from Leyden's "Scenes of Infancy" shows that according to other versions of the story the caverned warriors are King Arthur's knights: Say who is he, with summons long and high, Roll the long sound through Eildon's caverns vast, Although Scott confessed his inability to account for the incident of the horn and sword, its meaning is not at all dubious. The caverned heroes, as we have said, under whatever name they are known, and wherever they repose, are all representatives of Odin and his host. The great battle to which they will at last awake is that which will be fought before the end of the world, when heaven and earth shall be destroyed and the Æsir gods themselves shall perish, and their places shall be filled by a new creation and new and brighter gods. The sword concealed in the heart of the Eildon hill is that of Heimdallr, the Sverdâs or Sword-god, and warder of Bifrost bridge, and his is the Gjallar horn with which he will warn the gods that the frost giants are advancing to storm Valhalla.* Kuhn u. Schwartz, Ndd. p. 496. |