Legends of the Teufelsmauer.
On the plain, stretching away westward from the once imperial Quedlinburg, is the Devil's Wall, which rises in ragged rocks in the most fantastic shapes and forms, sometimes a hundred feet in height, mostly bare, but nearer to Blankenburg adorned with foliage.
This is the backbone of a mountain chain once extending from Blankenburg to Ballenstedt, which has been mostly washed away by the tempests of untold ages.
These rocks are a firm sandstone with a vein of iron, containing impressions of fossils, shells, and plants, and are sometimes in such forms as to resemble the ruins of castles or human figures.
These rent and torn rocks could not fail to possess their legends.
In the time of Charlemagne there lived in Blanka a maiden called Thusnelda. The report of her charms attracted the attention of the brave Egbert, who had built on the Klus near Halberstadt a strong castle. He won her affections, of course.
Just at this period the doctrines of the Christian faith had penetrated into the Harz; Egbert had become a convert, and had won Thusnelda also for the new faith.
But the lovers were betrayed to Thusnelda's father, the wild and savage Luitprand, and he, in fury, having promised her to a companion in arms, shut her up in a gloomy room, deaf to all her entreaties, and laid in wait for Egbert; but Egbert assembled all the Christians of the neighbourhood, and set off in the night to storm Luitprand's castle.
Suddenly a wall of rock rose before them, and they were obliged to wait till morning, when lo! as far as they could see, only this formidable barrier that blocked up their way.
Egbert encouraged his braves to climb it; but when half way up, the giant rocks fell upon them and crushed every daring knight to atoms.
This wall the devil had built to prevent the spread of the new faith.
The other legend says the devil wished to divide with Christ the empire of the world, and therefore began this wall as the border between the two kingdoms; but the work was not finished at the time agreed upon by the contracting parties, and the contract was broken. The devil, in wrath at having laboured so much for nought, broke in pieces his partly built defence.
There is a tradition that the holy Vehm,[[1]] or Fehm, formerly held her court also in the Teufelsmauer, not far from the majestic Reinstein.
[[1]] Vehm, or Fehm, old German for punishment.
This celebrated tribunal had its origin in Westphalia, the land of the Red Earth, and was one of the most remarkable institutions of the middle ages.
The Fehm is said to have been instituted by Charlemagne to prevent Saxony, which had been forced by his arms to embrace Christianity, from returning to Paganism. Others claim for it a much greater antiquity.[[2]]
[[2]] See "History of the Fehm Tribunal; or, Secret History of Westphalia." By Fr. P. Usener. Frankfort, 1832.