The Nymph Ruma and the Weingarten Höhle.
In the middle of fruitful fields and green meadows not far from Scharzfels rises the ball-shaped alabaster Romerstein, on whose summit ragged cliffs rise in the air resembling the ruins of a castle.
In the days before authentic history a race of giants dwelt hereabout, who, fearing the mountain-spirit,[[1]] piled up these cliffs and constructed thus a giant fortress, of which these cliffs are the proud remains.
[[1]] Berggeist.
Romar, a blooming youth of this race, was once hunting in the neighbouring forest for deer or wild boar.
The soft air fanned gently his glowing face, the birds sang in the thicket, and the gentle influence of the hour led him to slacken his pace.
Suddenly he stood still before a maiden asleep on a mossy bank under the rustling trees.
Silently admiring, Romar gazed at the sleeping beauty, and the sweetest emotions filled his breast, till the stranger opened her eyes and beheld him, uttered a scream of terror, sprang up, and fled into the thickest of the forest.
A moment Romar stood rooted to the ground; then coming to his senses, he followed the fleeing maiden, and, soon overtaking her, quieted her fears by kind and honest words; and this first meeting gave rise to many others. All suspicion, every fear vanished, and love speedily filled the maiden's heart.
Romar inquired after the descent of his beloved, and turned pale as he discovered that she was a nymph, and the daughter of the Berggeist, so hostile to his race, and a river goddess, and dwelt in the neighbouring mountain lake.
The nymph reassured him, told him she was her father's favourite, and he had never refused her a single request, and certainly would not refuse his consent to their union.
Accordingly, during the absence of the Berggeist, they were married.
A long time had passed, and Romar slept one day under an oak near Ruma, who held a lovely boy in her arms. Her father, returning from his journey, stepped out of the thicket, and came suddenly upon them.
His first glance at the pair told him what had happened, and a smothered tone of anger forced itself from his trembling lips.
Terrified, the nymph sprang up, and as she saw her secret discovered, and her father so enraged, she rushed toward him and entreated him to be calm. Romar now came forward and sought from the old mountain god reconciliation; but the latter only became more enraged.
A wave of his hand called whole troops of well-armed dwarfs together, who were commanded to lead away mother and child; while others so maltreated Romar, that he only escaped covered with wounds to the Giant Castle.
The Berggeist now tormented his unhappy daughter every hour to give up her husband. But her love for Romar only increased, and her father in his insane rage seized the child, broke it in pieces on the rocks, cursed and swore because he could not take the same measures with his mother, created with a wave of his hand the cave, the Weingarten Höhle, banished her into it, and left her with a laugh of scorn.
Banished into the earth, shut up in a cave, the entrance guarded by malicious cobolds, the wretched Ruma sought to reach Romar, and a succession of cavings in proves her efforts to set herself free; but her watchful father always thrust her back into the depths of the earth.
At last, after long years, she succeeded, by a subterranean way, in escaping from her father's dominions, as a full stream to spring into the light of day, and at a time when he, by the decree of an inscrutable destiny, had been attacked by a sort of torpor, she reached her old residence, the Nymph's lake, and was reunited to her faithful husband.
The river which springs from the mountain on the border of the Gyps mountains is called, in honour of the faithful, loving nymph, the Ruma. Still its waters redden with the blood of her innocent child.
The cliffs of the ruinated Giant Castle wear mourning still, and bear the name of the hero, the Romerstein, or Romar's rock.