The Red-haired Trude
At a time when very few men lived upon the earth, when towns and villages were few and very widely separated, when there were no roads in the mountains, and before Romulus and Remus were rescued by the motherly wolf on the yellow Tiber, or Nausikaa fell in love with Odysseus, there stood a house on the site of Schloss Ilsenburg, inhabited by a widow and her daughter Trude.
Deeper in among the mountains stood an old stone Schloss, on the granite wall connecting the Ilsenstein and the opposite-lying Westerberg, which had been bought, and was inhabited by a father and his fair daughter Ilse.
Nobody knew who the father was, but it was supposed—as people do in many cases—that he was some fallen and deposed Prince.
During the absence of the Prince and Princess Ilse on a journey, a stranger, handsome and gay, without money, sack, or scrip, but rich in self-confidence and flattering words, sought hospitality of the widow and her daughter, and was warmly received and entertained.
Ralf "fell in love" with Trude, and a blissful summer was spent gathering wild fruits and flowers and hunting birds' nests among the mountains.
The nuptials were near, and the widow was busy with the bride's trousseau, when unexpectedly with Autumn arrived the foreign Prince and fair Ilse from their mysterious journey.
Ritter Ralf, it must be confessed, was very naughty. With an eagle-eye he perceived the radiant charms of Princess Ilse, and poor Trude was forsaken.
The widow reproached him with his perfidy, but he replied, "The eagle mates but with the eagle, and though I have fled from a severe father, I am of noble blood, and have found a Braut of my own rank."
The widow swore revenge, and consoled the weeping Trude, begging her only to wait till Walpurgisnacht[[1]] and her perfidious lover should be punished.
[[1]] Night before the first of May, when all evil spirits and witches, according to the legend, meet on the Brocken. See Goethe's "Faust."
She made a league with the evil spirits of the mountains and the air, and devoted herself to the unholy arts of a witch.
Walpurgisnacht arrived, the widow stood on the balcony of her house and invoked the demons and witches, who swept through the night, which rested black as destruction on the mountains, heavy as the day of wrath and vengeance.
From the Brocken broke a terrible tempest. Awful thunders rolled, lightnings in fiery serpents cut their way through the heavens and mountains, and a tremendous flood swept down from the Brocken, destroying all in its course.
The coalers clung to the rocky walls, but Princess Ilse looked calmly on the wild scene, saw the rocks rent on which her father's castle stood, and it, her lover, father, and servants all swept away; and as she too was about to perish, a tall manly form, with majestic head and black locks—probably the Fairy King—seized her in his strong arms, wrapped her in a white mantle, and vanished.
Poor Trude, from the balcony by her mother's side, saw her faithless Ralf carried down the torrent, threw herself over after him, and when the flood had subsided the widow found them in each other's arms, washed up on the banks of the river.