The Seven Springs of Thale.
Between the red-roofed Thale and Dorf Neinstedt, one sees several low, round hills, here and there overgrown with thorns and thickets, sometimes bare of all vegetation save short grass.
These mounds are graves of primeval days, in which urns and bones have been found.
At the foot of these hills, in a semicircle, are seven small springs, which unite themselves in one tiny brooklet, over which the train passes.
On the summit of one of these hills once stood seven trees called the Seven Brothers, of which now no trace remains.
Seven royal brothers came from England to woo the seven daughters of the king of the Harz mountains, the fame of whose beauty had penetrated even to the English court. These princesses were called the Sunbeams of the mountains; and when the English princes arrived in the Felsenburg of their royal father, they found assembled there princes and nobles from Saxony and Thuringia, Franconia and Bohemia, from the banks of the Danube and the amber coasts of the sea.
But the Sunbeams loved the English princes, and promised to go with them to their father's court.
Then the German wooers were enraged, and said, "Not without combat will we permit these strangers to rob us of the glory of our land."
The brothers seized sword and shield, but the princesses rushed into their arms and hindered the combat. At midnight, when the full moon shone, each brother, with his affianced bride behind him on his fleet steed, fled toward the rocky shores of England.
Suddenly the affrighted maidens see the glitter of arms in the faint moonlight.
"What is that that glitters below on the plain?" they cry.
"Fear not," said the youths, "'tis the waves of the Bode."
"What is that whistling in the forest?"
"The thrushes sing in the shadows of the foliage."
"Do you hear the rustling in the thicket?"
"'Tis but the frightened deer."
"What is that murmur?"
"The spring gushing out of the rocks."
"And that whispering?"
"The wind!"
"You deceive us. Your eyes burn like the lightning, you have seized both sword and shield!"
"Fear not! We are with you; our arm will defend you!"
Out of the thicket rush the concealed rivals; a furious combat follows; the English princes are all slain, their bodies burnt and the ashes buried.
The princesses returned to their father's castle, but hated the murderers of their English lovers. Every day they went with the dawn to the spot where the brothers lay in their deep slumber, and night found them still there in tears.
Each princess planted a tree by her lover's grave, and when seven moons were passed away, one evening, as they sat by the graves, suddenly they felt a great joy spring up within them; they wiped away their tears, but from them seven springs bubbled up sparkling and clear. Smiling, they gave each other the hand, feeling the hour of reunion was come, and in the morning they were found dead, hand in hand.