CHAPTER X. THE LEGEND OF ROLAND.—THE ADVENTURES OF NYMPHALIN ON THE
ISLAND OF NONNEWERTH.—HER SONG.—THE DECAY OF THE FAIRY-FAITH IN ENGLAND.
ON the shore opposite the Drachenfels stand the Ruins of Rolandseck,—they are the shattered crown of a lofty and perpendicular mountain, consecrated to the memory of the brave Roland; below, the trees of an island to which the lady of Roland retired, rise thick and verdant from the smooth tide.
Nothing can exceed the eloquent and wild grandeur of the whole scene. That spot is the pride and beauty of the Rhine.
The legend that consecrates the tower and the island is briefly told; it belongs to a class so common to the Romaunts of Germany. Roland goes to the wars. A false report of his death reaches his betrothed. She retires to the convent in the isle of Nonnewerth, and takes the irrevocable veil. Roland returns home, flushed with glory and hope, to find that the very fidelity of his affianced had placed an eternal barrier between them. He built the castle that bears his name, and which overlooks the monastery, and dwelt there till his death,—happy in the power at least to gaze, even to the last, upon those walls which held the treasure he had lost.
The willows droop in mournful luxuriance along the island, and harmonize with the memory that, through the desert of a thousand years, love still keeps green and fresh. Nor hath it permitted even those additions of fiction which, like mosses, gather by time over the truth that they adorn, yet adorning conceal, to mar the simple tenderness of the legend.
All was still in the island of Nonnewerth; the lights shone through the trees from the house that contained our travellers. On one smooth spot where the islet shelves into the Rhine met the wandering fairies.
“Oh, Pipalee! how beautiful!” cried Nymphalin, as she stood enraptured by the wave, a star-beam shining on her, with her yellow hair “dancing its ringlets in the whistling wind.” “For the first time since our departure I do not miss the green fields of England.”
“Hist!” said Pipalee, under her breath; “I hear fairy steps,—they must be the steps of strangers.”