The cat, as I have shown in a previous chapter, like the boar, was an Aryan personification of storm and tempest.
When the Hackelberg-Odin was killed by the boar's tusk, in accordance with his last request, he was interred at the spot to which his favourite steed unguided bore him. He is believed to have been buried in the "enchanted or cloud mountain," which the superstitious, however, still insist upon finding on the earth. He is supposed to lie in a secluded spot on some lone moorland side, the way to which no curious enquirer ever trod a second time. Hence the many traditions of heroes slumbering in caves, awaiting the signal for future battle, and their triumph over the enchantment that has held them for ages spell-bound. Frederic Barbarossa—he of the red beard like Odin—is yet believed by the German peasantry to rest in a cavern, surrounded by his knights, in the Kyffhäuser mountain, "leaning his head upon his arm, at a table through which his beard has grown, or around which, according to other accounts, it has grown twice. When it has thrice encircled the table he will awake up to battle. The cavern glitters with gold and jewels, and is as bright as the sunniest day. Thousands of horses stand at mangers filled with thorn bushes instead of hay, and make a prodigious noise as they stamp on the ground and rattle their chains. The old Kaiser sometimes wakes up for a moment and speaks to his visitors. He once asked a herdsman who had found his way into the Kyffhäuser, 'Are the ravens [Odin's birds] still flying about the mountain?' The man replied that they were. 'Then,' said Barbarossa, 'I must sleep a hundred years longer.'" From many details in this superstition, Mannhardt clearly identifies Frederic and his companions with Odin and his wild host.
Similar stories are told of the Emperor Henry the Fowler, who is said to be entranced in the Sudemerberg, near Goslar. Charlemagne and his enchanted army are believed to slumber in several different localities. In Britain, Armorica, Normandy, and other places, the caverned hero, who has superseded Odin, is the renowned Arthur, who is expected yet to reappear, and restore the glory of the ancient British race. Grimm shows that the mediæval Germans believed that "Arthur, too, the vanished King, whose return is expected by the Britons, and who rides at the head of the nightly host, is said to dwell with his men at arms in a mountain; Felicia, Sybilla's daughter, and the goddess Juno, live with him, and the whole army are well provided with food, drink, horses, and clothes."
It appears that the earliest poetical writer in the English vernacular, at the commencement of the thirteenth century, Layamon, in his "Brut or Chronicle of Britain, a Poetical Semi-Saxon Paraphrase of the Brut of Wace," first engrafted this legend on the Arthurian romances. According to him, Arthur, when dying, addressed Constantine, his successor, as follows:—"I will fare to Avalun to the fairest of all maidens, to Argante, the Queen, an elf most fair, and she shall make my wounds all sound; make me all whole with healing draughts. And afterwards I will come again to my kingdom and dwell with the Britons with mickle joy." Layamon further adds:—"Even with the words there approached from the sea a little short boat floating with the waves, and two women therein wondrously formed; and they took Arthur anon, and bare him quickly, and laid him softly down, and forth they gan depart. Then was it accomplished that Merlin whilom said, that mickle care should come of Arthur's departure. The Britons believe yet that he is alive and dwelleth in Avalun with the fairest of all elves, and the Britons even yet expect when Arthur shall return." Amongst the Welsh bards, after the appearance of Geoffrey's History, fairy land was designated "Ynys yr Avallon," or the "Island of the Apple Trees."
Sir Walter Scott, in his "Demonology and Witchcraft," relates a tradition, in which he makes Thomas the Rhymer the hero, but this Kelly contends is a blunder, and cites the following passage, quoted by Sir Walter himself, from Leyden's "Scenes of Infancy," in proof of his view that the caverned warriors referred to were King Arthur's Knights:—
Say who is he with summons loud and long
Shall bid the charmed sleep of ages fly,
Roll the long sound through Eildon's caverns vast,
While each dark warrior kindles at the blast;
The horn, the falchion grasp with mighty hand,
And peal proud Arthur's march from Fairy land?
Sir Walter Scott's version of the legend is as follows:—"A daring horse-jockey sold a black horse to a man of venerable and antique appearance, who appointed the remarkable hillock upon Eildon Hills, called the Lucken Hare, as the place where, at twelve o'clock at night he should receive the price. He came, his money was paid in ancient coin, and he was invited by his customer to view his residence. The trader in horses followed his guide in the deepest astonishment through several long ranges of stalls, in each of which a horse stood motionless, while an armed warrior lay equally still at the charger's feet. 'All these men,' said the wizard in a whisper, 'will awaken at the battle of Sheriffmoor.' At the extremity of this extraordinary depôt hung a sword and a horn, which the prophet pointed out to the horse dealer as containing the means of dissolving the spell. The man, in confusion, took the horn and attempted to wind it. The horses instantly started in their stalls, stamped, and shook their bridles, the men arose and clashed their armour, and the mortal, terrified at the tumult he had excited, dropped the horn from his hand. A voice like that of a giant, louder even than the tumult around, pronounced these words:—
Woe to the coward that ever he was born,
That did not draw the sword before he blew the horn!
A whirlwind expelled the horse dealer from the cavern, the entrance to which he could never find again."
In the neighbourhood of Kirkoswald, on the Eden, in Cumberland, a district prolific in Arthurian legends, it is said that "a peculiar wind called the Helmwind, sometimes blows with great fury in this part of the country. It is believed by some persons to be an electrical phenomenon." Perhaps this fact may have some remote connection with the superstition under consideration.