A LEGEND OF BREGENZ
Irrespective of its unusually beautiful situation, one finds in Bregenz much to interest and detain. It is a truly ancient place, with much history—some of it of a romantic kind—attached to it. In the Middle Ages, indeed, the overlords of the town and district were so powerful that their house supplied the Emperor Charlemagne with a bride, concerning whom there is a legendary and highly romantic tale.
CHURCH INTERIOR, TYROL
It would appear from this story that Charlemagne was of a more than usually suspicious nature, and by no means one of those complaisant husbands with which the Mediæval tales have familiarized us. An old lover of Hildegarde, having seen her married to the Emperor with great distress of mind, in his wrath against her for preferring even an Emperor to himself, got ear of Charlemagne, and so succeeded in poisoning the latter's mind against his bride, that he either divorced or repudiated her, and married a Lombardian princess called Desiderata.
Accepting her fate resignedly, Hildegarde eventually found her way to Rome, where she devoted herself to the care of the sick, and especially of the sick pilgrims who came to the "Eternal City." In course of time, so the story goes, her revengeful lover, whose name, Taland, is almost as common a one in Tyrol as Smith in England, having lost his sight, came on a pilgrimage, and whilst in Rome was cared for by Hildegarde, "whose tender and saintly hands," we are told, "not only restored his physical sight, but also his moral perception of right and wrong."
He was so overcome with remorse when he learned to whom, under Providence, he owed his restoration to sight, that he confessed his fault to Hildegarde, and insisted upon accompanying her to Charlemagne, to whom he also confessed, and proved Hildegarde to have been blameless. The Emperor at once restored her to favour and honour.
In another story connected with Bregenz, which was made the subject of a poem by the late Adelaide Ann Proctor, one has preserved an incident connected with the heroic conduct of a Bregenz woman in saving the town from surprise and destruction by the Swiss. There are several versions of the story, which dates from 1408, but probably, as it is of a legendary character, the one given in the ballad is as correct as any other.
Unhappily, the Bregenz folk of to-day appear to know little of this heroine; and on one occasion on which we visited the town, and made a search for the effigy of the Maid and her steed on the gate of the old castle, or walls of the upper town, we were unable to find it. No one seemed to know the story of the "Maid of Bregenz," and an old lady, who had a temporary stall outside the gate for the sale of cakes and other refreshments, became quite irascible upon our persisting in the belief that there must have been a "Maid," and that she (the old lady) ought to know the legend.