On the way from Basel to Bern, the train passes through a long tunnel piercing a hill upon which stand the ruins of Castle Grimmenstein. This was once the home of so enthusiastic a hunter, that he even broke the Sabbath to indulge in his favourite sport. His wife, a gentle and pious soul, once vainly besought him not to desecrate a particularly holy day of rest, but he nevertheless sallied forth, and after a long search came across a doe with its young.
Although this gentle animal bravely tried to defend her offspring, the cruel hunter slew them all one after another. But, just as the doe breathed her last, a giant sprang out of the ground, shook his fist vehemently at the Sabbath-breaker, and exclaiming that the harmless animals were already avenged, vanished with them underground!
The lord of Grimmenstein, awed in spite of himself by these mysterious words and by the sudden disappearance of the quarry he had slain, gave up all thought of further hunting for that day and rode slowly home. But when he entered his wife’s apartment, he found her and his children dying from the very wounds he had inflicted upon the gentle doe and her young.
Ever since then, when war or pestilence threaten the land, the lord of Grimmenstein rises from his grave, blows a resonant blast upon his hunting-horn, and again sets out to range through woods and valleys in quest of game.
THE WILD HUNT.
Besides this hunter and Sabbath-breaker, almost every valley and hillside in Switzerland is said to be visited at times by some similar wraith, sweeping by on the wings of the wind. But the apparition which makes the most noise and causes most damage is undoubtedly that of Odin, the Wild Huntsman himself, who often rushes through the land with all his ghostly train of heathen deities.[2]
[2] See the author’s “Myths of Northern Lands.”
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After passing through the Wynigen tunnel, the train soon comes to Burgdorf, an ancient and picturesque little city, with an old castle in which Pestalozzi established a school toward the end of the eighteenth century.