It was customary at that time for those who inclined to the monastic life, and who as St. Benedict expressed himself, felt strong enough to fight with the Devil, without the assistance of pious companions, to have themselves immured in that way. They were called "Reclausi" that is Walled-in, and their usefulness and aim in life, may well be compared to that of the pillar-saints in Egypt. The sharp winds of winter, and frequent fall of snow, rendered their exposure in the open air somewhat impossible, but the longing for an anchorite's life, was nevertheless quite as strong.
Within those four walls on Erin-hill there lived the Sister Wiborad, a far-famed recluse of her time. She came from Klingnau in Aargau, and had been a proud and prudish virgin, learned in many an art; besides being able to recite all the Psalms in the Latin tongue, which she had learnt from her brother Hitto. She was not however quite opposed to the idea of sweetening the life of some man or other, but the flower of the youth at Aargau did not find grace in her eyes; and one day she set out on a pilgrimage to Rome. There in the holy city her restless mind must have undergone some great shock, but none of her contemporaries ever knew in what way. For three entire days her brother Hitto ran up and down the Forum through the halls of the Colliseum, and the triumphal arch of Constantine to the four-faced Janus near the Tiber, seeking for his sister and not finding her, and on the morning of the fourth day, she walked in by the Salarian gate, carrying her head very high, and whilst her eyes gleamed strangely she said, that things would not be right in the world until the due amount of veneration was shown unto St. Martin.
After returning to her home, she bequeathed all her wealth to the bishop's church at Constance, on condition that a great festival in honor of St. Martin, should be held every year on the 11th of November. Then she went to live in a small house where the holy Zilia had lived before, and there led a hermit's life, until she grew dissatisfied, and betook herself to the valley of St. Gallus. The bishop himself accompanied her, put the black veil on her head with his own hands, and after leading her into the cell, he laid the first stone with which the entrance was closed up. Then he pronounced his blessing, imprinting his seal four times into the lead, which joined the stones together, whilst the monks who had accompanied him, chaunted sad solemn strains, as if someone was being buried.
The people thereabout held the recluse in great honour. They called her a "hard-forged Saint" and on many a Sunday they flocked to the meadow before her cell, and listened to Wiborad, who stood preaching at her window, and several women went to live in her neighbourhood, to be instructed in all the virtues.
"We have arrived at the place of our destination," said Romeias, upon which Praxedis and her companions looked about in every direction; but not a human being was to be seen. Only some belated butterflies and beetles buzzed drowsily in the sunshine and the cricket chirped merrily, hidden in the grass. The shutter at Wiborad's window was almost shut, so that but a scanty ray of sunshine could penetrate; and from within came the monotonous hollow tones of a person chaunting psalms, with a somewhat nasal sound, breaking the silence without. Romeias knocked against the shutter with his spear, but this had no effect on the psalm-chaunting individual inside. Then the gate-keeper said: "We must try some other way of rousing her attention."
Romeias was rather a rough sort of man, or he would not have behaved as he did.
He began singing a song, such as he often sang to amuse the cloister-pupils, when they managed to steal off into his watch-tower, there to plague him, by pulling his beard or by making all sorts of absurd noises on his big horn. It was one of those ditties, which from the time that the German tongue was first spoken, have been sung by the thousand, on hills and highroads, beneath hedges and woody dells, and the wind has carried them on and spread them further. The words of this were as follows:
"I know an oak-tree fair to see,
In yonder shady grove,
There bills and coos the lifelong day
A beautiful wild dove.
I know a rock in yonder vale,
Around which bats are flitting
There, old and hoary in her nest
An ugly owl is sitting.
The wild dove is my heart's delight,
And with a song I greet it;
The arrow keep I for the owl
To kill it when I meet it."
This song had about the same effect, as if Romeias had thrown a heavy stone against the shutter. Instantly there appeared a figure at the little window, from the withered and scraggy neck of which, rose a ghastly woman's head, in whose countenance the mouth had assumed a rather hostile position towards the nose. A dark veil hid the rest, and bending out of the little window as far as she could, she cried out with ominously gleaming eyes: "Art thou come back, Satanas?"
Romeias then advanced a few steps and said complacently: "Nay, the Evil One does not know such fine songs as Romeias, the monastery's gate-keeper. Calm yourself Sister Wiborad, I bring you some dainty damsels, whom the Abbot warmly recommends to your kind reception."