One midday, Ekkehard had just begun taking his usual walk on the narrow path before his cavern, when a strange visitor met his view. It was the she-bear, which he had dug out of the snow. Slowly she climbed up the steep ascent, carrying something in her snout. He ran back to his cave to fetch his spear, but the bear did not come as an enemy. Pausing respectfully at the entrance of his domicile, she dropped a fat marmot, which she had caught basking in the sunny grass, on a projecting stone. Was it meant as a present to thank him for having saved her life, or was it instigated by other feelings, who knows?--To be sure, Ekkehard had helped to consume the mortal remains of her spouse;--could some of the widow's affection thus be transferred to him?--we know too little about the law of affinities to decide this question.
The bear now sat down timidly before the cavern, stedfastly gazing in. Then, Ekkehard was touched, and pushed a wooden plate with some honey towards her, though still keeping his spear in his hand. But she only shook her head mournfully. The look out of her small, lidless eyes was melancholy and beseeching. Ekkehard then took down his harp from the wall, and began to play the strain, which Benedicta had asked for. This evidently had a soothing effect on the deserted bear-widow's mind; for raising herself on her hind-legs, she walked up and down, with rhythmical grace; but when Ekkehard played faster and wilder, she bashfully cast down her eyes, as her thirty-years-old bear's conscience did not sanction her dancing. Then, she stretched herself out again before the cavern, as if she wanted to deserve the praise, which the author of the hymn in praise of St. Gallus, bestowed on the bears, when he called them, "animals possessing an admirable degree of modesty."
"We two suit each other well," said Ekkehard. "Thou hast lost what thou hast loved best, in the snow, and I, in the tempest,--I will play something more for thee."
He now chose a melancholy air which seemed to please her well, as she gave an approving growl now and then. But Ekkehard, ever inwardly busy with his epic, at last said: "I have thought for a long while, what name I should give to the Hunnic queen, under whose care the young Hildgund was placed; and now I have found one. Her name shall be Ospirin, the godlike bearess. Dost thou understand me?"
The bear looked at him, as if it were all the same to her; so Ekkehard drew forth his manuscript, and added the name. The wish to make known the creation of his mind to some living being, had for a long while been strong within him. Here, in the vast solitude of the mountains, he thought that the bear might take the place which under other circumstances would have required some learned scholar. So he stepped into his blockhouse, and leaning on his spear, he read out the beginning of his poem; he read with a loud, enthusiastic voice, and the bear listened with laudable perseverance.
So he read further and further; how the knights of Worms, who persecuted Waltari, entered the Wasgau-forest, and fought with him,--and still she listened patiently; but when at last the single combat went on without end,--when Ekkefried of Saxony fell down into the grass a slain man, beside the bodies of his predecessors, and Hadwart and Patavid, the nephews of Hagen, likewise shared the lot of their companions,--then, the bear raised herself slowly, as if even she had grown tired of so much bloodshed; and with stately steps strode down the valley.
In a solitary rocky crag on the Sigelsalp opposite, was her domicile. Thitherwards she directed her steps, to prepare for the coming long sleep of winter.
The epic, however, which of all living beings, was first heard by the she-bear of the Sigelsalp, the writer of this book, has rendered into German verse, during the long winter-evenings; and though many a worthy translator had undertaken this task before him, he yet did not like to withhold it from the reader, in order that he may see, that in the tenth century, as well as in later ages, the spirit of poetry had set up her abode in the minds of chosen men.