Legends of the Teufelsmauer.
On the plain, stretching away westward from the once imperial Quedlinburg, is the Devil's Wall, which rises in ragged rocks in the most fantastic shapes and forms, sometimes a hundred feet in height, mostly bare, but nearer to Blankenburg adorned with foliage.
This is the backbone of a mountain chain once extending from Blankenburg to Ballenstedt, which has been mostly washed away by the tempests of untold ages.
These rocks are a firm sandstone with a vein of iron, containing impressions of fossils, shells, and plants, and are sometimes in such forms as to resemble the ruins of castles or human figures.
These rent and torn rocks could not fail to possess their legends.
In the time of Charlemagne there lived in Blanka a maiden called Thusnelda. The report of her charms attracted the attention of the brave Egbert, who had built on the Klus near Halberstadt a strong castle. He won her affections, of course.
Just at this period the doctrines of the Christian faith had penetrated into the Harz; Egbert had become a convert, and had won Thusnelda also for the new faith.
But the lovers were betrayed to Thusnelda's father, the wild and savage Luitprand, and he, in fury, having promised her to a companion in arms, shut her up in a gloomy room, deaf to all her entreaties, and laid in wait for Egbert; but Egbert assembled all the Christians of the neighbourhood, and set off in the night to storm Luitprand's castle.
Suddenly a wall of rock rose before them, and they were obliged to wait till morning, when lo! as far as they could see, only this formidable barrier that blocked up their way.