In the latter rock one sees the impressions of giant feet, and Romance attempts to account for them. She is at least as competent to do so as anybody else, A giant virgin of the grey primeval times saw from the Mägdesprung her lover on a mountain on the opposite bank.
Her ardent love draws her to him, but she cannot climb the steep rocks, nor swim the Selke, then a torrent.
So she dares—for what will not love dare?—to leap over the wide space that divides the two rocks, leaving the impress of her feet in the rock, since called the Mägdetrappe.
Another Sage has a totally different motive.
A maiden of the Huns, a disciple of Diana, roaming fearlessly through the vale, hears from the Mägdesprung a cry of distress. She recognizes the voice that cries for aid, and her eagle eye perceives her friend being dragged away by two mountain robbers.
Her blood boils, and in the anguish of her soul the brave Hun maiden leaps the abyss, falls like an avenging angel upon the villainous mountaineers, with two blows of her spear pierces them both to the heart, and conducts her friend and favourite—for she is said to have been a Hun Queen—home to her parents.
Sage of Schloss Questenberg.[[1]]
[[1]] Questen—wreaths or garlands of flowers.
The Ritter Knaught had a lovely little daughter, whose chief pleasure was to gather wild-flowers; for this purpose she went often with her nurse into the forest. But one day her nurse lost sight of her, and not being able to find her, hastened in great terror to the castle to give the alarm.