Then the whole of this Black Forest region is full of legends and traditional stories, which live longer and are more easily preserved among a people where the sons and the daughters live and marry and die for the most part under the shadow of the same trees and the same thatch beneath which their fathers and mothers did the same. Of course, the Black Huntsman is as well known as of yore, though perhaps somewhat more rarely seen. But his habits and specialties have become too well known to all readers of folk-lore to need any further notice. Less widely known histories, each the traditional subject of inglenook talk in its own valley, may be found at every step. There is a rather remarkable grotto or cavern in the hill above Allerheiligen, the main ridge which divides that valley from Achern and the Rhine. It is, you are told, the Edelfrauengrab (the "Noble Lady's Grave"). And you will be further informed, if you inquire aright, how that unhallowed spot came to be a noble lady's grave, and something more than a grave. 'Twas at the time of the Crusades—those mischief-making Crusades, which, among all the other evil which they produced, would have absolutely overwhelmed the divorce courts of those days with press of business if there had then been any divorce courts. This noble lady's lord went to the Crusades. How could a gallant knight and good Christian do aught else? Of course he went to the Crusades! And of course his noble lady felt extremely dull and disconsolate during his absence. What was she to do? There was no circulating library; and even if there had been, she would not have been able to avail herself of its resources, for, though tradition says nothing upon the subject, it may be very safely assumed that she could not read. And needlework in the company of her maids must have become terribly wearisome after a time. She could go to mass, and to vespers also. Probably she did so at the new church of the recently-established community nestling in so charming a spot of the lovely valley beneath her. Let us hope that it was not there that she fell in with one whom in an hour of weakness she permitted to console her too tenderly for the absence of her crusading lord. Had she waited with patience but only nine months longer for his return, all would have been well. For he did return as nearly as possible about that time; and, arriving at his own castle-door, met one whom he at once recognized as his wife's confidential maid coming out of the house and carrying a large basket. The natural inquiry whither she was going, and what she had in her basket, was answered by the statement—uttered with that ingenuous fluency and masterly readiness for which ladies' maids have in all countries, and doubtless in all ages, been celebrated—that the basket contained a litter of puppies which she was taking to the river to drown. Alas! the girl had adhered but too nearly to the truth. There were seven living and breathing creatures in the basket, and the confidential maid had been sent on the very confidential errand of drowning them. Woe worth the day! They were seven little unchristened Christians, doomed to die one death as they had been born at one birth—the result of that erring noble lady's fault. The methods of injured husbands were wont to be characterized by much simplicity and directness of purpose in those days. The noble crusader invoked the aid of no court, either spiritual or lay. He happened to remember the existence of a certain dismal cavern in the sandstone rock not far from his dwelling. The entrance to it was very easily walled up. That cavern became the noble lady's prison and deathbed, as well as her grave! And a valuable possession has that lady's death and grave become to the descendants of her lord's vassals, for many a gulden is earned by guiding the curious to see the spot and by retailing the tragic history.
Well! and of the two changes, the two abolitions, which have been here recorded, which was the most needed, which the most salutary, which the least mingled in its results with elements of evil? Poor Baden piteously complains that it does not take half the money in the course of the year that it used to receive as surely as "the season" came round in the old times. And the poor, wholly unconverted by maxims of political economy, declare that there have been no good times in the land since the destruction of the monasteries. After all, Abbot Fischer (that was the name of the last of the long line) and his monks were less objectionable than M. Benazet and his croupiers. Could we perhaps keep the scales even and make things pleasant all round by re-establishing both the abolished institutions—restoring the croupiers and "makers of the game" to their green table, and requiring them out of their enormous gains to re-endow the convent? "C'est une idée, comme une autre!" as a Frenchman says.
T. Adolphus Trollope.
SONG.
Sweet wind that blows o'er sunny isles
The softness of the sea!
Blow thou across these moving miles
News of my love to me.
Ripples her hair like waves that sweep
About this pleasant shore:
Her eyes are bluer than the deep
Round rocky Appledore.
Her sweet breast shames the scattered spray,
Soft kissed by early light:
I dream she is the dawn of day,
That lifts me out of night.
Oscar Laighton.