two Borrel de la Combe; Oliver clove in two Justeamundus, the brother-in-law of Matrandus; and Charlemagne himself performed the like exploit on Almanzor, King of Cordova. Durandal, Hauteclair, Joyeuse, and other famous swords mowed down the Saracens like ripe grain, cutting off heads and arms and legs, and causing such torrents of blood to flow that the infidels finally renounced all hostilities against the abbey of La Grasse.
During the night before the consecration of the abbatial church was to be made by the Pope, the Divine Redeemer, so runs the legend, himself vouchsafed to come down from heaven in person, accompanied by a multitude of angels, to consecrate the edifice. The following morning, when the Pope and Charlemagne and Archbishop Turpin saw the marks of divine consecration, they, as well as Roland and Oliver and the rest, shed tears of joy, and blessed God, and, while still weeping, took leave of the monks, begging to be remembered in their daily orisons.
Charlemagne now departed for Spain, to carry war in his turn into the country of the infidel, and with what prodigies of valor is known to all men. The memory of his passage through the valley of the Aude has never been effaced from the popular mind. The name of Roland, too, echoes all through this region, like the horn he won from the giant Jatmund. Not far from La Grasse is a cliff that still bears his name. It was here the great paladin, when weary of hewing in pieces the Saracens, used to come to take breath and whet his sword. The iron ring to which he fastened his steed Brigliadoro is still in its place, and no hand in these degenerate days is strong enough to
wrench it from the rock. The people of this region, great lovers of the marvellous, tell how he used to gallop over the Montagne Noire on so fiery a steed that its feet shook the very mountains beneath them and left their imprint on the rocks, as may be seen to this day on the old road between Ilhes and Lastours. And a little higher up is a dolmen that bears the marks of his sword and the print of his hands. This dolmen is on a slight eminence near a little stream. The table is in the form of a disc about seven feet in diameter and one foot thick. It must weigh several hundred tons, and would require a great number of men of ordinary strength to place it on its present supports. The people say Roland, by way of amusement in his moments of leisure, hewed out this rock with his sword, and then used it as a quoit, which he threw with careless ease from La Valdous to Narbonne, and from Narbonne back to La Valdous. The prints of his mighty fingers are still clearly perceptible. It was he who set this light plaything up on its huge pillars, and not the Druids, and to this day it is called the Palet de Roland. Near by is a mysterious hole called Roland’s tomb, where the people insist he was buried, according to his express wish that he might repose in the place of his innocent amusements.
There are many of these Celtic monuments in this vicinity, the object of great conjecture among archæologists. The popular imagination is not so embarrassed, as we have seen. A legend is generally attached to them, often picturesque and dramatic. At Carnac, every one knows, it was St. Corneille who changed his pagan pursuers into monumental rocks by the petrifying influence of his wrathful visage.
On the banks of the Lamouse, a little creek in this region, is a tall colossus of a rock called the peulvan, that stands quite solitary on a little hill. It is, or was, fifteen feet high, a yard and a half broad, and not more than half a yard thick. The people say it descends to an inaccessible depth in the earth. If we may believe them, forty years ago it was no taller than a man, but it has grown higher and higher every year from some magic subterranean influence.
People who live among lofty mountains and dark forests, by noisy streams and waterfalls, or even on the borders of peaceful, dormant lakes whose mists fill the valleys and shroud the neighboring hills, are apt to be imaginative and dreamy. Here fairies and Undines have their origin. Here White Ladies, such as Scott has described in the valley of Glendearg, come forth in floating vapory robes to flit about the melancholy vales and fade away with the dawn. Such is the legend of Lake Puivert, according to which Reine Blanche, a princess of Aragon, issues every evening from her ancestral towers, and descends into the valley to breathe the freshness of the air. This legendary queen was no fair young princess who had become an untimely victim to melancholy—“sweetest melancholy”—but a dethroned queen, so infirm and decrepit as to have lost the very use of her limbs, and had come to end her days in the old manor-house of Puivert, where she had been born. A crowd of servants surrounded her day and night, attentive to her slightest caprice. Every evening at set of sun a herald ascended to the battlements of the tower to proclaim the coming forth of Lady Blanche. No sooner had the echoes of his horn died
away than she appeared at the principal gate, borne on a litter by four stout men. If the weather was calm and the sky clear, she was taken to a huge block of marble that rose out of the edge of the lake, where she loved to breathe the freshness of the night air and the resinous odor of the old pines that grew on the mountain above. Two pages in purple waved great fans to keep off the insects. There was nothing to disturb the delicious solitude but the swallows that skimmed over the surface of the lake and the murmuring rivulets that came down from the hills, and here she would remain in silent reverie till the light faded completely away, when she was borne back to her tower by the light of torches. It frequently happened, however, that the lake was so swollen by storms that her marble throne was entirely submerged. Then she went to the chapel of Our Lady of Bon-Secours to pray the wrath of the threatening waters might be stayed. One day she conceived the idea of piercing an immense rock that closed the entrance to the valley, hoping by this means to let off the surplus waters and keep the lake always at the same level, but, alas! at the very moment when she thought her wishes were to be crowned with success, the pressure of the waters against the weakened base of the rock overthrew it, and, rushing through the narrow gorge, overwhelmed serfs, pages, and La Reine Blanche herself. Such is the legendary cause assigned for the rupture of Lake Puivert in 1279, which destroyed the neighboring town of Mirepoix. The feudal manor-house, so well known in the history of the country, escaped, being on an elevation. It is still haunted by the troubled
spirit of Queen Blanche, who, in misty white garments, may be seen at nightfall flitting about the low valley, wringing her pale hands over the ruin she caused.
Nor is this Queen of Aragon the only White Lady of the land. The old people of Limoux tell of women in white who once a year come forth by night from a crystal palace in the bowels of the neighboring hill of Taich, and go to the fountain of Las Encantados—the fairies—where with a golden spatula they beat their linen, after the fashion of the country, till the dawn of day. These ghostly laundresses are not confined to the valley of the Aude. In Brittany and Normandy they likewise haunt many regions, but they beat their linen with an iron hand, which they do not hesitate to apply to the ear of the curious intruder.