Hadwig; Hadumoth, the lovely
forest flower and the foundling of the lowest stratum of society with
her heart of love and truth and beauty, the personification of all that
is great and good in the soul of German womanhood of the lower classes;
the wood witch, who continues the old beloved custom of worship and
loyalty to the old gods, in bitter hate of the new faith that has robbed
her of husband, happiness, and child; the servant maid Friderun, tall as
a building of several stories, surmounted by a pointed roof, her
pear-shaped head, whose heart is now desolate, since her sweetheart was
slain in the Hunnish battle, and who turns her attention to the solitary
Hunnish prisoner, Cappan, whom she domesticates, Christianizes and
marries; all these types of German womanhood are so perfect, so
fragrant, so real that the historian of civilization loses heart in
attempting to describe other or better types. The love of Hadwig and of
Ekkehard, the latter's brief forgetfulness of his and her mission,
Ekkehard's trial, his escape and recovery on the snowy Santis mountain
in the Alps, the composition of the Walthari saga in the bracing
mountain air, close to the blue heavens, inspired by the Alpine
shepherd's godly child, Benedicta, are all episodes worthy of King
Solomon's Song of Songs.

After the Ottoman dynasty follow the Franconian emperors, descendants,
both through the female line and through marriage, from the
Carlovingians and the Ottomans, since Konrad II. (1024-1039), the first
Franconian, was descended from Otto's daughter and married Gisela of
Burgundy, a descendant of Charlemagne. Theirs is a period of transition,
of struggle between the Papacy and the empire, the preparation for the
crusades, fantastic, impolitic expeditions to the Orient for the
recovery of the Holy Sepulchre, fostering the spirit of aimless
adventure, but, at the same time, widening marvellously the narrow
horizon of the European world.

In contrast with the Latin poetry of court and cloister, the humble
people cultivated in their own way the German popular love song and the
tales that stir the popular soul. From those old folk songs we derive a
great deal of our knowledge of the life and love of the women of the
time. It is undoubtedly this awakening of the people which stimulated
the clerics also to the necessity for preaching in German. An
interesting spiritual poetess arises, known as the Frau Am, the recluse
and sacred singer, who died in Aus