sehold affairs;
they washed for her, and on holidays and festival times they scoured the
copper and tin, and the house from the garret to the cellar. If at any
time the tailor had a press of work, he was sure to find it all ready
done for him in the morning by the Heinzelmaennchen.

"But curiosity began now to torment the tailor's wife, and she was dying
to get one sight of the Heinzelmaennchen, but do what she would she could
never compass it. She one time strewed peas all down the stairs that
they might fall and hurt themselves, and that so she might see them
next morning. But this project missed, and since that time the
Heinzelmaennchen have totally disappeared, as has been everywhere the
case, owing to the curiosity of people, which has at all times been the
destruction of so much of what was beautiful in the world.

"The Heinzelmaennchen, in consequence of this, went off all in a body out
of the town, with music playing, but people could only hear the music,
for no one could see the mannikins themselves, who forthwith got into a
ship and went away, whither no one knows. The good times, however, are
said to have disappeared from Cologne along with the Heinzelmaennchen."

St. Ursula

One of the most interesting figures in connexion with Rhenish mythology
is that of St. Ursula, whose legend is as follows:

Just two centuries after the birth of Christ, Vionest was king of
Britain. Happy in his realm, his subjects were prosperous and contented,
but care was in the heart of the monarch, for he was childless. At
length his consort, Daria, bore him a daughter, who as she grew up in
years increased in holiness, until all men regarded her as a saint,
and she, devoting herself to a religious life, refused all offers of
marriage, to the great grief of her parents, who were again troubled by
the thought that their dynasty would fail for want of an heir. Charmed
with the rumour of her virtues, a German prince, Agrippus, asked her
as a wife for his son, but the suit was declined by the maiden until
an angel appeared to her in a dream and said that the nuptials ought to
take place. In obedience to this heavenly mentor, St. Ursula no longer
urged her former scruples, and her father hastened to make preparations
of suitable magnificence for her departure to the Rhine, on whose banks
her future home was to be. Eleven thousand virgins were selected from
the noblest families of Britain to accompany their princess, who,
marshalling