Goddess?

The sainthood of St. Ursula is distinctly doubtful, and the number of
her retinue, eleven thousand, has been proved to be an error in monkish
calligraphy. St. Ursula is, indeed, the Teutonic goddess Ursa, or
Hoersel. In many parts of Germany a custom existed during the Middle Ages
of rolling about a ship on wheels, much to the scandal of the clergy,
and this undoubtedly points to moon-worship, the worship of Holda, or
Ursula, whom German poets of old regarded as sailing over the deep
blue of the heavens in her silver boat. A great company of maidens,
the stars, follow in her train. She is supposed, her nightly pilgrimage
over, to enter certain hills.

Thus in the later guise of Venus she entered the Hoerselberg in
Thuringia, in which she imprisoned the enchanted Tannhaeuser, and there
is good reason to believe that she also presided over the Ercildoune,
or Hill of Ursula, in the south of Scotland, the modern Earlston, after
which Thomas the Rhymer took his territorial designation, and whose
story later became fused with her myth in the old Scottish ballad of
Thomas the Rhymer. Thus we observe how it is possible for a pagan myth
to become an incident in Christian hagiology.

Satan in Rhine Story

In the legends of the Rhine the picturesque figure of his Satanic
majesty is frequently presented, as in the legends of 'The Sword-slipper
of Solingen,' 'The Architect of Cologne Cathedral,' and several other
tales. The circumstances of his appearance are distinctly Teutonic
in character, and are such as to make one doubt that the Devil of the
German peoples has evolved from the classical satyr. May it not be that
the Teutonic folk possessed some nature-spirit from which they evolved
a Satanic figure of their own? Against this, of course, could be quoted
the fact that the medieval conception of the Devil was sophisticated by
the Church, which in turn was strongly influenced by classical types.

Affinity of the Rhine Legends with Romance

But on the whole the legends of the Rhine exhibit much more affinity
with medieval romance than with myth or folklore.[1] A large number of
them are based upon plots which can be shown to be almost universal,
and which occur again and again in French and British story. One of the
commonest of these concerns the crusader who, rejected by his lady-love,
spends hopeless years in the East, or, having married before setting
out for the Orient, returns to find his bride the wife of an