own is a
mountain, known to geographers as Kedrich, but hailed popularly as 'the
Devil's Ladder.' Nor is the name altogether misplaced or undeserved,
the mountain being exceeding precipitous, and its beetling, rocky sides
seeming well-nigh inaccessible. This steepness, however, did not daunt
the hero of the poem in question, a certain Sir Hilchen von Lorch. A
saddle, said to have belonged to him, is still preserved in the town;
but on what manner of steed he was wont to ride is not told explicitly,
and truly it must have been a veritable Bucephalus. For the nameless
poet relates that Sir Hilchen, being enamoured of a lady whom angry
gnomes had carried to the top of Kedrich and imprisoned there, rode at
full gallop right up the side of the mountain, and rescued the fair one!

"Though my lady-love to a tower be ta'en,
Whose top the eagle might fail to gain,
Nor portal of iron nor battlement's height
Shall bar me out from her presence bright:
Why has Love wings but that he may fly
Over the walls, be they never so high?"

So the tale begins, while at the end the knight is represented exulting
in his doughty action:

"Hurrah, hurrah! 'Tis gallantly done!
The spell is broken, the bride is won!
From the magic hold of the mountain-sprite
Down she comes with her dauntless knight!
Holy St. Bernard, shield us all
From the wrath of the elves of the Whisper-Thal."

Andernach

There are several different versions of this legend, each of them just
as extraordinary as the foregoing. It is evident, moreover, that matter
of this sort appealed very keenly to the medieval dwellers by the Rhine,
much of the further legendary lore encircling the river being concerned
with deeds no less amazing than this of Sir Hilchen's; and among things
which recount such events a notable instance is a poem consecrated to
the castle of Andernach. Here, once upon a time, dwelt a count bearing
the now famous name of Siegfried, and being of a religious disposition,
he threw in his lot with a band of crusaders. For a long while, in
consequence, he was absent from his ancestral domain; and at length,
returning thither, he was told by various lying tongues that his
beautiful wife, Genofeva, had been unfaithful to him in his absence,
the chief bearer of the fell news being one Golo. This slanderer induced
Siegfried to banish Genofeva straightway, and so the lady fled from the
castle to the neighb