“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 neighbouring forest of Laach, where a little later she gave birth to a boy.  Thenceforth mother and son lived together in the wilds, and though these were infested by wild robbers, and full of wolves and other ravening beasts, the pair of exiles contrived to go unscathed year after year, while, more wonderful still, they managed to find daily sustenance.  And now romance reached a happy moment; for behold, Count Siegfried went hunting one day in the remoter parts of the forest, and fortuitously he passed by the very place where the two wanderers were living—­his wife and the child whom he had never seen.

     ’Tis in the woody vales of Laach the hunter’s horn is wound,
     And fairly flies the falcon, and deeply bays the hound;
     But little recks Count Siegfried for hawk or quarry now: 
     A weight is on his noble heart, a gloom is on his brow. 
     Oh! he hath driven from his home—­he cannot from his mind—­
     A lady, ah! the loveliest of all her lovely kind;
     His wife, his Genofeva!—­and at the word of one,
     The blackest traitor ever looked upon the blessed sun. 
     He hath let the hunters hurry by, and turned his steed aside,
     And ridden where the blue lake spreads its waters calm and wide,