BY TORSTEN SCHWANKE
I
Lady Holla‘s Pond
On the Meißner mountain range in Hesse,
Many things already indicate antiquity
By their mere names,
Such as the Devil's Holes,
The Battle Lawn and especially
Lady Holla‘s Pond.
This, situated at the corner of a moorland meadow,
Is at present only forty to fifty feet in diameter;
The whole meadow is bordered
With a half-submerged stone dam,
And not infrequently horses have sunk on it.
The people tell many tales of this Lady Holla,
Both good and bad.
She makes women who go down to her well
Healthy and fertile;
Newborn children come from her well,
And she carries them out of it.
Flowers, fruit, cakes, which she has down in the pond,
And what grows in her incomparable garden,
She distributes to those who meet her
And know how to please.
She is very tidy and keeps a good house;
When it snows, she knocks out her beds
So that the flakes fly in the air.
She punishes lazy spinners
By sullying their skirts,
Twisting their yarns
Or setting fire to their flax;
But to maidens who spin diligently
She gives spindles
And spins for them overnight
So that the bobbins are full in the morning.
She pulls the covers off lazy women
And lays them naked on the stone pavement;
Diligent women who carry water
To the kitchen early in the morning
In buckets that have been scrubbed clean
Find silver coins in them.
She likes to draw children into her pond;
She makes the good ones lucky,
The bad ones changelings.
Every year she goes around the country
And gives fertility to the fields,
But she also frightens people
When she drives through the forest
At the head of the angry host.
Sometimes she shows herself
As a beautiful white woman
In or on the middle of the pond,
Sometimes she is invisible,
And one merely hears from the depths
A ringing of bells and sinister murmuring.
II
Lady Holla roams about
At Christmas Lady Holla
Begins to wander about,
So the maids put on her distaff again,
Wind a lot of tow or flax around it
And leave it standing overnight.
When Lady Holla sees this,
She is pleased and says,
"Many a hair,
Many a good year."
She keeps this company
Until the great New Year, that is,
The holy Epiphany,
When she must turn back again
To her Horselberg;
If she then meets flax
On the skirt on the way,
She is angry and says,
"Many a hair,
Many a bad year."
That's why all the maids
Carefully tear off
What they haven't spun off
From their skirts
Before the feast
So that nothing remains on it
And turns out badly for them.
But it is even better
If they manage to bring down
All the spun tow beforehand.
III
Lady Holla‘s Bath
On the Meißner in Hesse
Lies a large pool or lake,
Mostly murky with water,
Which is called Lady Holla‘s Bath.
According to old folk tales,
Lady Holla is sometimes seen
Bathing in it at midday
And disappears afterwards.
The mountains and moors
In the whole area are full of ghosts
And travellers or hunters have often
Been seduced or damaged by them.
IV
Lady Holla and the faithful Eckart
In Thuringia there is a village
Called Schwarza, where Lady Holla
Passed by at Christmas,
Aand in the front of the crowd
Walked the faithful Eckart
And warned the people he met
To get out of the way
So that no harm would come to them.
A couple of peasant boys
Had just gone to the tavern
To fetch some beer to take home,
When the troop appeared,
Which they were watching.
But the ghosts took up
The whole wide street,
So the village boys with their tankards
Moved away into a corner;
Soon different women
From the crowd approached,
Took the tankards and drank.
The boys kept silent out of fear,
Not knowing what to do at home
If they came with empty jugs.
At last the faithful Eckart came up
And said, God told you
Not to speak a word,
Or your necks would have been twisted;
Now go home quickly
And tell no one anything about the story,
And your jugs will always be full of beer
And will never be broken.
This the boys did, and so it was,
The jugs were never empty,
And for three days they took heed of the word.
At last, however, they could not keep it any longer,
But told their parents about the matter,
And then it was over,
And the jugs ran dry.
Others said that this had not happened
At Christmas, but at another time.
V
Lady Holla and the farmer
Once when Lady Holla was going out,
She met a farmer with an axe.
She said to him that he should wedge
The wagon for her,
Or that he should beat it up.
The day labourer did as she told him,
And when the work was done, she said,
"Pick up the shavings
And take them with you for a tip,"
And she went on her way.
The man felt that the shavings
Were in vain and useless,
So he left them lying
About for the most part,
Taking only one or three
For his boredom.
When he got home
And reached into the sack,
The shavings were pure gold.
Immediately he turned back
To fetch the others
He had left behind;
However much he searched,
It was too late
And there was nothing left.
VI
The castle maiden
It is said that sometimes a maiden
Can be seen on the castle hill
Near Ohrdruf in Thuringia,
Who has a large bunch of keys
Attached to her.
She comes down from the mountain
At noon and goes to the Hierlingsbrunn
In the valley and bathes in it,
After which she climbs up
The mountain again.
Some people claim to have seen
And looked at her closely.
VII
The Snake Maiden
About the year 1520
There was a man in Basel, Switzerland,
Named Leonhard, otherwise
Commonly called Lienimann,
The son of a tailor,
A silly and simple-minded man,
And who also had a bad time talking
Because he stammered.
He had entered the vault
Or passageway that extends
Under the earth above Basel in Augst,
And had gone and entered it
Much further than was ever possible
For a human being,
And knew how to talk about
Wonderful trades and stories.
For he says, and there are still people
Who have heard it from his mouth,
That he took a consecrated wax light
Ad lit it and entered the cave with it.
There he would first have had to pass
Through an iron gate
And then from one vault into another,
And finally also through a number
Of very beautiful
And cheerful green gardens.
In the middle, however, there was
A magnificent and well-built castle
Or princely house,
In it there was a beautiful virgin
With a human body up to her navel,
Who wore a crown of gold on her head,
And she had beaten her hair into a field;
But from the navel downwards
She was a horrible serpent.
By the same virgin he would have been led
By the hand to an iron box,
On which two black barking dogs lay,
So that no one was allowed
To approach the box,
But she would have quieted
The dogs for him
And kept them in check,
So that he could go there
Without any hindrance.
Then she would have taken off
A bunch of keys
Which she wore on her neck,
Unlocked the box,
And taken out silver and other coins.
The virgin then gave him not a few
Of these out of special kindness,
Which he brought with him out of the crypt;
As he then also showed them
And let them be seen.
The virgin also said to him
That she was born
Of a royal lineage and race,
But was thus cursed into a monster
And could not be redeemed by anything
Except being kissed three times
By a young man whose chastity
Was pure and unharmed;
Then she would regain her former form.
In return, she would give
And hand over to her saviour
All the treasure
That was hidden in that place.
He went on to say that he had already
Kissed the virgin twice,
For both times, in the great joy
Of her unexpected redemption,
She showed herself
With such horrible gestures
That he was afraid and thought
She would tear him alive;
Therefore he did not dare
To kiss her the third time,
But went away.
Then it happened that some
Took him to a house of shame,
Where he sinned with a reckless woman.
Thus tainted by vice,
He has never again been able
To find the entrance to the cave of shame;
Wich he often laments with weeping.
VIII
Mermaid Well
Not far from Kirchhain in Hesse
Lies a very deep lake,
Which is called the Nixenbronn,
And mermaids often appear
At its shore.
The mill at the lake
Is also called Nixenmühle.
In Marburg, too, a mermaid
Is said to have been seen
In the Lahn
Near Elisabeth‘s Mill
In 1615.
IX
Magdeburg Mermaids
In Magdeburg, at a point on the Elbe,
The mermaid often let herself be seen,
Dragged down the people
Who were swimming across
And drowned them.
Shortly before the destruction of the city
By Tilly, a swift swimmer swam across
For a piece of money;
But when he wanted to cross over
And got to the spot,
He was held and swept down.
No one could save him,
And at last his body swam to the shore.
Sometimes the miracle of the sea
Is said to appear in broad daylight
And when the sun is shining,
Sitting down on the shore
Or on the branches of the trees
And combing long golden hair
Like beautiful maidens.
But when people approach,
It jumps into the water.
Once, because the water from the well
Is hard to boil
And the water from the Elbe
Has to be carried far
And laboriously into the town,
The townspeople wanted to have
A water pipe built.
They began to drive large piles into the river,
But were soon unable to advance far.
For a naked man was seen standing in the flood,
Who tore out and scattered all the piles
With force, so that the construction
Had to be stopped again.
X
The mermaid and the millwright
Two millers are walking along a river;
When one of them looks across the water,
He sees a mermaid sitting on it
And combing her hair.
He takes hold of his rifle
And starts to shoot her,
But the mermaid jumps into the river,
Waves her fingers and disappears.
All this had happened so quickly
And unnoticed that the other squire,
Who was walking ahead,
Saw and heard nothing of it
Until his companion soon told him.
Then it happened that this companion drowned
An the third day as he was bathing.
XI
The Two Underground Women
Praetorius heard the following incident
From a student whose mother said
It had happened in Dessau.
After a woman had given birth to a child,
She laid it down in her room
And fell into a deep sleep
Before it was baptised.
At midnight two underground women came,
Built a fire on the hearth,
Poured a kettle full of water over it,
Bathed the child
They had brought with them in it
And washed it off,
Then carried it into the parlour
And exchanged it
With the other sleeping child.
Then they went away with it,
But at the next mountain they got
Into a quarrel about the child,
And one of them threw it to the other
And, as it were, balled with it
Until the child cried out about it
And the maid woke up in the house.
When she looked at the women's child
And noticed the confusion,
She ran to the front of the house
And found the women still handling
The stolen child, whereupon she stepped in
And helped to catch it,
But as soon as she got the child in her arms,
She hurried home
And laid the changeling in front of the door,
Which the mountain women
Then took back to her.
XII
The Bog Maidens
There is a swamp in the Rhön
Called the red moor.
According to folk legend,
A village called Poppenrode once stood there,
But it has now sunk.
Little lights float on the moor at night,
They are moorland maidens.
In another place there is also the black moor,
Already called so in old documents,
And the legend also knows
Of a sunken village,
Of which a pavement is still left,
Called the stone bridge.
XIII
The white woman
The castle-white woman appears
In forests and on meadows,
Sometimes she comes into horse stables
With burning wax candles,
Combs and cleans the horses,
And drops of wax fall on the horses' manes.
She is said to see brightly
When she goes out,
But to be blind in her dwelling.
XIV
Tannhäuser
The noble Tannhäuser,
A German knight,
Had travelled through many countries
And had also ended up
In Lady Venus' mountain
With the beautiful women,
To see the great wonder.
And when he had dwelt there for a while,
Happy and in good spirits,
At last his conscience drove him
To go out into the world again,
And he desired a holiday.
Venus, however, offered everything
To make him waver:
She would give him one
Of her playmates as a wife,
And he might remember her red mouth,
Which laughed at all hours.
Tannhäuser replied that he would
Not marry any other woman
Than the one he had in mind,
That he did not want to burn in hell forever,
And that he was indifferent
To her red mouth,
That he could not stay any longer,
For his life had become ill.
And then the she-devil wanted to lure him
IKnto her chamber
To attend to her love,
But the noble knight scolded her loudly
And called on the heavenly maiden
To let him go.
Repentant, he went on the road
To Rome to Pope Urban,
To whom he wanted to confess all his sins,
So that penance would be imposed on him
And his soul would be saved.
But when he confessed
That he had also been a whole year
With Venus in the mountain,
The pope said, When the dry stick
Which I hold in my hand shall green,
Thy sins shall be forgiven thee,
And no other.
Tannhäuser said, And if I had lived
But one year more on earth,
I would have done such penitence
And contrition that God
Would have had mercy on me.
And from grief and sorrow
That the pope condemned him,
He departed again from the city,
And again into the devilish mountain,
To dwell therein for ever and ever.
But Venus welcomed him
As one welcomes a long absent bridegroom;
Then on the third day
The vine began to grow green,
And the pope sent word to all lands
To inquire where the noble
Tannhäuser had come.
But it was now too late,
He sat in the mountain
And had chosen his love,
There he must now sit until the Last Day,
When God will perhaps direct him elsewhere.
And no priest shall give comfort
To a sinful man,
But pardon him when he offers
Himself for repentance.
XV
The Queen of the Serpents
A shepherd girl found a sick snake
Lying on the top of a rock,
And it wanted to pine away.
So she compassionately handed it her milk jug,
The snake licked eagerly
And visibly regained its strength.
The girl went away,
And soon afterwards her lover wooed her,
But was too poor for her rich, proud father,
And was mockingly rejected
Until he too would one day own
As many herds as the old shepherd.
From that time on, the old shepherd
Had no more luck, but only accidents;
At night a fiery dragon was seen
Over his fields,
And his property was ruined.
The poor young man was now just as rich
And once again courted his beloved,
Who was now granted to him.
On the wedding day a serpent
Entered the room,
On whose coiled tail sat a beautiful maiden,
Who said that it was she
To whom the good shepherdess
Had once given her milk in the famine,
And out of gratitude she took off
Her shining crown from her head
And threw it into the bride's lap.
Then she disappeared,
But the young people had great blessings
In their economy
And soon became prosperous.
XVI
The Virgin in the Oselberg
Between Dinkelsbühl and Hahnkamm
There was a castle on the Oselberg,
Where a certain maiden lived,
Who was her father's widow
And held the key to all the chambers.
At last she perished with the walls and perished,
And there were cries
That her spirit hovered around the walls
And appeared at night
At the four Quatembern
In the form of a damsel
Carrying a bunch of keys at her side.
On the other hand, old peasants
Of these places say
That they have heard from their fathers
That this maiden was the daughter
Of an old heathen
And was cursed into an abominable snake;
She is also said to have been seen
At that time in the form of a snake,
With a woman's head and breast,
And a bunch of keys at her neck.
XVII
The meadow virgin
A boy from Auerbach on the Bergstraße
Was herding his father's cows
On the narrow valley meadow
From which the old castle can be seen.
Suddenly a soft hand slapped him
Gently on the cheek from behind,
So that he turned round, and behold,
A beautiful maiden stood before him,
Dressed in white from head to foot,
And was about to open her mouth
To speak to him.
But the boy was frightened,
As if by the devil himself,
And took to his heels
And went into the village.
Because his father only had one meadow,
He had to drive the cows
To the same pasture again and again,
Whether he wanted to or not.
It lasted a long time,
And the boy had soon forgotten the apparition,
When something rustled in the leaves
On a sultry summer's day,
And he saw a little snake crawling,
Carrying a blue flower in its mouth,
And suddenly began to speak,
Listen, good boy, you could redeem me
If you took this flower that I carry
And which is a key to my chamber
Up in the castle,
There you would find the abundance of money.
But the shepherd boy was frightened
When he heard her speak,
And ran home again.
And on one of the last days of autumn
He was herding in the meadow again,
When she appeared for the third time
In the form of the first white maiden
And again gave him a cheek swipe,
Also pleading that he should redeem her,
For which she told him all the ways and means.
All her pleading was for nothing,
For fear overwhelmed the boy,
So that he crossed himself
And blessed himself,
And wanted nothing to do with the ghost.
Then the maiden heaved a deep sigh and said,
Alas that I have put my trust in thee;
Bow I must wait again and wait
Until a cherry tree grows in the meadow
And a cradle is made of the cherry tree's wood.
Only the child who is first cradled in the cradle
Can one day deliver me.
Then she disappeared,
And the boy, it is said, did not grow old at all;
What he died of is not known.
XVIII
The Jungfernstein
In Meissen, not far from the fortress
Of Königstein, lies a rock
Called the Jungfernstein, or Pfaffenstein.
Once a mother cursed her daughter
Who did not go to church on Sundays,
But to the blueberries.
The daughter turned to stone
And her image can still be seen at noon.
During the Thirty Years' War,
People fled there
To escape from the soldiers.
XIX
Lady Berta or the white woman
The white woman appears
In the castles of several princely houses,
Namely in Neuhaus in Bohemia,
In Berlin, Bayreuth, Darmstadt and Karlsruhe
And in all those whose families
Have gradually become related
To hers by marriage.
She does no harm to anyone,
Bows her head before whom she meets,
Speaks nothing,
And her visit signifies a near death,
Sometimes also something cheerful,
Namely when she has no black glove on.
She wears a bunch of keys
And a white veil bonnet.
According to some, her name in life
Was Perchta von Rosenberg,
She lived in Neuhaus in Bohemia
And was married to Johann von Lichtenstein,
A wicked, stubborn man.
After her husband's death,
She lived in widowhood at Neuhaus
And began to build a castle,
To the great complaint of her subjects,
Who had to indulge her.
While they were working,
She called out to them to be industrious,
When the castle is finished,
I will serve you and your people
A sweet porridge!
For this was the expression
Used by the old people
When they invited someone as a guest.
In the autumn after the building was completed,
She not only kept her word,
But also made sure that all Rosenbergs
Would give their people
Such a meal for all eternity.
This has been done so far,
And if it is not done,
She appears with an angry face.
Sometimes she is said
To come into princely nurseries at night,
When the nurses are asleep,
To cradle the children
And carry them in confidence.
Once, when an ignorant nanny asked in fright,
What have you to do with that child?
And scolded her with words,
She is said to have said,
I am not a stranger in this house like you,
But belong to it;
This child comes from my children's children.
But because you have not done me honour,
I will not return.
XX
Wild Berta is coming
In Swabia, Franconia and Thuringia,
People call out to stiff-necked children,
Silence, or wild Berta is coming!
Others call her Bildaberta, Hildaberta,
Also probably: the iron Berta.
She appears as a wild woman
With shaggy hair
And sullies the skirt of the girl
Who does not spin her flax
On the last day of the year.
Many people eat dumplings
And herring on this day.
Otherwise, they say,
The Perchta or Prechta would come,
Cut open their bellies,
Take out the first thing they ate
And put in straw.
Then she sews the cut up again
With a ploughshare instead of a needle
And with a Röhm chain instead of twine.
XXI
The three maidens from the lake
In Epfenbach near Sinsheim,
Three beautiful maidens
Dressed in white
Have entered the spinning room of the village
Every evening since the people remembered.
They always brought new songs and tunes,
Knew pretty fairy tales and games,
Even their skirts and spindles
Had something of their own,
And no spinner could spin the thread
So finely and nimbly.
But at the stroke of eleven
They got up, packed up their skirts
And did not let themselves be held back
A moment longer by any plea.
They didn't know where they came from
Or where they were going;
They were only called
The maidens from the lake
Or the sisters from the lake.
The boys liked to see them
And fell in love with them,
Mostly the schoolmaster's son.
He couldn't get enough of hearing them
And talking to them,
And nothing hurt him more
Than that they left so early every evening.
Once he got the idea
And set the village clock back an hour,
And in the evening,
In constant conversation and joking,
No one noticed that the hour was late.
And when the bell struck eleven,
But it was actually already twelve,
The three maidens got up,
Put their skirts together and went away.
The next morning,
Some people passed by the lake;
They heard whimpering
And saw three bloody spots on the surface.
From that time on,
The sisters never came to the parlour.
The schoolmaster's son died shortly afterwards.
XXII
Maiden Ilse
The Ilsenstein is one of the largest rocks
In the Harz mountains.
It lies on the north side
In the county of Wernigerode
Not far from Ilsenburg
At the foot of the Brocken
And is washed by the Ilse.
Opposite it is a similar rock,
The layers of which match it
And seem to have separated from it
When the earth shook.
During the Flood,
Two lovers fled towards the Brocken
To escape the ever-increasing general flooding.
Before they reached it
And were standing together on another rock,
The rock split and wanted to separate them.
On the left side, facing the Brocken,
Stood the maiden;
On the right, the youth,
And together they plunged into the flood.
The maiden's name was Ilse.
She still opens the Ilsenstein
Every morning to bathe in the Ilse.
Only a few are granted the privilege of seeing her,
But those who know her praise her.
Once a charcoal-burner found her
Early in the morning,
Greeted her kindly
And followed her beckoning to the rock;
In front of the rock she took
His satchel from him,
Went in with it and brought it back filled.
But she told the charcoal-burner
Not to open it until he was in his hut.
The heaviness struck him,
And when he was on the bridge
Over the Ilse, he could no longer refrain,
Opened the satchel
And saw acorns and fir apples.
Reluctantly, he shook them into the stream,
But as soon as they touched the stones
Of the Ilse, he heard a ringing
And saw with horror that he had spilled gold.
The remnant, which was now carefully stored
In the corners of the sack,
Made him rich enough.
According to another legend,
There was once a castle
On the Ilsenstein that belonged
To a king of the Harz
Who had a very beautiful daughter named Ilse.
Nearby lived a witch
Whose daughter looked ugly beyond measure.
A lot of suitors were courting Ilse,
But no one wanted the witch's daughter;
So the witch got angry
And turned the castle into a rock by magic,
At the foot of which she put up a door
Visible only to the king's daughter.
The enchanted Ilse still steps out
Of this door every morning
And bathes in the river named after her.
If a person is so happy
And sees her in the bath,
She takes him to the castle,
Treats him deliciously
And leaves him richly endowed.
But the envious witch makes her visible
In the bath only on a few days of the year.
Only he who bathes with her in the river
At the same time and is like her
In beauty and virtue can redeem her.
XXIII
The Heathen Maiden of Glatz
Old and young people in Glatz told stories:
In the pagan times,
A godless, enchanting maiden ruled the land,
Who shot with her satchel bow
From the castle down to the large
Eisersdorf lime tree,
When she made a bet
With her brother
As to who could shoot the arrow the furthest.
Her brother's arrow barely reached half way,
And the maiden won.
The border stands on this lime tree,
And it is said to be as old
As the heathen tower at Glatz,
And even if it withers once or twice,
It has always grown up and is still standing.
On the lime-tree once sat the fortune-teller
And prophesied of the city
Many things to come:
The Turk would penetrate as far as Glatz,
But when he crossed the stone bridge
And entered the ring,
He would suffer a heavy defeat
At the hands of the Christians
Descending on him from the castle;
But this would not happen
Until a bunch of cranes
Flew through the bread banks.
As a sign that the virgin
Had shot her brother with the bow,
Two pointed stones were set
On the mile behind the ditch.
But because she had made illicit love
To her own brother, she was detested
By the people, and they sought her life,
But she always managed to escape
By her magic and strength,
Because she often tore a whole horseshoe
For the fun of it. In the end, however,
She remained trapped and walled up
In a large hall near the gate
Through which one enters the upper castle
From the lower castle.
There she died, and in memory of her,
Her portrait is carved in stone on the wall
To the left of the same gate
Over the deep moat
And is shown to all strangers to this day.
In addition, her painting
In the green castle hall
And in the castle church
Hung on an iron nail in the wall,
Beautiful yellow hair,
Braided several times according to length.
People generally call it the hair
Of the heathen virgin;
It hangs so high
That a tall man standing on the ground
Can reach it with his hand,
About three steps from the door.
She is said to appear often in the castle
In the form and dress as she is painted,
But offends no one, except those
Who sneer at her and mock her
Or intend to take her hair braid away from the church.
To a soldier who mocked her,
She came to the sentry post
And gave him a cold hand with her cheek.
To another, who stole the hair,
She appeared at night,
Scratched and clawed him to near death,
If he had not quickly had the hair carried back
To the old place by his journeyman.
XXIV
The White Maiden at Schwanau
The free Swiss broke down the castle
Of Schwanau on the Lowerzer See
Because the evil and cruel bailiff
Of the emperor lived there.
Once a year, in the silence of the night,
Thunder shook the ruins
And cries of lamentation
Rang out in the tower;
All around the wall,
The reeve was pursued
By the white-robed girl he had dishonoured,
Until he threw himself into the lake
With a howl.
Three sisters fled from the bailiff's lusts
Into the gorges of the Rigi
And never came out again.
St. Michel's Chapel
Is the name of the place.
XXV
The holy lake of Hertha
The Reudignians, Avions, Angles,
Warinians, Eudoses, Suarthones and Nuithones,
German peoples who dwell
Between rivers and forests,
All worship Hertha,
That is Mother Earth,
And believe that she mingles
With human things
And comes sailing to the peoples.
On an island of the sea
Lies an unconsecrated forest
Sacred to her,
There stands her chariot,
Wrapped in blankets,
Only one priest may approach it.
He knows when the goddess appears
In the sacred chariot;
Two cows draw her away,
And the priest reverently follows.
Wherever she is worthy to come and stay,
There is a happy day and a wedding;
No war is fought,
No weapon is seized,
The iron is locked.
Only peace and tranquillity
Are then known and desired;
This lasts until the goddess
Has dwelt enough among the people
And the priest leads her back
To the sanctuary.
The chariot, the cover
And the goddess herself
Are washed in a remote lake;
But the servants who serve
Are soon swallowed up by the lake.
A secret terror and a holy ignorance
Are therefore always spread
Over what only those who die
Immediately look upon.
XXVI
The image of Our Lady on the rock
In the Vispertal valley,
On a rugged rock face of the Rätiberg
Behind St. Niklas,
A small image of the Virgin Mary
Stands high up in the stone,
Barely visible to the eye.
It used to stand at the bottom of the path
In a now empty chapel,
So that people passing by
Could pray in front of it.
But once it happened that a godless man,
Whose wishes had remained unheeded,
Took excrement
And threw it at the holy image;
It wept tears,
But when he repeated the sacrilege,
It hurried away,
High up on the wall,
And would not come down again
In response to the people's pleas.
It was quite impossible
To climb up the rock and bring it back;
Rather, the people thought,
They could approach it
From the top of the mountain,
Climbed the mountain
And wanted to let a man float down
With strong ropes around him
Until he could get in front
Of the picture and receive it.
But as he was being lowered,
The rope by which they held him at the top
Became thinner and thinner at the bottom,
And when he came close to the image,
It became as thin as a hair,
So that the man was terrified and cried out,
For God's sake, they should pull him back,
Otherwise he would be lost.
So they pulled him up again,
And the ropes visibly regained
Their former strength.
Then the people had to get away
From the image of grace
And never got it back.