Northern mythology

APPENDIX. 287
guardian ^ Of otlier mountains it is also related that
heroes of ancient times have been carried into them.
Thus the emperor Frederic Barbarossa sits in the Kyfhauser
at a stone table ; his beard has already grown twice
round the table ; when it has grown thrice round he T\dll
awake '^. The emperor Charles sits in the Odenberg, or
in the Unterberg^, and an emperor not named, in the
Guckenberg near Frankishgemiinden '^.
Almost all the descriptions of the sojourn of souls after
death have this in common, that the nether world was
thought to be in the bowels of the earth, that is, in the
interior of mountains or at the bottom of waters, and that
its aspect was that of a spacious habitation, in which a
divine being received the departed. That it was, at the
same time, also' a belief that the dead in their graves, in a
certain manner, continued to live, that they were contented
or sad, and heard the voices
of those who called—a subject
to which we shall presently return—is strictly in
contradiction to the other ideas; but, in the first place,
heathenism easily tolerated such inconsistencies, and,
secondly, the depth of the grave became confounded with
the nether world in the bowels of the earth. Thus while.
1 The relationship of the traditions of Frau Venus and Holda is indubitable.
The Venusberg is considered by some as identical with the
Horselberg, in which Frau Holle holds her court.
Before the Venusberg
—according to the preface to the Heldenbuch— sits the trusty Eckhard,
and warns people ; as he also rides and warns before the Wild Hunt.
Grimm, D. S. No. 7. The tradition of the Venusberg first appears in
monuments of the foju'teenth century.
2 Grimm, D. S. Nos. 23,296. Comp. Bechstein, Thiir. Sagenschatz, 4,
9-54. See also vol. ili. pp. 101, sq. According to another tradition, the
emperor Frederic sits in a rocky cavern near Kaiserslautern.
3 Grimm, D. S. Nos. 26, 28. Mones Anzeiger, 4. 409. Of Wedekind
also it is said that he sits in a mountain, called Die Babilonie, in Westphalia,
until his time comes. Redecker, Westf. Sagen, No, 21. Similar
traditions are in D. S. Nos. 106, 207, and in Mones Anzeiger, 5, 174.
4 MuUer, p. 396.