the sweet strains of the charmer" (Kalewala, Rune

xxii.).

In one of the heroic ballads of the Minussinchen Tartars, the wind, which is represented as a foal which courses round the world, finds that its master's two children, Aidôlei Mirgän and Alten Kuruptju, which I take to be the morning and evening stars, are dead and buried and watched by seven warriors. The foal changes himself into a maiden, and. comes singing to the tomb such bewitching strains that

"All the creatures of the forest,

All the wing'd fowl of the air,
Come and breathless to her listen ;"

and the watchers are charmed into letting her steal away the children, as Hermes stole Io from Argus, and she revives them with the water of life, which is the dew".

In Scandinavian mythology, Odin was famous for his Rune chanting; and the power of bewitching creation with these Runes obtained for him the name of Galdner, from gala, to sing, a root retained in our nightingale, the night-songster; in gale, a name applied to the wind from its singing powers;

• Heldensagen der Minussischen Tataren, v. A. Schiefner. S. Petersburg, 1859, p. óo.

and in the Latin gallus, the noisy chanticleer of the farmyard.

A trace of the myth appears in the ancient German heroic Gudrunlied, where the powers are ascribed to Horant, Norse Hjarrandi, who is described as singing a song which no one could learn. "These strains he sang, and they were wondrous. To none were they too long, who heard the strains. The time it would take one to ride a thousand miles passed, whilst listening to him, as a moment. The wild beast of the forest and the timid deer hearkened,' the little worms crept forth in the green meadows, fishes swam up to listen, each forgetting its nature, so long as he chanted his song." On reading this, we are reminded of that sweet German legend, so gracefully rendered by Longfellow, wherein the parts are changed, and it is no more the birds listening to the song of man, but proud man, with finger on lip and bated breath, listening to the matchless warble of the bird.

"A thousand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday!" mused Brother Felix; "how may that be?" and full of doubt over God's word he went forth to meditate in the forest.

"And lo! he heard

The sudden singing of a bird,

So sweet, and clear, and loud,

It seem'd a thousand harp-strings ringing.

And the Monk Felix closed his book,
And long, long

With rapturous look

He listen'd to the song,

And hardly breathed or stirr'd.”

As he thus listened years rolled by, and on his return to the convent he found all changed-new faces in the refectory and in the choir.

Then the monastery roll was brought forth, wherein were written the names of all who had belonged to that house of prayer, and therein it was found

"That on a certain day and date,

One thousand years before,

Had gone forth from the convent gate
The Monk Felix, and never more

Had enter'd that sacred door:

He had been counted among the dead.

And they knew at last,

That, such had been the power

Of that celestial and immortal song,

A thousand years had pass'd,

And had not seem'd so long

As a single hour."

Bishop Hatto

F the many who yearly visit the Rhine, and

OF

bring away with them reminiscences of tottering castles and desecrated convents, whether they take interest or not in the legends inseparably attached to these ruins, none, probably, have failed to learn and remember the famous story of God's judgment on the wicked Bishop Hatto, in the quaint Mäusethurm, erected on a little rock in midstream.

At the close of the tenth century lived Hatto, once abbot of Fulda, where he ruled the monks with great prudence for twelve years, and afterwards Bishop of Mayence.

In the year 970, Germany suffered from famine.

"The summer and autumn had been so wet,
That in winter the corn was growing yet.

'Twas a piteous sight to see all around

The corn lie rotting on the ground.

"Every day the starving poor
Crowded around Bishop Hatto's door,
For he had a plentiful last year's store;
And all the neighbourhood could tell
His granaries were furnish'd well."

Wearied by the cries of the famishing people, the Bishop appointed a day, whereon he undertook to quiet them. He bade all who were without bread, and the means to purchase it at its then high rate, repair to his great barn. From all quarters, far and near, the poor hungry folk flocked into Kaub, and were admitted into the barn, till it was as full of people as it could be made to contain.

“Then, when he saw it could hold no more,
Bishop Hatto he made fast the door,
And while for mercy on Christ they call,
He set fire to the barn, and burnt them all.

66 6

'I'faith, 'tis an excellent bonfire !' quoth he,
' And the country is greatly obliged to me
For ridding it, in these times forlorn,
Of rats that only consume the corn.'

"So then to his palace returned he,

And he sat down to supper merrily,

And he slept that night like an innocent man;
But Bishop Hatto never slept again.

"In the morning, as he enter'd the hall
Where his picture hung against the wall,

A sweat, like death, all over him came,

For the rats had eaten it out of the frame."

Then there came a man to him from his farm,