Year: 1871

lt ls amusing sometimes to see how


fiction mixes itself up with history


and how the legends of remote age,


may be made to play an active part il


the events of the present day. This j.


the case with the legend of Frederick


the First, Emperor of Germany, sur


named Barbarossa," or Red Beard


This most famous of all the Emperou


of midieval Germany, having become


involved in a serious quarrel with the


Church, sought to avert its anathemas


and conciliate its favor by joining in


the third crusade against the Turks 70,


the expulsion of those followers OF


Mshomed and Termagaunt from


Asia Minor and the Holy Land. But


his fortune was not commensurate with


his zeal, for in bathing in the icy wa
ters of the river Cydnus he was drown
ed doth June, 119O), fate which
Alexander the Great had very narrowly
escaped from, in the same stream, 800
years previously.


In those days, good Germans, when
they died, did not go to Paris, but such
fate was kept in reserve for Frederick
Barbarossa; for he was transported
bodily to the Mountain of Kyffhauser,
in Thuringia, in state of semi con
sciousness, and "in his habit as he
lived, by whom is not exactly known,
but most probably by the tutelary an
gels of Germany One side of the
mountain was opened by the same mys-
terious hands, and tolerably large
apartment was excavated, wherein the
monarch was deposited in comatose


tate, with his attendants, and q page,
who plays an important part in the af-
fair. There, seated before a stone ta-
bic, nodding drowsily in chair, the
drowned Emperor was condemned to
nod and wink and dream until the
crows, which by thousands had built
their nests in the old ruined
tower on the top of the noun
tain, should disappear. But it
was at the same time decreed that they
should not do SO until all discord had
ceased In Germany; and when that re-
markable state of things should come
about, no matter from what cause, then
the Emperor, weary with long sleeping
and waiting, should come forth from
his cavernous prison, and hire a peas
ant to carry his sword and shield be-
fore him, with the view of terrifying
all those who fancied they had better
blood in them than the peasant had.
In this manner the Emperor was to go
forth and reclaim his empire. Cnce,
at the expiration of each century, he
was allowed to wake up and send his
page up to the tower to see If the crows
had left it; and this favor he has hith-
erto carefully availed himself of. Six
times has the page done his
errand, only to return with the
answer, "the crows are still
there" and six times has the disap-
pointed monarch fallen asleep for an
other hundred years. But, on the 18th
of July last, he was awakened in an
unusual manner, and he sent his page
up to the tower in haste, to look after
the crows. What then was his delight
when the page returned with the it'd
jngs that the crows were preparing to
leave, as war had been declared by
France, and all discord had ceased in
Germany, because the nation was unit
ed under one flag to repel the invader
Yes, the hour of awakening had come,
and the spirit of Barbarossa stepped
forth to animate the new Emperor (that
is to be-, not bg one peasant but by
every man in the land-no one, not even
duke or count, considering his blood
any better than that of a peasant in the
cause of the Fatherland!


Such is the wild, yet beautiful, le-
gend which has suddenly resumed its
in the German heart, as sig
nifcant of the approaching unifcation
of its native land. Barbarossa is the
type of this oneness of will, and the
of his waking up the mo-
ment his beard had grown so long that
1T touched the ground, as symbolical of
that will having taken root in German
soil. There are, however, two modes
of interpreting the legend: one, which
may be called Bismarck's; the other,
Heine's. The Bismarck theory is that
the Red Bearded Emperor will unite all
Germany beneath his sway, after the
manner of feudal times, and repress
revolutionary tendencies of modern
times. The Heine theory is that he
will, on the contrary, cause these ten
denotes TO germinate and expand, and
that this is what is intended by the le-
gend, when it says that the Emperor
shall hang his sword and shield on a
withered tree, which tree, shall there
upon begin to blossom. This last view
is the most popular.