THE NOVELIST


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GERMAN TRADITIONS.


I have a song of war for knight,
Lay of love for lady bright,
Faery tale to lull the heir,
Goblin grim the maids to scare!

SIR WALTER SCOTT.

Germany! land of mystery and of mind! birth-place of Schiller and
Goëthe, with what emotions does not every lover of romance sit down to
peruse thy own peculiar, dreamy traditions! Thy very name conjures up
visions of demons, and imps, and elfs, and all the creations of faery
land, with their varied legends of _diablerie_, almost incredible in
number and singular in detail--and romance, in his gloomy mood, seems
here to have reared his strong hold.

At a time when a taste for the beauties of German literature is becoming
general throughout this country, we conceive that a few specimens of her
traditions may not be unacceptable to the reader. Few subjects are more
interesting than the popular legends of a country, which are the source
from whence many of our later novelists draw several of their writings:
they offer a field for reflection to the contemplative observer of man;