Chapter 15

According to a widely accepted popular belief, examined more minutely in ch. XXXII on Spiriting away, certain heroes have sunk from the rocks and fortresses they once inhabited, into clefts and caverns of the mountains, or into subterranean springs, and are there held wrapt in a seldom interrupted slumber, from which they issue in times of need, and bring deliverance to the land. That here again, not only Wuotan, Arminius, Dieterich and Siegfried, but such modern heroes as Charles, Frederick Barbarossa and even Tell are named, may assure us of the mystic light of myth which has settled on them. It was Norse custom, for aged heroes, dead to the world and dissatisfied with the new order of things, to shut themselves up in a hill: thus Herlaugr with twelve others goes into the haugr (Egilss. p. 7), and in like manner Eticho the Welf, accompanied by twelve nobles, retires into a mountain in the Scherenzerwald, where no one could find him again (Deutsche sagen, no. 518). Siegfried, Charles and Frederick, like King Arthur of the Britons, abide in mountains with their host.

Be it be remarked lastly, that the heroic legend, like the divine, is fond of running into triads. Hence, as Oðin, Vili, Ve, or Hâr, Iafnhâr and Thriði stand together, there appear times without number three heroic brothers together, and then also it commonly happens, that to the third one is ascribed the greatest faculty of success. So in the Scythian story of the three brothers Leipoxais, Arpoxais and Kolaxais (Herod. 4, 5): a golden plough, yoke and sword having fallen from heaven, when the eldest son and the second tried to seize them, the gold burned, but the third carried them off. The same thing occurs in many märchen.