Page:Legends of Rubezahl, and Other Tales (1845).djvu/95



HE famous Mountain Spirit Rubezahl, who alone has conferred upon the land of the Sudetes more celebrity than have all its poets put together, dwells, in peaceful harmony with Apollo and his nine Muses, on the often though but feebly sung Riesengeberg, that Parnassus of the Silesians. This Prince of the Gnomes, indeed, possesses on the surface of the earth but a very limited territory, and this he only holds in common with two mighty Potentates, who take no notice whatever of his co-sovereignty. But then, at a few fathoms underground, he exercises a monarchy which there is no one to dispute, control, or trench upon; and which, extending far and wide, descends eight hundred and sixty miles, right down to the very centre of the earth. Sometimes the subterranean Starost takes