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They conducted us down the most frightfully steep paths until we had descended beneath the clouds, when the light from our torches threw our shadows in gigantic form upon the mists above, reminding us of the legend of the 'Spectre of the Brocken. At last the torches began to go out, one by one, and just as the last light was expiring we arrived at a small village, where we of course found that everybody was asleep.
Coleridge told also of his reception at an Hessian village, after his visit to the Hartz mountains, and the Brocken. Their party consisted of himself, Mr. Carlyon, and the two Mr. Parrys. The four pedestrians entered the village late of an evening, and repaired to the chief ale-house, wearied with a hard day's journey, in order to be refreshed and to rest for the night.
A very pretty picture to contemplate from the outside, this little world in holiday clothes, framed in greenery! but just on the Brocken, where the nicest girl among the dancers had the unpleasant peculiarity of dropping a little red mouse out of her mouth so too here under different forms there were red mice dropping about among the company.
The prop of his pride seemed shaken beyond recovery. But the girl's calm comforted them all, and poignancy became dull pain. Before parting for the night Marie said to Hugh: "This is what I wish you to do for me to bring over two of your horses to Point Assumption on the river. There is a glen beyond that as you know, and from it runs the steep and dangerous Brocken Path across the hills.
The Brocken is, of course, the traditional scene of the "Witches Sabbath" on Walpurgis-Nacht, and many of the rock-strewn valleys seem to have pleasant traditions of bloodthirsty ogres and gnomes associated with them. There is no real climbing in the Harz, easy tracks lead to all the local lions.
She's not to know. She must never know." In his sudden fit of passion he sprang to his feet and towered over me with clenched fists, the sputtering flames casting a weird Brocken shadow on wall and ceiling of the fog-darkened room I shrank into my chair, for he seemed not a man but one of the primal forces of nature. He shouted in the same deep, shaken voice. "Adrian is dead. The child is dead.
How differently the poet and the naturalist look at objects! What, probably, will he spy? what will he select to look at? Of course, he will see a Brocken spectre of himself. He will see several meeting-houses, at least, and, perhaps, that somebody ought to be assessed higher than he is, since he has so handsome a wood-lot.
Rapid syllabication is also a characteristic of the song of the witches in the scene on the Brocken; but the witches sing in octaves and fifths except when they kneel to do homage to Mefistofele; then their chant sounds like the responses to John of Leyden's prayer by the mutinous soldiers brought to their knees in "Le Prophete."
Many remarkable phenomena attend this state of the atmosphere, known as the Fata Morgana of Sicily, the Mirage of the Desert, the Spectre of the Brocken, and the more common exhibitions of halos, coronæ, and mock suns. The Mountain House at Catskill has repeatedly been seen brightly pictured on the clouds below. Rainbows are also due to this condition of the atmosphere.
She could speak in the voices of all women, hence she was named "Echo," and we might fancy that, like the witch of the Brocken, she could appear to every man in the likeness of his own first love. The ancient Egyptians either knew her, or invented legends of her to amuse the inquiring Greeks. She had touched at Sidon, and perhaps Astaroth is only her Sidonian name.
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