The Wildgrave flies oer bush and thorn, With many a shriek of hapless woe; Behind him hound, and horse, and horn, And hark away, and holla, ho!
With wild despairs reverted eye, Close, close behind, he marks the throng; With bloody fangs, and eager cry, In frantic fear he scours along.
Still, still shall last the dreadful chase, Till time itself shall have an end; By day, they scour earths caverned space; At midnights witching hour, ascend.
This is the horn, and hound, and horse, That oft the lated peasant hears; Appalled, he signs the frequent cross, When the wild din invades his ears.
Beings of the dwarf race swarmed on the banks of Rhine. First and foremost among these are the gnomes, who guard the subterranean treasures, but who on occasion reveal them to mortals. We meet with these very frequently under different guises, as, for instance, in the case of the Cooper of Auerbach, and the Yellow Dwarf who appears in the legend of Elfeld. The Heldenbuch, the ancient book in which are collected the deeds of the German heroes of old, says that God gave the dwarfs being because the land on the mountains was altogether waste and uncultivated, and there was much store of silver and gold and precious stones and pearls still in the mountains. Wherefore God made the dwarfs very artful and wise, that they might know good and evil right well, and for what everything was good. Some stones give great strength, some make those who carry them about them invisible. That is called a mist-cap, and therefore did God give the dwarfs skill and wisdom. Therefore they built handsome hollow-hills, and God gave them riches.
Keightley, in his celebrated Fairy Mythology, tells of a class of dwarfs called Heinzelmännchen, who used to live and perform their exploits in Cologne. These were obviously of the same class as the brownies of Scotland, Teutonic house-spirits who attached themselves to the owners of certain dwellings, and Keightley culled the following anecdote regarding them from a Cologne publication issued in 1826:
In the time that the Heinzelmännchen were still there, there was in Cologne many a baker who kept no man, for the little people used always to make, overnight, as much black and white bread as the baker wanted for his shop. In many houses they used to wash and do all their work for the maids.