r divinities, and transferred her name to their great
Christian feast. It had long been customary to celebrate this day by
the exchange of presents of coloured eggs, for the egg is the type of
the beginning of life; so the early Christians continued to observe
this rule, declaring, however, that the egg is also symbolical of the
Resurrection. In various parts of Germany, stone altars can still be
seen, which are known as Easter-stones, because they were dedicated
to the fair goddess Ostara. They were crowned with flowers by the
young people, who danced gaily around them by the light of great
bonfires,--a species of popular games practised until the middle of
the present century, in spite of the priests' denunciations and of
the repeatedly published edicts against them.

Bertha, the White Lady

In other parts of Germany, Frigga, Holda, or Ostara is known by
the name of Brechta, Bertha, or the White Lady. She is best known
under this title in Thuringia, where she was supposed to dwell in
a hollow mountain, keeping watch over the Heimchen, souls of unborn
children, and of those who died unbaptized. Here Bertha watched over
agriculture, caring for the plants, which her infant troop watered
carefully, for each babe was supposed to carry a little jar for that
express purpose. While the goddess was duly respected and her retreat
unmolested, she remained where she was; but tradition relates that
she once left the country with her infant train dragging her plough,
and settled elsewhere to continue her kind ministrations. Bertha
is the legendary ancestress of several noble families, and she is
supposed to be the same as the industrious queen of the same name,
the mythical mother of Charlemagne, whose era has become proverbial,
for in speaking of the Golden Age in France and Germany it is customary
to say, "in the days when Bertha spun."

As this Bertha is supposed to have developed a very large and flat
foot, from continually pressing the treadle of her wheel, she is
often represented in mediaeval art as a woman with a splay foot,
and hence known as la reine pedauque.

As ancestress of the imperial house of Germany, the White Lady is
supposed to appear in the palace before a death or misfortune in
the family, and this superstition is still so rife in Germany, that
the newspapers in 1884 contained the official report of a sentinel,
who declared that he had seen her flit past him in one of the palace
corridors.

As Berth