ried, pierced by the thorn of winter, is sleeping until
he shall be again called forth to fight. In Switzerland, by the
Vierwald-stattersee, three Tells are awaiting the hour when their
country shall again need to be delivered from the oppressor. Charlemagne
is reposing in the Untersberg, sword in hand, waiting for the coming of
Antichrist; Olger Danske similarly dreams away his time in Avallon; and
in a lofty mountain in Thuringia, the great Emperor Yrederic Barbarossa
slumbers with his knights around him, until the time comes for him to
sally forth and raise Germany to the first rank among the kingdoms of
the world. The same story is told of Olaf Tryggvesson, of Don Sebastian
of Portugal, and of the Moorish King Boabdil. The Seven Sleepers of
Ephesus, having taken refuge in a cave from the persecutions of the
heathen Decius, slept one hundred and sixty-four years, and awoke to
find a Christian emperor on the throne. The monk of Hildesheim, in the
legend so beautifully rendered by Longfellow, doubting how with God
a thousand years ago could be as yesterday, listened three minutes
entranced by the singing of a bird in the forest, and found, on waking
from his revery, that a thousand years had flown. To the same family of
legends belong the notion that St. John is sleeping at Ephesus until the
last days of the world; the myth of the enchanter Merlin, spell-bound by
Vivien; the story of the Cretan philosopher Epimenides, who dozed away
fifty-seven years in a cave; and Rip Van Winkle's nap in the Catskills.
[14]

We might go on almost indefinitely citing household tales of wonderful
sleepers; but, on the principle of the association of opposites, we
are here reminded of sundry cases of marvellous life and wakefulness,
illustrated in the Wandering Jew; the dancers of Kolbeck; Joseph of
Arimathaea with the Holy Grail; the Wild Huntsman who to all eternity
chases the red deer; the Captain of the Phantom Ship; the classic
Tithonos; and the Man in the Moon.

The lunar spots have afforded a rich subject for the play of human
fancy. Plutarch wrote a treatise on them, but the myth-makers had been
before him. "Every one," says Mr. Baring-Gould, "knows that the moon
is inhabited by a man with a bundle of sticks on his back, who has been
exiled thither for many centuries, and who is so far off that he is
beyond the reach of death. He has once visited this earth, if the
nursery rhyme is to be credited when it asserts that

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