Rübezahl: The Moody Mountain Lord of the Giant Mountains
Between Silesia and Bohemia the Giant Mountains—the Riesengebirge, the Krkonoše—rise in long treeless ridges where the weather changes character in minutes: sun, then wall-fog, then hail out of a blue morning, then sun again upon the drenched traveler. The old people of both slopes knew the author of that meteorology by name, though they were careful where they spoke it. He is Rübezahl : lord of the range, keeper of its herbs, treasures, and tempests—a mountain spirit of no fixed shape, appearing now as a gray monk, now as a woodcutter, a huntsman, a journeyman on the path ahead, a log across the stream, a toad, a cock, a cloud; in Schwind's great painting he strides his ridge as a wild staff-bearing giant with the face of a man interrupted mid-thought. He is, by the unanimous testimony of five centuries of tales, the moodiest power in German legend : generous past all reason to the poor, the honest, and the courteous—his gifts of leaves and stones turn to gold at the mountain...