interest. In 1755 the colonial authorities established as many as forty forts and blockhouses along the Blue Mountains, from the Susquehanna to the Delaware. These were occupied for a number of years by colonial troops, and for many years formed a frontier, within which took place Indian forays. This line of forts was recently made known by a committee of the Pennsylvania legislature, and an examination of the colonial records made by Mr. Henning brought to light much historical matter of interest. The southeastern boundary line of Schuylkill County is the Blue Mountain range, and here were situated seven of the forts. It would seem that the hills formed the point of attachment of many Old World traditional stories concerning fairies regarded as mountain-dwellers, and that these ideas have lingered until within the recollection of persons still living, or only lately deceased. In the "Miners' Journal" of March 26, 1897, is printed a tale, apparently of German origin, possessing such characteristics. A youth of the name of Siegfried, having paid a visit to his promised bride, rather singularly called Chriemhilt, crossed the mountains during a thunder-storm and disappeared. Sixty-five years, a month, and a fortnight later the bride, now grown to an old woman and still unmarried, received a visit from this lover, who appeared on horseback, still wearing the costume habitual in the time when he had been lost to knowledge. This interview took place, according to the tale, in the presence of children. The old woman afterwards explained that she had been accosted by her lover, who was under the impression that he had remained only a few hours in the mountains with the spirits, whose splendid palaces and golden streets he described, and who were able to pass at will and in a moment from one end of the mountains to the other. The woman refused to accompany him, and one of the spirits of the mountain appeared, who claimed the suitor as his captive. At the prayer of Chriemhilt, however, he consented that after her death the prisoner should be released, and reunion effected in heaven. Such is the folk-tale, obtained from the relation of one of the children present at the advent of the suitor, and who in after days narrated the incident.
The story belongs to that class of tales of which the story of Rip van Winkle is a diluted example; the fair youth, marriageable and therefore an especial object of attraction to fairies, is carried away to the earthly paradise, in which he himself does not become old, and where three hundred years go by as a single day. The return to the bride reminds one of the tale on which is based Bürger's ballad of Lenore; but in the latter case it is the excessive grief of the girl that brings back from the grave the lover, who, as in the present case, is bound by a promise, but who is really dead, and not, as in the Pennsylvanian story, merely a captive of fairies. The tale shows that instruction even respecting European folk-lore might have been derived from the tales of Pennsylvanian Germans, had these been garnered in season; and it will be highly interesting, and a part of the mental history of the settlement in America, if even fragments can be dis- interred.
Another story, related in the same paper of March 26, 1897, is of a
