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]

[14] A collection of these interesting legends may be found in
Baring-Gould's "Curious Myths of the Middle Ages," of which
work this paper was originally a review.