with some liquid; which she offered to the count, in order that he might drink.  The count took the horn, and examined the liquid, but declined to drink it.  Whereupon the damsel said:  “My dear lord, drink it upon my assurance; for it will do you no harm, but will tend to your good.”  She added that, if he would drink, he and his family, and all his descendants, and the whole territory of Oldenburg, would prosper:  but that, if he refused, there would be discord in the race of the Counts of Oldenburg.  The count, as was natural, mistrusted her assurances, and feared to drink out of the horn:  however, he retained it in his hand, and swung it behind his back.  While it was in this position some of the liquid escaped; and where it fell on the back of the white horse, it took off the hair.  When the damsel saw this, she asked him to restore the horn; but the count, with the horn in his hand, hastened away from the mountain, and, on looking back, observed that the damsel had returned into the earth.  The count, terrified at the sight, spurred on his horse, and speedily rejoined his attendants:  he then recounted to them his adventure, and showed them the silver-gilt horn, which he took with him to Oldenburg.  And because this horn was obtained in so wonderful a manner, it was kept as a precious relic by him and all his successors in the reigning house of Oldenburg.

The editors state that richly decorated drinking-horn was formerly preserved, with great care, in the family of Oldenburg; but that, at the present time [1818], it is at Copenhagen.

The same story is related from Hamelmann’s Oldenburg Chronicle, by Buesching, in his Volksagen (Leips. 1820), p. 380., who states that there is a representation of the horn in p. 20. of the Chronicle, as well as in the title-page of the first volume of the Wunderhorn.

Those who are accustomed to the interpretation of mythological fictions will at once recognise in this story an explanatory legend, invented for the purpose of giving an interest to a valuable drinking-horn, of ancient work, which belonged to the Counts of Oldenburg.  Had the story not started from a basis of real fact, but had been pure fiction, the mountain-spirit would probably have left, not silver gilt, but a gold horn, with the count.  Moreover, the manner in which she suffers herself to be outwitted, and her acquiescence in the loss of her horn, without exacting some vengeance from the incredulous count, are not in the spirit of such fictions, nor do they suit the malignant character which the legend itself gives her.  If the Oldenburg horn is still preserved at Copenhagen, its date might doubtless be determined by the style of the work.

Mount Osen seems to have been a place which abounded in supernatural beings.  Some elves who came from this mountain to take fresh-brewed beer, and left good, though unknown money, to pay for it, are mentioned in another story in the Deutsche Sagen, (No.43. vol. i. p. 55.)