Crossword-Solution: HOLDA 5 letters, 5 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 9

Chapter XII "Tannhäuser" Wagner and Greek ideals--Methods of Wagnerian study--The story of the opera--Poetical and musical contents of the overture--The bacchanale--The Tannhäuser legend--The historical Tannhäuser--The contest of minstrels in the Wartburg--Mediaeval ballads--Heroes and their charmers--Classical and other parallels--Caves of Venus-- The Hörselberg in Thuringia--Dame Holda--The tale of Sir Adelbert.

Before Christianity came to reconstruct the folk-tales of the Thuringian peasants, the Hörselberg was the home of Dame Holda, or Holle, and the horde of weird creatures which used to go tearing through the German forests on a wild rout in the Yuletide.

The original German song itself has come down to American and English children, and enthusiastic folklorists see in it a relic of the ancient tree worship and an invocation of Frau Holda, the goddess of love and spring of our Teutonic ancestors.

According to some of the Scotch stories, the witch, after bestriding her broomsticks must repeat the magic formula, _Horse and Hattork!_ The flitting of these ill-omened night-birds, like nearly all the general superstitions relating to witchcraft, mingles itself and is lost in a throng of figures more august.[110] Diana, Bertha, Holda, Abundia, Befana, once beautiful and divine, the bringers of blessing while men slept, became demons haunting the drear of darkness with terror and ominous suggestion.

Then said a small shrill voice distinctly: "Note now, sweethearts, how high we pass over the wind-vexed heath, where the gallows' burden creaks and groans swaying to and fro in the night! Now the rain breaks loose as a hawk from the fowler, and grave Queen Holda draws her tresses over the moon's bright shield.