The fall of Heringen castle

In the first version the castle is held by a wild knight, Veit, the terror of the whole district. He is at feud with all his neighbours and shrinks from no means. His daughter Adelinde is his opposite in everything, and his coarse nature costs her much grief.

Returning once from a raid, Veit comes upon Sir Klaus of Mersch out hunting. Such an opportunity he does not let pass: he seizes him and drags him captive to Heringen. For months the young knight lies in hard imprisonment, until his plight moves the compassionate Adelinde. On a dark night she creeps down to the dungeon and loosens the prisoner’s chains.

Down in the valley a strong hand grips him: it is his own squire. Klaus learns that the lords of Ansembourg, Fels, Meysembourg and Folkendingen have joined forces and ringed Heringen so closely that not a mouse can escape the robbers’ nest. At daybreak the castle will be stormed and set alight.

So it happens. Soon the flame leaps from the captured castle. In vain the lord of Heringen fights like a lion. Klaus saves his life and then plunges down to the dungeon to snatch the noble Adelinde, now lying there in chains in his place, from death by fire. Three years later Klaus and Adelinde are a happy couple, and one evening an old man in foreign dress arrives at the castle of Mersch: it is Veit, who had made pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre and returns a changed man.

The second version knows no Adelinde. There Heringen is held by Templars who make the country unsafe with their raids, fall upon travellers and oppress the poor country people hard. The neighbouring castles want to catch them and cannot, for the robbers have had their horses shod backwards. When men think they have ridden out, they are sitting safe behind their walls.

A man from neighbouring Befort reads the fresh hoofprints in the sand and concludes the castle is empty. He walks towards it. The robbers come out and mean to kill him so that he cannot betray them. At his pleading they let him go, on condition that he swear an oath never to reveal their secret to any man.

He keeps his oath. The following Sunday, when high mass is over and the people are leaving the church, he places himself before a gravestone beside the church door and carries on so that every eye is on him. Then he calls aloud, turned towards the stone: to you, o stone, I say it alone, the Heringers are at home; when men think they are in, they are out, and when men think they are out, they are in; they have had their horses shod back to front. Told to no man. At once the peasants of several neighbouring villages band together, arm themselves with hayforks and scythes, and storm the castle.