Note 399 — Chapter XV · FLOATING DOWN THE TIGRIS ON A KELEK

As many fantastic stories are related about Dietrich von Bern—Theodoric the Great, King of the East Goths—as there are about Semiramis. As the Assyrian queen was said to have been nursed by doves in her infancy and to have been transformed into a dove after her death so, the German legends have it, Dietrich von Bern was descended from a spirit and made his exit from the world on a black horse. In Lusatia the mythical Wild Huntsman who, during violent storms, rides furiously across the heavens is called Dietrich von Bern. Living so long after Semiramis it is more surprising that his life should be made the theme of Middle High German poems and Old Norse sagas than that the Assyrian queen should have been made the subject of oriental myth and Greek legend.