This great goddess was known by different names among the various peoples of Germany. She may have been the same as Zisca, but, as we know absolutely nothing of the myth and attributes of that deity, we cannot decide with certainty. More probably she was the Holda, or Holle, who still holds sway over the imagination of the German peasantry.
Now Holda is the great pale lady who glides through the sky at night, in whose dark courts are many thousand bright-eyed damsels, all, like her, pure; all, with her, suffering eclipse.
“Siderum regina bicornis audi
Luna puellas.
O Ursula! Princess among thy thousands of virgins,
Pray for us!”
Holda, or the Moon, is the wandering Isis, or Ursula, whom German poets love still to regard as sailing over heaven’s deep in her silver boat. As—
“Seh’ ziehen die Wolke mit der Brust voll Segen,
Des Mondes Kahn im Meer der Nächte prangen.”
Or—
“Es schimmert, wie der Silberkahn,
Der dort am Himmel strahlt.”
Holda, in Teutonic mythology, is a gentle
