Legends From River and Mountain by Carmen Sylva

Among those mountains of Saxony known as the Obererzgebirge, once / famous for their silver-mines, there lived, nearly three hundred years / ago, a man named Ran, who was overseer of the mines of Schneeberg. Now / many among his workmen tried to win the favour of overseer Ran, not / only because he was master of the works, but because of his only child, / his beautiful daughter Gretchen. Her loveliness and her sweetness were / the talk of the country, and every young man in Schneeberg fancied / himself ready to jump down the shaft of the mine for her sake, if it / were required of him. This, however, was not what Master Ran needed. / He was a grasping man, and the constant handling of precious metal / seemed to have increased his thirst for riches. So he was determined / that lovely Gretchen should be a mine of wealth to him, all the more, / perhaps, that the other mine with which he had to do was no longer / as prosperous as it had been. There were general complaints over the / quantity of "blind ore," as the people called it, that had lately been / found -- worthless stuff, that did not repay smelting. This misfortune / was said to be due to the "silver-thief," or "Kobold," a wicked little / dwarf that was supposed to haunt the mountain, and draw the silver down / out of the quartz as the workmen approached. At any rate, the failure / of the mine, whoever was to blame for it, was like to bring poverty / among the folk of Schneeberg, and Ran was all the more anxious to / secure riches for himself and his child against that evil day. So he / let it be known that the man who could produce the largest bag of gold / in all the district, should have the beautiful Gretchen to wife.

"Let those who would get her seek," said he, "for it is well known / there is plenty of gold in these mountains for any who have wit to find / it, and courage to risk something in the winning of it."