White Lady, a spectral figure which, according to popular legend, appears in many of the castles of Germany, as at Berlin, Nenhaus in Bohemia, Ansbach, Baireuth, Kleve, Darmstadt, Altenburg, as also in London, Copenhagen, Stockholm, and elsewhere, by night as well as by day, particularly when the death of any member of the family is imminent. She is regarded as the ancestor of the race, shows herself always in snow-white garments, carries a bunch of keys at her side, and sometimes rocks and watches over the children at night when their nurses sleep. The earliest historical instance of this apparition occurred in the 15th century, and is famous under the name of Bertha of Rosenberg (in Bohemia). The White Lady of other princely castles was identified with Bertha, and this was accounted for by the intermarriages of other princely houses with members of the house of Rosenberg. In the Schloss of Berlin she was seen in 1598, 1619, 1667, 1688, and again in 1840, 1850, and 1879. The White Lady of Avenel, in Scott's Monastery, is an ineffective imitation. It was long a common belief in the Highlands that many of the chiefs had some kind spirit to watch over the fortunes of their house. Popular tradition has many well-known legends about white ladies, who generally dwell in forts and mountains as enchanted maidens waiting for deliverance. They delight to appear in warm sunshine to poor shepherds or herd-boys. They are either combing their long hair, or washing themselves, drying wheat, beating flax, or spinning; they also point out treasures and beg for deliverance, offering as reward flowers, corn, or chaff, which gifts turn in the instant into silver and gold. They wear snow-white, or half white half black garments, and yellow or green shoes. All these and many other traits that appear in individual legends may be traced back to a goddess of German mythology who influences birth and death and presides over the ordering of the household. Still more distinctly the appellation White Lady and the name Bertha point back to the great goddess of nature, who appears under various names, and who, as Berhta ('the brilliant'), held her circuit on Twelfth-night and revealed her power. When the legend goes on to say that the Bohemian Bertha of the 15th century promised the workmen of Neuhaus a sweet soup on the completion of building the castle, and that this soup, along with carp, is still given in remembrance of it to the poor on Maundy Thursday, we may be permitted to recognise again the festival dishes consecrated to Bertha, such as fish, oatmeal gruel or dumplings, &c., which it is still customary to eat about the time of Twelfth-night and Christmas in most districts of Germany.
See Minutoli, Die Weisse Frau (Berl. 1850), and Schrammen, Die Schicksals- oder Totenfrau im Haus der Hohenzollern (Cologne, 1888).