It has been a German custom, older than Christianity, to celebrate the awakening life of nature in May. This has always been a martial feast, in which the fundamental idea of the old heathen faith, the victory of the awakening divinities of nature over the demons of winter, was dramatically represented. In the rising cities it was the warlike youth of the freeborn citizens who lead the May sports, and in the Hohenstaufen time these sports assumed the form of fashionable knightly festivals. Thus in the year 1279, at Magdeburg, on the borders of the Rhine, where Saxon blood had formed one of the strongest fortresses of German life against the Sclavonian, the Whitsuntide feast was celebrated quite in knightly style. The young mounted yeomen arranged a great tournament in their Elbe island "the Marsh," under their Maigraf, Bruno von Stoevenbecke; the arrangements were all written down, and the merchants of Goslar, Hildesheim, Braunschweig, Halberstadt, and Quedlinburg invited. They came splendidly-equipped, and courteously broke a lance with two young comrades of Magdeburg in front of the city, and then rode festively through the gates to the island on which many tents were pitched. The prize settled by the Magdeburgers for this May tilt was, like the figure on their coat-of-arms, a maiden.[58] An old merchant from Goslar won the beautiful Sophie; he took her with him and married her, giving her so good a dowry as to enable her to live ever afterwards honourably. A century later, in May 1387, the Magdeburgers celebrated a great festival on the "Marsh," and again they contended for a maiden; but the combat was no longer in the style of a tournament, such as their bishop held at the same time on the other side of the city, but it was in a great archery court. To this archery meeting they again invited the friendly cities of Brunswick, Halberstadt, Quedlinburg, Aschersleben, Blackenberg, Kalbe, Salza, and Halle. A citizen of Aschersleben won the maiden.