#Z#, which takes us back from Eastern Germany to the Rhine, combines features from all the three groups. Ulrich fascinates a king's daughter by his song. She collects her gold and jewels, as in #W#, and goes to a wood, where a dove warns her that she will be betrayed. Ulrich appropriates her valuables, and they wander about till they come to the Rhine. There he takes her into a wood, and gives her a choice between hanging and drowning, and, she declining both, says she shall die by his sword. But first she is allowed three cries,--to God, her parents, her youngest brother. The youngest brother demands of Ulrich where he has left his sister. "Look in my pocket, and you shall find fourteen tongues, and the last cut [reddest] of all is your sister's." The words were scarcely out of his mouth before Ulrich's sword had taken off his head. The three classes of the German ballad, it will be observed, have for their principal distinction that in I the maid saves her own life by an artifice, and takes the life of her treacherous suitor; in II, she is rescued by her brother, who also kills the traitor; in III, she dies by the villain's hand, and he by her brother's, or by a public execution. There are certain subordinate traits which are constant, or nearly so, in each class. In I, #A-F#, a choice of deaths is invariably offered; the maid gets the advantage of the murderer by persuading him to take off his coat [distorted in #F#, which has lost its conclusion]; and, on her way home, she falls in with one or more of the robber's family, mother, brothers, servant, who interrogate her [except #F#, which, as just said, is a fragment]. Class II has several marks of its own. All the thirteen ballads [#G-S#], except the last, represent the knight as fascinating the maid by his singing; in all but #Q# she is warned of her danger by a dove,[53] or more than one; in all but the much-abridged #M#, #N#, the knight spreads his cloak on the grass, they sit down, and, excepting #M#, #N#, #R#, the unromantic service is repeated which she undertakes in Danish #A#, #B#, #D#, #E#, #F#, #H#, #L#, Swedish #A#, Norwegian #A#, #B#. The bloody spring occurs in some form, though often not quite intelligible, in #H#, #J#, #K#, #L#, #O#, #P#, #Q#, #R# (also in #D#, #Y#). All but the much-abridged #M#, #N# have the question, What are you weeping for? your father's land, humbled pride, lost honor? etc.; but this question recurs in #T#, #U#, #V#, #W#. The cries for help are a feature of both the second and the third class, and are wanting only in #Y#. Class III differs from I, and resembles II, in having the cries for help, and, in the less impaired forms, #T-W#, the knight spreads his cloak, lies down with his head in the lady's lap, and asks the cause of her tears. Beyond this, and the changed catastrophe, the ballads of Class III are distinguished by what they have lost. Forms in which the story of this is mixed with that of some other German ballad remain to be noticed.