( The Legend of the mermaid that died because of love)
The lake Mummel is located at a height of 1029m just belove the highest mountain of the northern black forest, the Hornisgrinde with its 1164m.
To get there you just have to take the black forest high route (Schwarzwaldhochstraße) and get to one of the parking spots between Ruhestein and Unterstmatt – or you just use google maps.
The name of the lake comes from the mermaids that supposedly live here in this lake, which is in old german called Mümmel: tiny and beautiful creatures that can seduce any man and take him to the ground of the lake. It is said that they live in a big cristal castle on the bottom of the lake where the king permits them to visit the world above the lake, always if they come back in time before the stars go down. If they did not manage to be back in time, they were punished. So they went to the surface, danced, and sang to the music of the villagers and woodworkers.
All of them went back in time and everything was perfect until one day the most beautiful mermaid of them all fell in love with a woodworker from the close by village Seebach. In the following visit, all the mermaids went back to the depths of the ocean, only the one that fell in love stayed. She wanted to keep dancing and singing with her love and only once it was too late already, she noticed that she stayed longer than all the others. She said to her love with a sad voice: ‘Maybe we will not see each other ever again, because I have to die. Wait here and if you see blood on the lake you will know, I lost my life.’
She went down to the kings' castle and a few minutes after a cloud of blood returned to the surface of the lake. The mermaid had died because of her love.
