VE'NUSBERG, the name of several mountains in Germany, especially in Swabia; it appears to be met With in Italy also. It occurs for the first time, so far as is known, in a poem called the Children of Limburg, composed in the Netherlands about 1337 (pub lished by Van den Bergh, Leyden, 1846); but since then it is met with frequently in the literature of the 15th and 16th centuries, and has been preserved to the present day in legends and popular songs. According to these accounts the lady Venus holds her court 'in the interior of such mountains, in brilliant style, with song and dance, banquets, and all kinds of revels. Persons of earthly mold now and then visit her abode (they are always represented as descending), and tarry longer or shorter time, some even to the day of judgment, leading a life of perpetual delight; e.g., Heinrich von Limburg, a hero of the romance, and the noble Tamilauser (q.v.). Yet they usually run the risk of eternal perdition ; and therefore, the faithful Eckhart sits before the entrance of the mountain, and warns people against entering. Nor does the condition of the sojourners always present so enticing an aspect; on the contrary, there are at times heard issuing from the mountain the lamentations of the damned; and Gciler von Keiscrsherg makes the witches in their night-expeditions rendezvous in the Venusberg.
On putting together the various traits of these traditions it is apparent that they origin ated in the mythology of the highest German antiquity. The lady Venus is, under a name borrowed from the classical mythology, the universal divine mother of the old Ger man belief, in her peculiar conception of subterranean goddess—the same being that appears under several other German names, each bringing forward some particular side of her character; e.g., Hulda (q.v.), the gracious, benign; Hilda, war; Berehta (q.v.), the shining; Het, the concealed (from which our hell is detived). In this character of goddess of the under-world she is surounded by the elves and other subterranean spirits, unbaptized children, fallen heroes, and the wise women devoted to her services. who, in the way of thinking of later times, were degraded to witches. The queen of Elfiand, or i Faery, is evidently only another form of the lady Venus modified by a more decided mixture of Celtic and classic elements.—See Tale of Tamlane, and Thomas the Rhymer in Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.