(often noting that many years have passed in the world during his absence) and in the end returns to fairy-land. The Venusberg legend has no counterpart in Middle High German literature associated with Tannhäuser. Venusberg as a name of the "Otherworld" is first mentioned in German in Formicarius by Johannes Nider (1437/38) in the context of the rising interest in witchcraft at the time. The earliest version of the narrative of the Tannhäuser legend, as yet without association with the figure of Tannhäuser, and naming a "Sibylla" instead of Venus as the queen in the mountain, is recorded in the form of a ballad by the Provençal writer Antoine de la Sale, part of the compilation known as La Salade (c. 1440). The association of the narrative of La Sale's ballad, which was likely based on an Italian original, with the name of Tannhäuser, appears to take place in the early 16th century. A German Tannhäuser folk ballad is recorded in numerous versions beginning around 1510, both in High German and Low German variants. Folkloristic versions were still collected from oral tradition in the early- to mid-20th century, especially in the Alpine region (a Styrian variant with the name Waldhauser was collected in 1924). Early written transmission around the 1520s was by the means of printed single sheets popular at the time, with examples known from Augsburg, Leipzig, Straubing, Vienna, and Wolfenbüttel. The earliest extant version is from Jörg Dürnhofers Liederbuch, printed by Gutknecht of Nuremberg in ca. 1515. The popularity of the ballad continues unabated well into the 17th century. Versions are recorded by Heinrich Kornmann (1614), Johannes Preatorius (1668). Modern reception The Preatorius version was included in the Des Knaben Wunderhorn folksong collection by Clemens Brentano and Achim von Arnim in 1806. The folk ballad was adapted by Ludwig Tieck (Der getreue Eckart und der Tannhäuser, 1799) and Heinrich Heine (1836). Richard Wagner adapted the legend in his three-act opera Tannhäuser, completed in 1845. The plot of the opera covers both the Tannhäuser legend and the epic of the Sängerkrieg at Wartburg Castle. Aubrey Beardsley started to write an erotic treatment of the legend which was never to be finished due to his conversion to Catholicism, repudiation of his past works, and subsequent illness and death; the first parts of it were published in The Savoy and later issued in book form by Leonard Smithers with the title