Nieder-Walsee--Castles of Clam and Kreuzen--Ardagger--Grein--The
Strudel and the Wirbel--Mistakes of various Authors concerning
them--St. Nikola--Sarblingstein--Freystein--Hirschau--The
Isper--Bösenbeug--Story of Bishop Bruno and the Lady
Richlita--Ips--Gottsdorf.
After washing the walls of Ens, the river from which it takes its name
hurries through several channels, into the Danube. In the time of
Charlemagne it divided Bavaria from the lands of the Avars or Huns of
Pannonia.
--“Ad fluvium venit Anasum
Qui medius Bajvarios sejunxit et Hunnos.”
Saxo Poeta. T. II. p. 155.
From the point of its confluence with the Danube, the latter is
again studded with islands, sandbanks and sunken rocks as far as
Nieder-Walsee; and the history of the small market towns and villages
upon its flat banks, is as uninteresting as their appearance. On the
left, below the village of Nieder-Sebing, the little river Aust,
formerly the boundary between the Slavi and the Bohemians, flows round
an island, formed in its mouth, into the Danube; and on the right,
above the rippling Erla-bach, stands Erla-Kloster, a convent founded by
Otto of Machland in the tenth century, and suppressed by the Emperor
Joseph II. Our old steersman had been for some time complaining of
illness, and now lay groaning upon some straw, having given up the
paddle, by which the boat was steered, to the care of a lad who had
joined us at Linz in the place of his son, an exchange which we had
protested against at the time, as it was arranged at Ratisbon, that
the same people should row us the whole way to Vienna, and the father
and son were evidently the only persons who knew anything about the
navigation of the river. The old man growing apparently worse every
moment, we looked rather anxiously about for a place where we could
land, and obtain some assistance, but none presented itself before our
arrival, in sight of Nieder-Walsee; and therefore, although a mere
group of huts, above which arose the old wall and curious tower of the
Schloss, promised little in the way of accommodation, we determined to
land there, and see what could be done to set our poor pilot on his
legs again. Nieder-Walsee stands perched upon a rocky point of land,
on the right bank of the Danube, and behind it the mountains again
rear their forest-clothed heads. Upon the summit of one of the nearest
stands Strengberg, a post station, through which the high road runs
to Vienna, and from whence we enjoyed a splendid view of the Danube
on our return by land to Linz. The castle of Nieder-Walsee was built
by the same Eberhard, who erected Ober-Walsee on the Klausberg near
Aschach, and stands on the site of the old castle of Sumerau, After
the death of Reinprecht von Walsee in 1483, the castle was bought and
sold, pledged and redeemed, by various families, till, in the Seven
Years’ war, it became the property of the famous Field-marshal Daun,
from one of whose descendants it was bought in 1810, by Count Wimpfer.
A strong current runs round the point, and few boats, except those
belonging to the inhabitants, approach the shore at this place, as
there is considerable difficulty in getting back into the main stream,
out of which one is aground every two minutes upon the gravelly
shoals that rise in all directions in this part of the Danube, and can
only be avoided by keeping in the middle of what the boatmen call the
_Graben_ (the trench or channel) of the river. Not aware, however,
of this circumstance, and anxious to alleviate the sufferings of the
old steersman, we directed his locum tenens to run into the shore, a
business that was speedily effected, for we had no sooner come within
the influence of the current, than round went the head of the boat, and
in a few seconds we were brushing the bushes that hung over the steep
bank, and hurried along it far beyond the proper landing-place. Two
unfortunate discoveries were made together. The offer of a dram to the
steersman cleared up the mystery of his malady. He had had a few too
many already, and had laid down in the boat for the most excellent of
all reasons, his inability to stand; our second discovery was equally
annoying. We had got out of the stream, and the only person who was
capable of getting us cleverly back into it was hors de combat. The
rest of the crew knew as little about the matter as ourselves. As
soon as we had escaped one current we found ourselves in the power of
another, and with such force was the heavy, flat-bottomed punt we were
in driven upon the shoals, that, with all the strength we could muster
amongst us, we were sometimes ten minutes or a quarter of an hour
before we could get her afloat again; and when we had at last effected
it, round she spun, and there was her stern as fast as a church within
a dozen yards of the spot where her head had been similarly situated
two minutes before. At least an hour and a half was lost in this
amusing exercise, during which we had the gratification of seeing the
regular packet-boat that we had gotten the start of at Aschach, pass
us far to the left, and, steering clear of all obstacles, vanish into
the valley which opened between the wooded mountains in the distance.
At last, when our strength, our patience, and the reproaches we poured
rather unceremoniously on our drunken steersman were just exhausted,
and we had begun to calculate upon the probability of passing the
afternoon and evening at least upon the shoals, we found ourselves
by accident, but to our unspeakable satisfaction, once more impelled
forwards by a gentle and properly behaved current, which promised, in
the course of time, to lead us into the stream we had in evil hour
deserted.
On the left bank of the Danube below Nieder-Walsee, stand the village
of Saxen, and the Castles of Clam and Kreuzen. Saxen is mentioned as
early as 823, in which year Louis the Debonair gave to Reginhard,
Bishop of Passau, two churches at “Saxina in terra Hunnorum.” The
towers of Clam rise above a forest of pines a little behind Saxen. It
was anciently the seat of the Lords of Machland. The brother of Otto of
Machland, who founded the kloster of Baumgartenberg, was the first of
the family who signed himself “Chlamme,” A.D. 1156. On the extinction
of the family of Machland, this Burg came to the Preuschenks, and in
1487, the troops of Matthias Corvinus besieged and took it. The family
of Perger bought it in 1524, enlarged it in 1636, and took the title
of Barons and afterwards of Counts of Clamm. The great white castle
of Kreuzen, far away upon the summit of a hill to the north-west,
also belonged to the Lords of Machland, and in the twelfth century
was called Croucen and Chrutzen. In 1334, it came to the celebrated
Volkerstorfs, The Counts of Meggar bought it in 1523, and when the
Turks were devastating Upper Austria in 1526, its walls were filled
with fugitives of all ranks and ages. In 1701, it was bought by a
Count Cavariani, who sold it again almost immediately to the Count
of Salburg. The market-town of Ardagger, upon the right bank, was
given by Charlemagne to the bishopric of Passau. The Emperor Conrad
III., when setting out on his unfortunate crusade, landed here on the
29th of May, 1147, to make the necessary preparation for passing with
his fleet the then much-dreaded Strudel and Wirbel. Seventy thousand
knights, completely armed, an equal number of foot-soldiers, a troop of
females “in the armour and attitude of men,” the chief of whom, from
her gilt spurs and buskins, obtained the epithet of “The golden-footed
dame[56]”, passed down the Danube under the banners of Conrad. Two
years afterwards, a few boats, principally filled with priests who
had followed the army, returned to these shores; all that treachery,
battle, and disease had left of the mighty host that had so lately
marched in full confidence to the conquest of Asia!
A sudden bend of the river near this spot, brought us again amongst
the mountains, and in a moment we seemed shut out from the world by
the craggy barriers that rose on each side of us,--the counterparts of
those I have attempted to describe in the wild gorge of the Schlägen.
After passing a few lonely huts, perched here and there amongst the
masses of rock and forest, the chateau and town of Grein started at
once into view, on turning a sharp and craggy point, cradled amongst
the precipices which, opening behind the town, form a vista, terminated
by the castle of Kreuzen on its distant hill. Grein is one of the
poorest and smallest towns in Upper Austria, and the chateau is a
large, gloomy building, originally built by Heinrich von Chreine, in
the twelfth century. Frederick the Handsome, Duke of Austria, pledged
Grein for five hundred and sixty-two silver pfennige, to Albert von
Volkerstorf, May 14th, 1308. The valiant Bernhard von Scherffenberg
beat the Bohemians here twice, during the fifteenth century; at the
close of which it was bought of the Emperor Maximilian by one of the
family of Prueschenk. Heinrich von Prueschenk rebuilt the chateau, and
from this circumstance it received the name of Heinrichsburg.
The traveller now approaches the most extraordinary scene on the long
Danube, from its source in the Black Forest, to its mouth in the Black
Sea. As soon as a bend of the river has shut out the view of Grein and
its chateau, a mass of rock and castle, scarcely distinguishable from
each other, appears to rise in the middle of the stream before you. The
flood roars and rushes round each side of it; and ere you can perceive
which way the boat will take, it dashes down a slight fall to the
left, struggles awhile with the waves, and then sweeps round between
two crags, on which are the fragments of old square towers, with
crucifixes planted before them. It has scarcely righted itself from
this first shock, when it is borne rapidly forward towards an immense
block of stone, on which stands a third tower, till now hidden by the
others, and having at its foot a dangerous eddy. The boat flashes like
lightning through the tossing waves, within a few feet of the vortex,
and comes immediately into still water, leaving the passenger who
beholds this scene for the first time, mute with wonder and admiration.
These are the Scylla and Charybdis of the Danube, the celebrated
Strudel and Wirbel. The passage is made in little more than the time
it takes to read the above brief description, and I could scarcely
scratch down the outlines of these curious crags and ruins, before
I was whirled to some distance beyond them. I must beg my reader,
however, to return with me, and repass them more leisurely, than the
impatient stream would permit us. The Danube, checked in its northern
course at Grein, and driven unwillingly towards the east, vents its
fury against the opposing crags on the left bank, and having broken
down part of the barrier, rides over the ruins in triumph, forming what
is called, by the boatmen, the Grein-Schwall. After this ebullition of
anger, the stream appears to sink into sullen indifference, and slowly
and silently pursues its way through a gloomy gorge of precipices, that
rise higher and higher on each side of it, till it arrives within a few
yards of the Wörthinsel, an island, about four hundred fathoms long,
and two hundred broad, surrounded by sand-banks on all sides except
the north, where a perpendicular crag starts up, bearing on its crest
the ruins of the Wöther-Schloss, or Castle of Werfenstein[57]. From
this island to the rocky shores of the Danube, which here open and
form a kind of circle around it, run several chains of crags beneath
the water; some indeed peering above it, over and through which the
stream rushes right and left, with considerable violence and uproar.
The right arm is called the Hössgang, and is only passable when the
water is very high, by the smallest and lightest craft. The main body
hurries round the northern or left side of the island, and boiling
over the first chain of rocks, falls through three separate channels,
a depth of three feet in a distance of four hundred and eighty. This
fall is called the Strudel; but the boatmen have a name for each
channel, and call that one in particular the Strudel which is nearest
to the north shore of the island: the centre channel is called the
Wildriss; and the third, nearest the main bank, the Waldwasser[58]. The
three principal crags which, standing in the entrance of these three
channels, form part of the bank or bar, over which the water falls into
them, have also their particular names; that in the entrance to the
Strudel is called the Bomben-Gehäkel, or Buma-G’hachelt; the next, the
Wildriss-Gehäkel, and the third, the Wald-Gehäkel,--the term Gehäkel
or G’hachelt distinguishing the crags, the points of which generally
appear above the surface, from those which lie beneath it, and which
are called Kogeln or Kugeln. There are nearly a dozen of these Kogeln
in the passage of the Strudel, the principal of which are named the
Marchkugel, the Wolfskugel, and the Maisenkugel; and one, from its
particular formation, the Dreyspitze. These lie in various directions,
in the entrance and middle of the channels. At the outlet of the
Wildriss there is a reef of rock called the Ross, the principal crag in
which is named the Rosskopf; another reef, called the Felsengelander,
lies at the end of the Waldwasser, beside which are two rocks called
the Keller and the Hute. Some of these, at low water, are not more than
two feet beneath the surface, and impassable, of course, by a boat of
any size or burden.
It may easily be supposed that a stream like the Danube does not flow
very quietly over so rugged a bed, and though considerable masses of
rock have been blown up, and the channels otherwise much widened and
deepened within the last fifty years, there are still obstacles enough
to fret and agitate the river to a degree which gives at least an
appearance of danger to the passage, if even there be not a little in
reality. At the end of the fall, or Strudel, on the left, and of the
Hössgang on the right, the rocky shores again approach each other, and
the river, uniting its currents, sweeps rapidly round to the north
beneath a jutting crag, upon which stands the ruins of the castle of
Struden, and washes the walls of the little town of the same name. The
castle belonged anciently to the lords of Machland, and after them to
the Archdukes of Austria. In 1413, the Archdukes Leopold and Ernest
gave the “Feste haus ze Struden” to one Hans Greisenecker, who already
possessed the Castle of Werfenstein, for “a consideration;” and in
1493, the brothers Heinrich and Sigmund Prueschenk bought both castles
from the House of Austria, to which they had reverted.
About a thousand yards below Struden, but near the right bank of the
river, rises the large block of stone called the Hausstein, upon
which are the ruins of the tower of the same name; round the southern
side of this block struggles a small arm of the Danube, called the
Lueg, and navigable like the Hössgang, when the water is very high,
by small boats only. On the northern side is the celebrated whirlpool
(Der Wirbel), formed most probably by the violence with which the
two currents of the Danube are hurled against each other on leaving
the Wörthinsel, and again checked and divided by the Hausstein. This
whirlpool measures sometimes nearly fifty feet in diameter; but when
we passed it, it did not, I should think, exceed fifteen. In the
centre the water forms a perfect funnel, and a large branch of fir was
whirling round and round in it, as if some invisible hand were stirring
the natural cauldron, and making it “boil and bubble.” All sorts of
extravagant stories have of course been circulated respecting this
dreaded vortex, which is gravely affirmed by some of the old writers to
have no bottom. Munster, in his Kosmographie, printed at Basle in 1567,
says, “They have often sounded in this place, but the abyss is so deep
that they can touch no ground. It is bottomless. What falls therein,
remains under and never comes up again.”--b. III. sam. 965. This writer
also confounds the Strudel with the Wirbel.[59]
Father Kircher vows there is a hole underneath the Wirbel, which sucks
in the waters of the Danube, and a subterranean channel connected with
it, by which the said water is conveyed into Hungary, where it rises
again, and forms the Plattensee or Lake of Balaton! Others claim the
same origin for the Lake of Neusiedle[60], and to clinch the fable,
which is still reverently believed by the Hungarians, assert, that a
travelling cooper, who lost some of his tools in the Wirbel, absolutely
found them again floating on the surface of the Neusiedler-see.
Happelius, as in support of this hypothesis, says, “it is well known
that the Danube loses a considerable quantity of its waters in the
Wirbel, so that its flood is of much less consequence from that spot
down to Vienna,” a falsehood which a glance at the river is capable at
once of refuting.
There can be no doubt that, in earlier ages, there must have been
considerable danger in passing these falls and eddies; and even now,
when the water is low, an inexperienced or careless steersman might
easily get the bottom of his boat knocked out in the Strudel, or its
side staved in by the crags of the Hausstein, under either of which
circumstances the passengers would stand a very fair chance of being
drowned. I cannot help thinking our own rather a narrow escape, for
my readers will recollect that, on leaving Nieder-Walsee, our worthy
pilot was lying dead drunk in the stern of the boat. To our utter
astonishment, however, upon approaching the Grein-Schwall, he managed
to get upon his legs, and, as if sobered for the moment by a sudden
sense of his own situation, snatched the rudder from the boy (who in
a few minutes would certainly have had us upon the rocks), steered us
manfully and cleverly through the Strudel and Wirbel, and then flung
himself down again on his straw as drunk and insensible as before. Had
we been aware of the vicinity of these places, we should certainly have
taken a pilot on board at Ardagger, but we had no idea we were so near
them, and the poor fellows who rowed us were altogether ignorant of
the river, and merely working their way to Vienna. The passage was,
however, made before we had time to think of our danger, almost indeed
before we knew where we were; and absorbed in contemplation of the
romantic beauty of the scene, nothing short of absolute foundering
could, I believe, have distracted our attention from it. Riesbeck,
after a brief description of this spot, says, “a great variety of
circumstances concur to excite an idea of danger in both these parts of
the Danube. Low mechanics are fond of speaking of them, and magnifying
the danger, that they may increase their own importance in having gone
through it. Others, more simple, who come to the place with strong
conceits of what they are to meet with there, are so struck with the
wildness of the prospect, and the roaring of the water, that they begin
to quake and tremble before they have seen any thing. But the masters
of the vessels are those who most effectually keep up the imposition.
They make the passage a pretence for raising the price of the freight,
and when you are past them the steersman goes round with his hat in
his hand to collect money from the passengers as a reward for having
conducted them safely through such perilous spots. When our master (who
yet very well knew how much it was for his interest to keep up the
credit of his monsters) saw how little attention I paid to them, he
assured me in confidence that _during the twenty years he had sailed
the Danube, he had not heard of a single accident_.” This account was
written in 1780, and yet only three years before, (on the 31st of
October 1777,) two vessels struck, one on the Wolfs-Kugel, and the
other on the Maisenkugel, and went to pieces. In 1749, a Schiffmeister
of Passau, named Freidenberger, perished with his daughter in the
whirlpool, and another Schiffmeister, Martin Beyerl, of Vienna, was
drowned in it, at the commencement of the century.
The danger has certainly, however, been much diminished by the
exertions of the Austrian government, which, besides having
considerably widened and deepened the channels of the Strudel and
Hössgang, by blowing up the rocks and removing the sand, has instituted
sundry prudent regulations respecting the navigation of this part of
the Danube. All boats ascending the river when the water is only of a
certain height, are obliged to stop at the little town of Struden till
information is sent to Grein and the Saurüssel, at both which places a
flag is immediately hoisted to give notice to any vessels descending
the stream, that one is coming up through the Strudel, and so prevent
the collision that would be likely to take place should they attempt
to pass it in contrary directions at the same time, the descending
vessel being compelled, under a heavy penalty, to lay to, above the
rock called the Rabenstein, till the other has passed. Also when the
water is of a sufficient height to enable the ascending boats to pass
through the southern channels of the Lueg and the Hössgang, the horses
keep the towing-path on the right bank from Ips to Wiessen, a small
place facing Grein. But when the water is low, the horses are ferried
three times across the river in the short distance of 1200 yards; first
below the Wirbel, from the right bank over to the left; then from the
town of Struden to the Wörthinsel; and lastly, from the western end of
that island over the Hössgang, back again to the right bank, under the
Rabenstein.
As soon as you have passed the Wirbel, a boat puts off from the little
town of St. Nikola on the left bank, and paddling alongside, a man
holds out a box with the figure of the saint in it for the “voluntary
contributions” of the passengers, who are expected to drop a few
kreutzers in acknowledgment of the protection that has been so kindly
afforded them by his saintship. On board the regular passage-boat,
money is also collected by the steersman as Riesbeck describes, and
another ceremony likewise takes place, something similar to that
customary on board a ship when passing the line. The steersman goes
round with the wooden scoop or shovel, with which they wet the ropes
that bind the paddles to their uprights, filled with water; and those
who have never before passed through the Strudel and the Wirbel must
either pay or be well soused with the element, the perils of which they
have just escaped.
In 1144, Beatrix of Klamm founded an hospital at St. Nikola for
travellers on the Danube, which she so richly endowed, that Albert of
Austria, two hundred years later, found it only necessary to provide
for the spiritual welfare of its visitants, and therefore established a
daily mass with the money collected on the river from Ardagger to Ips,
in the manner above mentioned.
There were formerly two other towers or fortresses in the
neighbourhood; the ruins of one still exist on the northern bank of the
river, nearly facing the Wirbel, on the rock called the Langen-Stein.
The other was, as early as the twelfth century, spoken of as “the
ruined castle of the noble Lady Helchin,” and not a fragment of it is
now remaining. An old story, which I shall shortly have occasion to
transcribe, speaks of the tower called “Der Teufelsthurm,” (the Devil’s
Tower) but whether either of the four still standing have a claim to
that respectable appellation or no, is a question at present undecided.
It is accorded by some writers to the Castle of Werfenstein.
The gorge through which the river now flows calmly and silently as
it had never been ruffled, is of the same description as that from
Hayenbach to Neuhaus, but the mountains that line its shores are still
higher, and often
“Their lofty crests are capped with snow,
While blossoms deck the vale below.”
So deep is the water, and so steady the stream, that boats of any
burden may drift down it in the darkest night with perfect safety. We
now floated past the old round tower of Sarblingstein, standing on a
pedestal of granite, above a little group of houses, beside which the
rivulet of Sarbling brawls through a woody ravine over the rocky bank
into the Danube. The tower is all that remains of a fortress built by
the Monks of Waldhausen in 1538, with the permission of the Emperor
Ferdinand, upon the express condition that it should be considered an
asylum for the inhabitants of the neighbourhood in case of invasion or
civil war. Hirschau, close under Sarblingstein, is the last hamlet in
Upper Austria, or Austria on the Ens. Opposite it on the right bank are
the scarcely visible remains of the castle of Hirschau, and further
east, upon the mountain top, lie the extensive ruins of Freystein,
formerly one of the largest and strongest castles in Austria. At the
close of the fourteenth century, it belonged to the famous Reinprecht
von Walsee, and after him to the families of Preuschenk and Zinzendorf.
The Prince of Starrhemberg also once possessed it. Near this spot two
valleys open to the south-west, and from thence the granite is brought
with which the streets of Vienna are paved. The labourers employed
to blast the rocks and work the quarries live close by in the little
village of Dörfel; beside which the rivulet Isper, the Hyspere of
the middle ages, rippling through a narrow valley, forms the line of
boundary northward between Upper and Lower Austria.
The sun went down and the mountains seemed to sink with it, or melt
into the mists that crept around them. The valley of the Danube
widened,--a large building rose on the left bank, upon the end of a
rocky promontory, throwing a deeper gloom over the darkening waters,
its lofty tower piercing through the low vapours and soaring into
the clear, star-spangled sky above them--it was Schloss Bösenbeug,
the summer residence of the Emperor, and one of the oldest buildings
in Lower Austria, though the alterations made during the last century
by its then possessors, the Herren von Hoyos, have taken much from
the antique appearance of its exterior[61]. Nearly facing it on the
right bank stood the small chateau of Donaudorf, and beyond these two
buildings, the river opened to the right and left, in the same manner
that it did below Neuhaus. A multitude of lights glimmering amidst a
black mass of houses and huts, and reflected in long trembling lines
upon the water, pointed out to us the town of Ips, similarly situated
to that of Aschach. The Castle of Bosenbeug or Persenbeug belonged
in the ninth century to that Count Engelschalk who carried off the
daughter of Arnulph the Bastard, and afterwards lost his eyes and his
estates by the sentence of the Diet at Ratisbon, as has been already
described in the notice of Ebelsberg near Linz: Nearly all the
confiscated property of Engelschalk was given by Arnulph to the monks
of Kremsmünster; but, curiously enough, this Castle of Bösenbeug,
by a train of circumstances, eluded for a long time the clutches of
“holy mother Church,” who laboured indefatigably, “by hook or by
_crook_,” to get it into her possession. How it escaped her grasp
in the ninth century is not clear, but it certainly did do so, and
became the property of the valiant Bavarian Sieghart von Sempt, to
whom probably it was given as a stronghold, that would enable him
better to defend the duchy against the inroads of the Hungarians.
Sieghart fell gloriously in the execution of his trust, A.D. 907, in
the terrible battle fought between Theben and Haimburg. To work of
course went the monks, and at length so wrought upon the mind of one of
his weak descendants, Albert III.; that he bequeathed to them at his
death “the strong castle of Bösenbeug,” in despite of the entreaties
of his wife Richlinde, or Richlita, who strove to preserve it to the
next male heir, her nephew Welf von Altorf. The breath was scarcely
out of the body of Albert, when a desperate struggle ensued between
his widow and the monks of Ebersberg. The lady had taken up her
residence in the castle, which she claimed as part of her jointure,
with reversion to her nephew Welf, and refused to acknowledge the title
of the church, which she contended had been fraudulently acquired.
In the midst of this dispute, a circumstance took place which shall
be related as nearly as possible in the words of the old chronicler
Aventine. “The Emperor” (Henry III. surnamed the Black) “departed from
Regensburg and came by water to Passau: there he tarried during the
Passion week; and till the holy feast of the Ascension. The next day
after which he again took water; and journeyed into Lower Bavaria, as
Austria was then called. There is a town in Austria by name Grein;
near this town is a perilous place in the Danube, called the Strudel
by Stockerau[62]. There doth one hear the water rushing far and wide,
so falls it over the rocks with a great foam, which is very dangerous
to pass through, and brings the vessel into a whirlpool, rolling round
about. The Emperor Henry went down through the Strudel; in another
vessel was Bruno, bishop of Wurtzburg, the Emperor’s kinsman; and as
the bishop also was passing through the Strudel, there sat upon a
rock that projected out of the water, a man blacker than a Moor, of a
horrible aspect, terrible to all who beheld it, who cried out and said
to bishop Bruno, ‘Hear! hear! bishop! I am thine evil spirit! thou art
mine own, go where thou wilt, thou shalt be mine, yet now I will do
nought to thee, but soon shalt thou see me again[63].’ All who heard
this were terrified. The bishop crossed and blessed himself, said a few
prayers, and the spirit vanished. This rock is shewn to this day; upon
it is built a small tower all of stone, without any wood: it has no
roof, and is called the Devil’s Tower. Not far from thence, some two
miles journey, the Emperor and his people landed, purposing to pass
the night in a town called Pösenbeiss, belonging to the Lady Richlita,
widow of the Count Adalbero von Ebersberg. She received the Emperor
joyfully; invited him to a banquet, and prayed him, besides, that
he would bestow the town of Pösenbeiss and other surrounding places
(that her husband had possessed and governed) on her brother’s son,
Welforic III. The Emperor entered the banquet-room, and standing near
Bishop Bruno, Count Aleman von Ebersberg and the Lady Richlita, gave
the countess his right hand and granted her prayer. At that moment the
floor of the apartment fell in, and the Emperor fell through into the
bathing-chamber below it, without sustaining any injury, as did also
Count Aleman, and the Lady Richlita, but the bishop fell on the edge
of the bathing-tub, broke his ribs, and died a few days afterwards.”
Other writers say, that the Count and the Lady Richlita both died from
the hurts they received; but be that as it may, the right heir was,
according to the Emperor’s promise, established at Bösenbeug, A.D.
1045, in spite of the intrigues and plots of the monks, whose agents
had frightened and killed the poor bishop, he having, as it appears,
spoken a good word for the lady, who is supposed also to have fallen a
victim to the same scandalous trick, copied most likely from a similar
tragical farce played off by the celebrated St. Dunstan, about seventy
years before, in England. Some time afterwards the monks renewed their
claim in applications to the Markgraves Albert I. and Leopold III., but
without success, the latter, in 1096, giving the castle to his youngest
daughter, Richardis. Thus foiled, they went on a new tack, and managed
to persuade the husband of this Princess, Count Stephaning, to join
the first crusade, in the hope that he would never return, and that
Bösenbeug would at length become their property. Half of the charitable
wish was granted.
“Audiit, et voti Phœbus succedere partem
Mente dedit: partem volucris dispersit in auras.”
The bones of the poor crusader whitened the deserts of Syria, but his
castle reverted to the Markgraves of Austria. Ottocar, king of Bohemia,
gave it in 1271 to the patriarch of Aquileia; but in the reign of the
Emperor Albert I. we find it again in the possession of the house of
Austria. The Emperor Frederick IV. took possession of it as guardian
of Ladislaus, but he was ejected by force of arms in 1457, and the
castle given back to Ladislaus. Rudolph II. pledged and afterwards sold
it, with Rohreck, Weinberg, and the whole Isperthal, to the Barons of
Hoyos, from which family it was repurchased by the present emperor in
1801. The tilt-yard is still in good preservation, and the gardens
are beautiful. His Majesty is very partial to the spot, and makes
frequent excursions by land as far as the Strudel and Wirbel, from
whence he returns in the boat of a schiffmeister at Bösenbeug of the
name of Feldmüller, whom he patronizes highly, and who is considered
the richest man of his calling in Lower Austria. He builds yearly about
twenty of the boats called kellheimers, and employs one hundred horses
and three hundred men. Most of the inhabitants of the little markt of
Bösenbeug have, as may be supposed, considerably benefited from its
becoming an Imperial residence.
The town of Ips or Yps, as it is indifferently spelt, on the opposite
bank, is supposed by some old geographers to be the Usbium of Ptolemy,
by others the Pons Isidis. It is seated at the confluence of a river of
the same name with the Danube; and, in the time of Charlemagne, appears
under the name of Ibesse and Isebruch, as the property of the Counts of
Sempt and Ebersberg. In 1275, Ips threw open its gates to Rudolph of
Hapsburg; and, in 1741, the Bavarian and French armies here formed a
junction: its name has, however, become familiar to foreign lands, not
from the deeds of arms done in its neighbourhood, but from its having
shared with Passau the trade in the crucibles made at Hafner-zell;
and which, as I have before mentioned, are distinguished throughout
the world by the names of the places where they are sold, instead of
that of the spot where they are fabricated. Immediately below Ips, the
river forms a reach, which, from the difficulty of its navigation,
obtained the appellation that has eventually attached itself to the
point of land at which it commences,--Die Böse-Beug, literally, “the
bad corner.” Before we turned this corner, however, night had sunk down
upon land and flood, and our crew began to be clamorous for rest and
refreshment. Our drunken beast of a steersman, whom we had now begun
cordially to detest, insisted upon proceeding as far as Marbach; and
accordingly the men, who knew nothing of the river, pulled away again
for a quarter of an hour rather sulkily; when, having lost sight of
the lights of Ips, and seeing none appear in the distance, they again
expressed symptoms of impatience, and upon receiving from a passing
boat the information that Marbach was yet “eine starke stunde” (a
long hour) distant, they became outrageous, and vowed they would run
the boat ashore, at the first village they could discover. Neither my
companion nor myself much objected to their determination, as there
was every probability, from their utter ignorance of the river, the
inability of the steersman to direct them, and the heavy fog that
was fast rising, that in the course of a few minutes we should go
bump ashore somewhere, whether we would or no; and therefore a hovel,
where bed and supper might be procured, was certainly preferable to a
sandbank without either. Two or three tapers glimmering above the fog
through something like windows, attracting our notice on the left, the
men pulled towards it, and our boat soon grated on the sand, under what
first appeared a lofty wall, but which turned out, on examination, a
steep bank, upon the ridge of which stood half a dozen poor cottages.
Up we clambered on all fours, dragging our cloaks and portmanteaus
with us; and a man making his appearance with a lantern, we followed
him into an old crazy-looking hovel, which, by the outward and visible
sign of a dead bush dangling over its door, too plainly indicated the
miserable state of its inward and spiritual grace, though dignified by
the title of a gasthaus[64]. Several sufficiently ill-looking fellows
in jackets of undressed black sheep-skin, caps of the same material,
and high boots, each with a formidable clasp-knife, worn as an English
carpenter wears his rule; two brawny, bare-armed, masculine wenches in
similar jackets, with dark handkerchiefs bound round their brows in the
Austrian fashion; and an old hag, whose habits and person were equally
indescribable, formed the rather startling group to which our guide
introduced us. Our application for beds appeared to astonish them. They
had no such thing; there was plenty of straw. They had no coffee, no
butter;--the poor fellows who had rowed us sat down on a bench, and
began to gnaw some dry bread, the only refreshment the _hotel_ seemed
capable of furnishing. On a sudden it occurred to us that a basin of
boiled milk might be procurable, and sure enough half a gallon, at
least, of delicious milk was in ten minutes smoking in two glorious
wooden bowls, upon the long oaken table before us. Our host now entered
with one or two helpers laden with straw, which they spread all over
the floor, and our crew, having finished their crusts, stretched
themselves out in a row, their knapsacks under their heads, and soon
commenced a nasal symphony, more powerful than harmonious. The company
and the family having one by one withdrawn, with the exception of the
old beldame, who waited to take away the solitary candle, we betook
ourselves also to our portion of the straw, and never in my life did I
enjoy a sweeter, sounder sleep than that which bound up my senses in
the humble gasthaus of Gottsdorf till six o’clock the next morning.
FOOTNOTES (CHAPTER VI.)
[56] Gibbon.--William of Tyre and Matthew Paris reckon seventy thousand
loricati in each of the armies led by Conrad and the French king,
Louis VII. The light-armed troops, the peasant infantry, the women
and children, and the priests and monks, swelled this swarm to an
inconceivable extent. “It is affirmed by the Greeks and Latins, that in
the passage of a strait or river, the Byzantine agents, after a tale
of nine hundred thousand, desisted from the endless and formidable
computation.”--_Decline and Fall_, vol. xl. p. 107.
[57] This little square tower, which is generally called, from its
situation, the Wörther-Schloss, is described in several topographical
works indifferently under the name of the Castle of Werfenstein, and
the Castle of Struden. But it being clearly apparent from various
ancient documents that the Castles of Werfenstein and Struden were
two distinct buildings, Herr Schultes has, I think, with good reason,
designated this the ruin of Werfenstein, and that which overhangs the
little markt of Struden, on the left bank of the river, the Castle of
Struden.
[58] The Waldwasser and the Wildriss, like the Hössgang, are never
passable but when the water is very high, and then only by the lightest
and smallest craft. The Strudel, though most studded with rocks, is the
best, and consequently the general passage for all boats and rafts,
either ascending or descending, and has therefore given its name to the
whole fall.
[59] A singular ignorance of the true situation of these famous
places is displayed by most of the German writers. Berckenmayer, in
his Curiösen Antiquarius, carries the Wirbel below the town of Krems,
and he is followed in his error by Strahlenberg, in his Beschreibung
des Russichen Reiches, and Hübner, in his Vollständigen Geographie,
who speak of the Wirbel as a _waterfall_ near Krems. From Hübner this
mistake has been copied into several geographical works, and amongst
others into the old Zeitung’s Lexicon; and many of the modern German,
and even some English travellers speak of the Strudel and Wirbel as one
and the same thing, a confusion which nothing but utter carelessness
could have created; the first being distinctly a fall, and the second
an eddy, each remarkable in itself, and at some little distance from
the other.
[60] “Inter alios (vortices) famosus ille est, qui aspicitur sub
Lincio. Creditur vulgo origo esse lacus Neusidel in Hungaria
Cis-Rahabanti. Aspicitur etiam alter sed hoc minor, prope pagum Almas
infra Commaronium, qui perhibetur esse origo lacus Balaton.”--Marsigli
Danubiani illustr. See also Herbinius de Cataract. Fluv., and Kircher’s
Mundus subterraneus.
[61] Vide Frontispiece. The view was taken from a hill on the right
bank of the river, on our return by land from Vienna.
[62] Here is another error respecting the Strudel. Stockerau is nearly
two days journey from it, in the neighbourhood of Vienna.
[63]
“_Brutus._ Speak to me what thou art?
Ghost. _Thy evil spirit, Brutus._
_Brutus._ Why com’st thou?
Ghost. _To tell thee thou shalt see me at Philippi._
_Brutus._ _Well, Then I shall see thee again?_
Ghost. _Ay, at Philippi!_”
Julius Cæsar, Act iv. Scene 3.
[64] A _gast-haus_ is an hotel; a _wirths-haus_, a tavern, or ale-house.