Note 11 — RANDOM PASSAGES FROM ROUGH NOTES OF A VISIT TO ENGLAND, SCOTLAND, FRANCE, SWITZERLAND, AND GERMANY.
Reading edition
Among the Rhenish legends, versified by Planche, is one of the 'Mouse-Tower,' near Ehrenfels, commencing:
'The Bishop of Mentz was a wealthy prince. Wealthy and proud was he; He had all that was worth a wish on earth, But he had not charitie! He would stretch out his empty hands to bless, Or lift them both to pray; But, alack! to lighten man's distress, They moved no other way.'
A famine came; the poor begged in vain for aid, 'till he 'opened his granaries free,' and then locked them in, and 'burned them every one.' 'The merry mice! how shrill they squeak!' said the prelate:
'But mark what an awful judgment soon On the cruel bishop fell! With so many mice his palace swarm'd, That in it he could not dwell. They gnaw'd the arras above and beneath, They eat each savory dish up, And shortly their sacrilegious teeth Begun to nibble the bishop!
'He flew to the castle of Ehrenfels, By the side of the Rhine so fair, But they found the road to his new abode, And came in legions there! He built him in haste a tower tall In the tide, for his better assurance, But they swam the river, and scal'd the wall, And worried him past endurance!
'One morning his skeleton there was seen, By a load of flesh the lighter! They had pick'd his bones uncommonly clean, And eaten his very mitre! Such was the end of the Bishop of Mentz; And oft at midnight hour, He comes in the shape of a fog so dense, And sits on his old 'Mouse-Tower.'