One of these Schlegel has versified in the "Lay
of the Sunken Castle," with the piteous tale of the spirits imprisoned;
and Simrock tells us in rhyme of the merman who sits waiting for a
mortal bride; while Wolfgang Mueller sings of the "Castle under the
Lake," where at night ghostly torches are lighted and ghostly revels are
held, the story of which so fascinates the fisherman's boy who has heard
of these doings from his grandmother that as he watches the enchanted
waters one night his fancy plays him a cruel trick, and he plunges in to
join the revellers and learn the truth.
Local tradition says that Count Henry II. and his wife Adelaide, walking
here by night, saw the whole lake lighted up from within in uncanny
fashion, and founded a monastery in order to counteract the spell. This
deserted but scarcely ruined building still exists, and contains the
grave of the founder; the twelfth-century decoration, rich and detailed,
is almost whole in the oldest part of the monastery. The far-famed
German tale of Genovefa of Brabant is here localized, and Henry's son
Siegfried assigned to the princess as a husband, while the neighboring
grotto of Hochstein is shown as her place of refuge. On our way back to
the Rocky Gate we pass through the singular little town of Niedermendig,
an hour's distance from the lake--a place built wholly of dark gray
lava, standing in a region where lava-ridges seam the earth like the
bones of antediluvian monsters, but are made more profitable by being
quarried into millstones.
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