ll, we will hurry past
the mermaid's home, where so much salmon used to be caught that the very
servants of the neighboring monastery of St. Goar were forbidden to eat
salmon more than three times a week, to go and take a glimpse of St.
Goarshausen, with its convent founded in the seventh century by one of
the first Celtic missionaries, and its legend of the spider who remedied
the carelessness of the brother cellarer when he left the bung out of
Charlemagne's great wine-cask by quickly spinning across the opening a
web thick enough to stop the flow of wine. A curious relic of olden time
and humor is shown in the cellar--an iron collar, grim-looking, but more
innocent than its looks, for it was used only to pin the unwary visitor
to the wall while a choice between a "baptism" of water and wine was
given him. The custom dates back to Charlemagne's time. Those who,
thinking to choose the least evil of the two, gave their voice for the
water, had an ample and unexpected shower-bath, while the wine-drinkers
were crowned with some tinseled wreath and given a large tankard to
empty. On the heights above the convent stood the "Cat" watching the
"Mouse" on the opposite bank above Wellmich, the two names commemorating
an insolent message sent by Count John III. of the castle of
Neu-Katzellenbogen to Archbishop Kuno of Falkenstein, the builder of the
castle of Thurnberg, "that he greeted him and hoped he would take good
care of his mouse, that his (John's) cat might not eat it up." And now
we pass a chain of castles, ruins and villages; rocks with such names as
the Prince's Head; lead, copper and silver works, with all the activity
of modern life, stuck on like a puppet-show to the background of a
solemn old picture, a rocky, solitary island, "The Two Brothers," the
twin castles of Liebenstein and Sternberg, the same which Bulwer has
immortalized in his _Pilgrims of the Rhine_, and at their feet, close to
the shore, a modern-looking building, the former Redemptorist convent of
Bornhofen. As we step out there is a rude quay, four large old trees and
a wall with a pinnacled niche, and then we meet a boatful of pilgrims
with their banners, for this is one of the shrines that are still
frequented, notwithstanding many difficulties--notwithstanding that the
priests were driven out of the convent some time ago, and that the place
is in lay hands; not, however, unfriendly hands, for a Catholic German
nobleman, married to a Scotch woman, b