from passau to pesth, along the danube

Irish Jesuit Province

From Passau to Pesth, along the DanubeAuthor(s): John FallonSource: The Irish Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 134 (Aug., 1884), pp. 401-409Published by: Irish Jesuit ProvinceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20497163 .

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From Passau to Pesth. 401

"0 brave young men, my love, my pride, my promise, 'Tis on you my hopes are set,

In manliness, in kindliness, in justice, To make Erin a nation yet:

Self-respecting, self-relying, self-advancing, In union or in severance, free and strong

And if God grant this, then, under God, to Thomas Davis

- Let the greater praise belong."

Thus traversing all the ages, from the shadowy gigantic forms and mythic lays of the earliest epoch down to our own times, from Cuchul lin and Fergus Mac Roy to Thomas Davis, may we not say that Sir Samuel Ferguson has achieved a great work for his country? Be it no disparagement to other labourers in the same field, whom we honour and admire, to say that he is in the front of them all. It has been urged upon us that it is almost a pity that we did not devote ourselves to make his great gifts as a poet better known through the pages of some English periodical. We do not adopt this view. In the present condition of English taste our words would be addressed to cold, re luctant, and unsympathetic ears. Here and there a man of genius, like Matthew Arnold, may appreciate the treasures that lie in Celtic poetry and legend, but to the ordinary English mind they are extra neous and repulsive. However that may be, the first thing is to make our poet more known and more prized by his own countrymen. If a distinctive national Irish literature in the English tongue is, as we hope and believe, an achievement of which the foundations have been already laid, and which one day, in fair and stately proportions, will body forth all that is best and noblest in the character and aspirations of the Gae], and not of the Gael alone, but of the Gael as interfused and blended with the Dane, the Saxon, and the Norman, according to the noble language of Davis himself, then to Sir Samuel Ferguson may the greater praise belong. Be this the pillar of his fame.

0.

FROM PASSAU TO PESTII, ALONG THE DANUBE.

BY JOHN FALLON.

PASSAU is one of those old-fashioned places which seem to have got out of the running of the nineteenth century, and to have gone to sleep. Formerly its bishops,were independent princes, with a little territoryand a miniature army of their own; now it is one of the frontier towns of

Bavaria. I noticed in the old-fashioned inn at which I " descended "

that the stairs and corridors are vaulted in solid stone, and groined like the crypt of a cathedral; even the upper passages through the



402 From Passau to Pesthi.

house are built in this tremendously solid manner, with just small grated apertures at intervals to admit a faint glimmer of light. I think this is typical of the whole town, because, as I rambled about, I noticed the gate-entrances and arched-ways to all the old houses of any pretension were stone-vaulted and groined in like manner. In fact, the town seems as if built to resist a bombardment, in the days of weak artillery, when such a thing was possible; and one instinc tively asks one's self, can it have had more experience in that

way than other towns? The windows of the houses, at least the lower ones, are defended with iron-work, artificially wrought into patterns of foliage and animals of grotesque design, such as one sees in museums. The tall roofs are tiled like fish-scales, and studded

with dormer windows. The chimneys are perfect miniatures of the houses themselves, tiled like them in a small way, and with opes at the sides, like windows, through which the smoke issues. The town is evidently built on the side of a hill, so that the streets rise tier above tier, and the cross ones are steeply inclined. And I noticed that several of the streets have stone arches spanning them, with open or covered passages above, very convenient to avoid the steep inclines, but strongly suggestive of the same idea of precaution against bom bardment in days gone by.

The cathedral, as it stanids. is not old: it was burnt down and rebuilt in the seventeenth century, and in the style of that age, which

means Byzantine, or perhaps I should call it " Italian Renaissance." In its way it is really fine; and if, as I believe, it be due to the private

munificence of the prince-bishops, it is a noble monument to their memory. To me those prince-bishops, here and elsewhere, are an enigma: how they came to exist, how they grew to power, till some of them became electors of the empire, and then how they so utterly ceased to be known, at least in Western Europe? There must be truth in the theory that, when the barbarian hordes swept down upon the decaying empire of the Ctcsars or of Charlemagne, and mercenary governors forsook their commands, the people gathered like sheep round their true shepherds, who remained with their trembling flocks, to live with them, or to die. Then and thus their temporal power arose, most legitimately, because spontane ously. At present we only know them by their tombs. Have you ever noted the graceful symbolism of a prince-bishop's tomb ?-a sword in the left hand, pointed towards the ground; the Bible in the right, raised towards heaven-token of the supremacy TEAT OUGHT TO BE of truth over force, justice over violence, right over might !-a supremacy as obsolete in these days of "Iblood and iron" as the prince-bishops themselves. That their rule was not deleterious in ancient Passau is manifest at a glance, from the stately and sub stantial air of the burghers' houses, built as if to defy time.



From Passau to Pesth. 403

What shall I say of the people-that is to say, the bourgeoisie, and the few peasants who lingered about the streets after the day's

market ? Simply this: the bourgeoisie seemed to me pretty much the same here as everywhere else; or, rather, all you can see is a lot of men, with nothing peculiar in their costume, but with porcelain pipes in their mouths (even to youngsters who have not yet attained their teens); and a lot of women, with nothing peculiar in their features (though Passau was famed for beauty), but with black silk handkerchiefs tightly tied round their heads, so- that when they walk before you their heads look like moving cannon. balls. The peasantry are a little bit more picturesque: the peasant men wear double-breasted vests of gaudy colours, decorated with a profusion of large steel buttons, richly carved; the peasant women have fine sun burnt features and athletic busts; they sport large gold ear-rings and in many instances Hessian boots, and all of them wear coloured handkerchiefs closely capping their heads and knotted as tightly as possible at one side. Time was when the guilds and trades of Passau had each its badge and livery, and its costume iistinct in colour and shape; that was the time when each had also its ban ner, and patron saint, and altar at the cathedral; but the sinister influence which we call the French Revolution has swept its far reaching wave even here, and obliterated those picturesque features of other and better days.

Speaking of the peasantry, I should like to record their method of hay-making, which I noted as I came along. Fancy light poles stuck in the ground at regular distances, and in straight lines, like the hop poles of Kent; fancy round these poles the hay trussed in successive layers, tall, narrow, and gaunt-as you pass they seem like regiments of giants or goblins;-and for rapidly drying the hay, the effect must be superb.'

But now I must bid adieu to Passau, for the bell rings which sum mons us to the steamer. A white fog had hung over the river all the morning, but now the atmosphere has cleared off; stray fragments of white cloud cling affectionately to the hill-sides, or go curling upwards like flakes of down: in fact, the day is all that a day could be for sight-seeing and enjoyment.

Immediately below Passau the Danube is joined by the Inn and the Ils. The Ils, flowing down from the Boemer Wald, is compara tively insignificant; but the Inn, rolling up its waters from the south, is a broader river, where it unites, than the Danube itself. The pro

montories, by whose feet those three rivers flow, are all built upon; and their terraces of houses, rising in magnificent amphitheatre one

* A precisely similar method is adopted in turf-making, where that most tiresome,

of fuels is used: and for bay-making, it is prevalent in various parts of the Austrian

empire. Why do we not try it in Ireland?



404 From Passau to Peskh.

above another, form a scene in its way unsurpassable, varying at every moment by the twists and rapid bends of the river.

I have said that the Inn is broader than the Danube where it joins it: it has also been ascertained that it has travelled more miles from its source, in distant Engadine, than the Danube from its cradle amid the glens of the Wurtemburg Black Forest. Then why, in the name of all geography, do not the combined waters bear and perpetuate the name of the wider confluent? Surely it cannot be owing to a

mere accidental mistake, as in the case of the Mississippi and Missouri. No! but the Inn, big as it is, and long, yields up its current as it joins, and all too meekly gives up its way, like a henpecked hus band; the Danube, imperious consort, flows on without yielding a jot, unbent and undeflected in the least degree. And thus it is that the queenly river remains the Danube still, and that the Inn, with its name effaced, sinks into a secondary form of existence for evermore. Such is life, amongst rivers as amongst men!

Soon the last tower of Passau dips behind the hills, and you find yourself joyously gliding down the stream, amidst primeval forests of darkest hue. Those forests are of pine-wood, called " Pinus Cembra ;" at a distance it is exceedingly like the " Pinus Austrica," so familiar to planters at home; perhaps it is the same tree, but I cannot tell.

And now, as this day's journey ends at Linz, a distance of about sixty-five miles, done in about four hours, I would briefly describe the character of the scenery in a few words, thus: picture a river, not forcing or cutting, but coaxing and insinuating its way amidst a range of wood-covered mountains, yielding and twisting with their bends, quickening or slackening with the inclines of their deepest glens, through which it rushes ever, with a firm determination to move on.

Of course at times it loses its temper, and frets angrily round some too obstructive headland; at times also its ruffled surface tells of treacherous ledges beneath. But on the whole the scene is like a lake, ever changing, ever new, reminding you of everything you have ever seen of most beautiful, and of fairy visions never seen but in dreamland, now realised, or surpassed. Such is the Danube between Passau and Linz.

And at intervals you will remark, peeping over the trees, old feudal castles in ruins; each of these caps some hill-top, or flanks some side ravine, arnd generally makes its appearance, like an evil omen, where the navigation of the river, even for a steamer, " requires care."

Those are, or rather were, the castles of the robber knights-yes; that is their correct name, " rauber-ritter "-who levied smart toll on passing barges in days gone by. The proceeding was a sublimely simple one: the barge was sighted, the great horn sounded from the topmost tower, heard for miles, like the horns of Uri and Unterwald, like the horn that Roland would NOT sound at Ronceval:



From Passau to Pesrk. 405

"Roland, Roland, yet wind one blast!

Karl will hear ere the gorge be passed, And the Franks return on their path full fast."

And when the long low sound had gone booming through the glens, down flocked the retainers from tillage field and cottage, as well as from banquet-hall and rampart, the bells rang, and the performance commenced which degenerate moderns call "robbing." But the real performers had no scruple whatever about the matter; they would have scorned " any vile mercantile pursuit," but this they deemed quite worthy of their lineage andl caste! To levy tolls on the passing barges was in their eyes a birthright and an heirloom, and they no more scrupled it than Mr. De Lesseps and his shareholders scruple levying tolls at the Suez Canal.

But trade, hard matter-of-figure trade, found this form of taxation did not suit: and, what was much better, found a perfectly willing and competent champion in Rudolph of Hapsburgh, just six hundred years ago. The gentle Rudolph hanged quite a number of " rauber ritter" within their own donjon-keeps, "your encourager le autres." I believe he scored as high as seventy-five in one short year, " a mag nificent bag," as East-Indian tiger-shooters would say. For this ser vice alone the founder of the Austrian dynasty deserves to be ranked among the highest benefactors of mankind; with Charlemagne and Alfred the Great.

Still, like juries who sometimes recommend the greatest sinners to mercy, I confess to a feeling of sympathy for those poor old " rauber ritter" who fostered the spirit of Germanic combativeness, and trans

mitted Germanic bravery, such as it was known in the classic days of old. In leisure hours they made those now silent pine-woods resound

with the cheery blast of their horns and the healthful shout of their voices, as they urged on their hounds to hunt the wild-boar and the

wolf; in the long winter evenings they gathered round the huge log fire, heedless of winter storm, to listent religiously to some tale of a troubadour "singing from Palestine :" or they calmly planned some fresh plunder for the morrow, and gaily slept on their design, without scruple as without remolse.

Almost too soon, the strongly fortified city of Linz, gay capital of Upper Austria, is in view: and the steamer, docile to an inch, drops alongside the quay, and stands still.

X * * 4 * *

Some fifty years ago a mad arch-duke conceived the idea of making Linz a first-class military fortress by encircling it with detached forts: he was left to do it at his own expense; but fortunately he had the will, and the money, and he was not mad at all, but simply prophetic, and in advance of his generation. His works had to be rebuilt, to

meet the ever-lengthening range of artillery, but his idea still lives, and is adopted by all the engineers of Europe.



4o6 From Passan to Pesih.

You will easily conceive that at Linz the military element is pre dominant, ubiquitous: their chief amusement seems to be to sit at small tables, in the open air, sipping beer. I found them at it when I arrived; I left them at it when I retired to rest: I found them at it again when I turned out next morning (six o'clock). And ladies

join in this jovial pastime! The fact is, the nectar they quaff is Viennese beer, made somehow differently from Bass and Allsopp, and fit for the gods!

Among the male population walking the streets I noticed quite a sad proportion of mutilated specimens hobbling about on crutches,

minus one leg. The only way that I can account for this statistical fact is, that Linz, besides being a great military fortress, is also probably a military sanitarium, to which Austria sends her brave pensioners, to

breathe the pure air. The few streets that T saw are straight and wide; the houses tall

and well-built. The cathedral is modern, and nothing peculiar; but on the morning after my arrival (Sunday) it was already crowded with worshippers at 7 a.m. As for costume there is none, except that a few superannuated women wear a cap of black material shot with gold, which glistens like a helmet, and is by no means picturesque.

The river is crossed by a fine iron bridge, resting on stone piers: this bridge is six hundred yards from end to end. Standing on it, you can see the rushing water, and hear its grand whispering: and you soon come to realise how fast the Danube flows. It is fifteen hunIred

miles from its source to the Euxine, and only falls twice fifteen hundred feet in all that length: of course, in places, the incline is more, in others less; but three feet in five hundred make a rushing rapid, such as I hope to cross between this and Vienna: and although there is nothing exceptional in the incline here, the water flows as fast as a, good horse would trot, and brave or rash would be the man that would dare to breast it.

But now again the bell sounds-for Vienna-aand away I must go, leaving the sunny towers of Linz behind.

The run is a hundred and twenty miles: but with such a currentr and a boat that only skims the water, the distance is done in seven hours.

Unlike the scenery of yesterday, which was altogether beautiful, the bankfs to-day widen and flatten down, then contract and rise again, and become as bold and varied as the most ardent lover of " crags that are wild and majestic " could desire. In the tame parts, where the navigation is easy, the castles of the robber knights disappear;

but only to reappear again, perched on every " coign of vantage," andl to multiply, according as the difficulties of navigation increase.

Two of those difficulties were as dreaded as Charybdis and Scylla:



From Passau to Pest/i. 407

they are the Striidel and Wirbel, as no doubt you have guessed. Let me tell you what they consist of.

An island rises: your boat must steer by the northern side of it, because the southern channel is too shallow; treacherous ledges sub divide the northern channel into three; and, to complicate the situation, this is just one of those places where the incline is about three in five hundred, so that the rush of water is pretty lively. I believe each of the subdivided channels has its disadvantages: you must choose one, and " shoot" it. Such is the Strudel.

If you have accomplished this successfully, - you reach another island: the subdivided currents of the Strudel rush in an angry scramble against it, and the unyielding rock formerly sent them spin ning into a whirlpool, round and round, with wide diameter, and deep depression. This whirlpool was a hungry swallower of men and barges, and the old folks had an idea that beneath it lay a fathomless abyss, down which the waters plunged, to reappear again in the " Neusiedler Lee," ninety miles away-just as the Greeks had an idea that the waters of Arcadian Alpheus emerged again in the fairy fountain of Arethusa. Many waters, in many places, even in Oldc Ireland, plunge downwards, and of course must reappear again in some form, so that there was nothirLg unscientific in the hypothesis of the old folks; but simply the facts did not bear it out. Austrian skill and gunpowder have sunk the reefs of the Strudel, and deflected. the currents of the Wirbel: so that now, at least with flood-water such as favoured me, your steersman, sure of aim, sends the flat-bottomed boat along the Strudel with calm precision and perfect serenity. You are requested to keep your seat, to prevent over-crowding on either side, nothing more, and the excitement is over in less than a

minute. As for the Wirbel, you would pass it unnoticed if your attention was not directed to it, and all you can see is a seething and bubbling of the surface, as if there was some vexation still.

As the river expands, there rises amid the southern woodland a monastery of imperial grandeur: this is Moelk. Rich as the duchy of Austria is in huge monasteries, this is quite a queen among them, and a palace to the eye. Napoleon requisitioned it to furnish wine for his army, a hundred and twenty thousand strong, for several daysi in suc cession; and the story is that its ample cellars were able to stand the strain of two hundred and fifty hogsheads a day till that army moved on. If the story be true, it merely shows that the revenues of this princely house were paid in grape-juice, to be distributed again in more available form for charity and relief. Nine hundcred years ago the place where this monastery stands was the border-land between the empire of Germany and the formidable Magyars. Leopold of

Babenberg wrested it from Geisa, the father of St. Stephen, and here the margraves and margravines of the Babenberg dynastyI "sleep in peace."

VOL. XII., NO. 134. 32



408 From Passau to Pesth.

As the river contracts again, high up on the southern cliff, stands Aggstein, of all the eyries of the robber-knights the most picturesque, now an open-work ruin like the rest.

And a little lower down, on the left bank, fitting pendant to Agg stein, stands Diirrenstein, almost as picturesque-which is saying much -and far more interesting; because here Richard Cceur-de-Lion was kept chained in a dungeon by his mortal foe, Leopold of Austria, during the first period of his fifteen months' imprisonment. Readers of "The

Talisman" will remember what little love was lost between these two Crusaders; and of all the mad things ever perpetrated, the maddest was for the monarch of England and the better part of France to start riding through the territory of his very bitterest enemy, with only two followers, he disguised as a pilgrim!

Most certainly, were it not for his mother, his minstrel, and, above

all, the Pope, he never would have been set free; for his own brother

John, and even Philip Augustus of France, kept offering the heaviest bribes to the emperor, not for his liberation, but to keep him in

bondage. But the Pope, responding to the prayer of " Eleanor, by the wRATia of God, Queen of England," and to the sentiment of Chris tian Europe, forced the crowned conspirators to let go their prey, and thus only " the devil was let loose," as Philip wrote to John.

Of course the destructive criticism of modern pedants has raised a doubt about this being the precise locality of Richard's first imprison ment; and as for the legend of his faithful minstrel, Blondel, it is almost beneath the loftiness of their contempt. And why ? Was not Richard kidnapped? Was not Leopold of Austria the first into whose hands he fell? Did not Leopold hand him over to the keeping of Radmar of Tyrnstein (= Diirrenstein) ? and what more natural than

that his favourite minstrel should wander from stronghold to strong hold, chanting his favourite lays, til the refrain came down from the donjon-keep, which reverberated through the land, and led to his deliverance. All I can say is, that as you glide beneath these crumbling battlements, so weird, so fascinating, you feel that the

whole legend and the whole place dovetail into one another, and

-that any sickly doubt on the subject is uinmeaning and absurd.

Between Aggstein and Diirrenstein, on the Diirrenstein side, is a

,splendid specimen of what geologists call a " dyke :" it is just like a >stone wall, running sheer down the steep incline of the mountain, -straight and gray. They call it " the devil's wall," and the name is not a bad one, for it was thrown up by the great internal (or infernal) -fires of the earth, when " the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the

waters," before the first day of Genesis. Yes! for it is quite mani fest that some grand convulsion rent the mountain-side; through the fissure the liquid lava protruded, and hardened to unyielding rock; -and as the surroundings melted and crumbled, from age to age, this intrusive welt remained fast, and thus it rose.



TwiliZht. 409

Below Diirrenstein the river subdivides again into many channels; it is said that amid the more deserted of these channels the beaver is still to be found, in spite of civilisation, building his dam and lodge, and exerting his almost superhuman sagacity, as unconcernedly as if he were in the backwoods of America instead of almost within sound of the bells of a great capital.

Again the banks rise, and mountains, one on either side, rear them selves like sentinels to guard the approach to the old city. On the north it is the Bisamberg, on the south the Kahlenberg; both are historic.

And thus we reach Vienna. (To be concluded in our next.)

TWILIGHT.

JRIFT, little snowflakes, 'mid the shells; Break, little waves, among the pebbles;

Rise, little notes, in dulcet swells, And faint again in silver trebles!

The hot sun stoops and dips and dips His burning brow to drowsy numbers,

Then kisses red the ocean's lips, And sinks away to golden slumbers.

Come, Twilight, with thy purple breath, And freshen all the drooping willows

The water-lilies, faint to death, The bending reeds, the fevered billows!

And bring thy breeze withl soothing wing Around my heated brows to flutter,

And teach the waves more sad to sing, More yearning mysteries to utter!

Come, gliding softly from the East, Come, breathing over distant cities,

And crown the hills with holy rest, And fill the winds with plaintive ditties!

R. M.



from passau to pesth, along the danube

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