Topic Research: Folklore of the Rhineland

I chose three stories from the Rhineland region of Germany, the area where my dad was born. 

The first of these stories is "Mouse Tower" (or Poems of Tragedy: IV. Germany—God’s Judgment on a Wicked Bishop by Robert Southey), a legend about an evil ruler who is eaten by mice for his sins. I like this story for several reasons: 1) it is pretty unforgettable, 2) it has some historical relevance, as the Mouse Tower is a real structure built by the Romans and still standing today, and 3) Wikipedia provides useful background on the tale, found here. 

The second story I liked is called "The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was," which is a Brothers Grimm tale about a boy who could not shudder. He spends the entire story asking people to help him learn how to shake, and various people come up with different ideas. Each of these ideas, however, does not work, until the girl he marries douses him with cold river water, finally making him shudder. I thought this legend was pretty strange, but its premise seems to appear in other tales across many cultures, so I thought I'd include it to learn more about its background. 

Statue of Lorelei, Loreley port, St. Goarshausen, Rhienland-Palatinate, Germany from Mark Schneider (source: Wikimedia).

The third story I enjoyed is "The Forsaken Bride," a popular adaptation of the classic Lorelei folklore. In this rendition, a woman named Lorelei (who is desperately in love with a traveling knight) is so gorgeous that every man she lays eyes on falls in love with her, and many of these men drown themselves in the Rhine because their love is unrequited. In the end, her lover returns, crashing his ship while approaching her; they both drown in the Rhine when she jumps in after him. Although this tale is morbid, I've heard much about the Lorelei character but have never read the stories before now, so I wanted to include it in my research.