For ridding it in these times forlorn
Of rats that only consume the corn.’”
Robert Southey.
No sooner had this terrible crime been accomplished than the souls of the poor murdered wretches, assuming the forms of the rats to which he had likened them, came rushing towards the wicked bishop, whom they pursued even into the middle of the Rhine, where he took refuge in a stone tower to escape from their fangs. But the rats swam to the tower, gnawed their way through the stone walls, and pouring in on all sides at once, they pounced upon the bishop and devoured him.
“And in at the windows, and in at the door,
And through the walls, helter-skelter they pour,
And down from the ceiling, and up through the floor,
From the right and the left, from behind and before,
From within and without, from above and below,
And all at once to the Bishop they go.