Ervin died in 1318, and his son continued the work up to the first landing, or platform, of the towers.
In the archives of the cathedral are still to be seen the designs on which father and son worked in achieving the portal and towers,[{106}] as well as those of the spire, the north porch, the pulpit, and the organ-buffet. Not all of these are contemporary, but the first, at least, are the very drawings which were handled by Maître Ervin and his son in the latter years of the thirteenth century.
The following lines of Longfellow describe the religious fervour of the great architect perhaps more truthfully than could prose.
". . . A great master of his craft,
Ervin von Steinbach; but not he alone,
For many generations laboured with him,
Children that came to see these saints in stone,
As day by day out of the blocks they rose,
Grew old and died, and still the work went on,
And on and on and is not yet completed.
". . . The architect
Built his great heart into these sculptured stones,
And with him toiled his children, and their lives
Were builded with his own into the walls
As offerings to God."
It is perhaps not possible to write of Strasburg's cathedral without giving its great clock more than a passing thought.
The legendary history of the clock at Strasburg is as follows:[{107}]
The cathedral being terminated, the magistrates of the city desired to ornament its tower with a great clock which should be unique in all the world.
No one came forth to undertake the commission, until a workman, much advanced in years, agreed for a certain sum to produce a clock which should be superior to all others then existing.
After some years of incessant work, he produced the first of Strasburg's wonderful mechanical clocks full of moving figures and symbols.
In lieu of recompense, the magistrates, desiring that their city should be the sole possessor of such a work, accused the old man of having had resource to the aid of the devil in producing so weird a timepiece, and condemned him to torture and the loss of his eyesight.