Legend steps in and says that "the naves of the cathedral were inundated by the libations which went on at this funeral ceremony."
A modern white marble monument, put into place in 1842, and replacing one that had previously disappeared, stands as a memorial to the sweet singer of the praises of women.[{172}]
XVII
BACHARACH, BINGEN, AND RUDESHEIM
Bacharach is famous for its legends and its wine. With the former is associated the ruins of St. Werner's Church, a fragment of exquisite flamboyant Gothic, though built of what looks like a red sandstone. The Swedes demolished it in the Thirty Years' War, but the lantern and the eastern lancet window still remain to suggest its former great beauty.
This beautiful chapel was built as a memorial to the child Werner, whose body was fabled to have been thrown by the Jews, his supposed murderers, into the Rhine at Oberwesel. Instead of floating down-stream with the current, it went up-stream as far as Bacharach, where it was recovered.
There is at Bacharach a twelfth-century church in the Byzantine style, which is now a Protestant temple. It is an incongruous affair in spite of the fact that the style is fairly[{173}] pure of its kind, so far as the body of the church is concerned. Surmounting it is a needle-like spire which rises above the crenelated battlement of its tower in a most fantastic manner.
The city walls have great ornamental and[{174}] picturesque qualities, and were, in former days, defended by twelve towers of imposing strength.
The evolution of the name of Bacharach is decidedly non-Christian. It is frankly pagan, being descended from Bacchi ara,—the altar of Bacchus,—which was the name originally given to a rock in the midst of the river, which, in varying seasons, is sometimes covered by the flood, and again quite dry. When its surface appears to the light of day, the vineyard owner hails it as a sign of good vintage.