Lays forth her purple grape.
Milton’s Paradise Lost.
Our ears were delighted with the solemn choruses of the inhabitants of the villages returning in large crowded boats from their churches, and the bells of the convents, while the shores on either side were enlivened by the peasants in their sabbath dresses going to or returning from their respective places of worship. At length the hoary battlements of Bacharach opened upon us; part of this town slopes from the vine-clad mountain behind it, and the remainder is close to the water. This town is also very ancient, and as a proof of its antiquity, derives its name from Bacchus, to whom tradition relates an altar was raised upon a rock in the centre of the Rhine. Indeed we might have supposed that he had been worshipped here in all the marvellous pomp ascribed to his original adoration, and that his priestesses, by striking the earth with their thyrsi, had caused rivers of milk, and honey, and wine to flow
Et te, Bacche, vocant per carmina, læta, tibique
Oscilla ex altâ suspendunt mollia pinu.
Hinc omnis largo pubescit vinea fætu.
Virgil, 4 Georg.
This insulated rock was admirably adapted for bearing upon one of its trees, if ever one grew upon it, those little wooden or earthen images of Bacchus, which from the smallness of their mouths were called Oscilla, and were considered as so many watch towers, from which the god might look after the vines, to prevent their receiving injury. I know of no situation where he could have performed his tutelar duties better than in this very spot.
The vine here has been long celebrated for its excellence; the Emperor Venceslas preferred four fuder of this wine (a fuder is equal to three hundred and sixty gallons) to ten thousand florins offered to him by the inhabitants of Nuremberg, to redeem their sequestered privileges; and even Pope Pius the Second imported for his table a fuder of this wine annually. These are illustrious authorities in favour of the Bacharach wine, but the best is its flavour.
My laquais, a merry, good humoured fellow, and having no bad ear for music withal, announced our being opposite to Lorch, the first town where, in ascending the Rhine, the Rhingau commences, in which district the finest wines are produced, by singing a national song in honour of this vine-covered region, in which every person on board joined most cordially. It was a very long one, but the following stanzas will serve as a specimen of it.