THE STRUDEL
A romantic story attaches to the Wörth Cross, for it is said that a Tyrolese nobleman, journeying along the river in 1540, was wrecked in the Strudel, but succeeded in getting on to the island. He saw his wife swept away by the flood, and so set up as a hermit on the island, and there he remained until a dozen years later, when his wife—who had been rescued from the water some distance below the Strudel and not unnaturally concluded that he had perished—discovered him. The reunited couple commemorated their escape and their reunion, says the legend, by erecting the cross.
Many rocks, here and further down, have been blasted away to improve the navigation; and this has no doubt made the Strudel less dangerous to appearance as well as in reality. Rocks used to be visible at low water dividing the rapids into three, and these and the submerged rocks were all named by the boatmen. They have, however, been removed by modern engineering so that when the water is even low enough to leave the bed of the Hössgang, or right branch of the river bare, no Strudel rocks are visible. The Hössgang is said to have originated in a farmer’s having cut an irrigating channel into the low-lying land that now forms the island, and to have been enlarged by the force of the impetuous current.
A little below the Strudel is the Wirbel, which was at one time more dreaded as a “whirlpool” than the rapids we have just mentioned, but the improvement of the navigation has done away with the second of these twin terrors of the old-time boatmen and now we have to be told when we are passing the one-time place of dread, for the tower-crowned rock that divided the channel and formed the phenomenon was some years ago entirely cleared away. More than sixty years ago Dr. Beattie declared prophetically that “if the rock called Hausstein were blown up it is probable that this whirlpool would entirely disappear.” How effectually this has been the case the present-day visitor acquainted with the old accounts of the terrible Wirbel will soon ascertain. Before dealing with the Wirbel it may be interesting to quote Planché’s account of his passage of this part of the river, describing it as it was before the channel had been cleared:
“As soon as a bend of the river has shut out the view of Grein and its château, a mass of rock and castle scarcely distinguishable from each other, appears to rise in the middle of the stream before you. The flood roars and rushes round each side of it; and ere you can perceive which way the boat will take, it dashes down a slight fall to the left, struggles awhile with the waves, and then sweeps round between two crags, on which are the fragments of old square towers, with crucifixes planted before them. It has scarcely righted itself from this first shock, when it is borne rapidly forward towards an immense block of stone, on which stands a third tower, till now hidden by the others, and having at its foot a dangerous eddy. The boat flashes like lightning through the tossing waves, within a few feet of the vortex, and comes immediately into still water, leaving the passenger who beholds this scene for the first time, mute with wonder and admiration. These are the Scylla and Charybdis of the Danube, the celebrated Strudel and Wirbel. The passage is made in little more than the time it takes to read the above brief description, and I could scarcely scratch down the outlines of these curious crags and ruins, before I was whirled to some distance beyond them.”
The second of these phenomena was the Wirbel, more truly described, it would seem, as an eddy than as a whirlpool. About a thousand yards below the Strudel there used to rise from the channel towards the right bank a rocky islet known as the Hausstein, the stream rushing against this part of it going to the right through a narrow channel known as the Lüng, and the rest forming the Wirbel on the left. “This has the appearance of a series of foaming circles, each deepening as it approaches the centre, and caused by the two opposite streams rushing violently against each other. [The Hössgang branch comes in again to the main stream almost at right angles.] ... The circle, within which the eddies perform their circumvolutions with amazing velocity, deepens as it approaches the centre, so as to form a basin nearly five feet in depth, and filling the neighbouring echoes with the increasing roar of its waters.” It certainly must have been a hazardous business getting rafts and boats past the Wirbel, especially at times when the Lüng was not navigable owing to the lowness of the water, and it is not matter for surprise that there are many records of wrecks. The destruction of the Hausstein removed the cause of the disturbance, and the terrors of the Wirbel have become traditional.
A German writer in 1780 went so far, indeed, as to declare that then those terrors were much exaggerated: “A great variety of circumstances concur to excite an idea of danger in both these parts of the Danube. Low mechanics are fond of speaking of them, and magnifying the danger, that they may increase their own importance in having gone through it. Others, more simple, who come to the place with strong conceits of what they are to meet with there, are so struck with the wildness of the prospect, and the roaring of the water that they begin to quake and tremble before they have seen anything. But the masters of the vessels are those who most effectually keep up the imposition. They make the passage a pretence for raising the price of the freight, and when you are past them the steersman goes round with his hat in his hand to collect money from the passengers as a reward for having conducted them safely through such perilous spots. When our master (who yet knew how very much it was for his interest to keep up the credit of his monsters) saw how little attention I paid to them, he assured me in confidence that during the twenty years he had sailed the Danube, he had not heard of a single accident.” That the “master” was going to the other extreme of exaggeration is shown by the fact that—besides fatalities in the Wirbel—two vessels had been wrecked on the sunken rocks of the Strudel only three years before that was written.
Many were the old methods of accounting for the Wirbel. A sixteenth century cosmographer declared “they have often sounded in this place, but the abyss is so deep that they can touch no ground. It is bottomless. What falls therein, remains under and never comes up again.” This was the kind of marvel beloved in the olden, credulous times, and other marvels no less wonderful were associated with the Wirbel. One learned author declared that there was a hole in the river bed here which received the whirling waters that after a long subterranean journey reached the great Hungarian lake known as the Plattensee, and in proof of the theory it was gravely asserted that some bold experimentalists had a vessel wrecked in the Wirbel—and in course of time a hammer that had belonged to a cooper on board was found (floating, says one account) in the Plattensee. The tradition of “unfathomable depth,” received a rude shock in the middle of the eighteenth century when a barge laden with pottery sank in the Wirbel, and the roof of the hut aboard remained visible!
Even as stories gathered about the whirlpool so did they around the neighbouring ruins, and especially in connexion with the towers that stood on the Hausstein, and a neighbouring rock—both of which have been done away with by the navigation improvements. It is not surprising that these various ruins—half a dozen within a mile or so—became the centres of legendary lore among the credulous peasantry. To quote from Dr. Beattie’s summary: “Each of these mouldering fortresses was the subject of some miraculous tradition, which circulated at every hearth. The sombre and mysterious aspect of the place—its wild scenery and the frequent accidents which occurred in the passage, invested it with awe and terror; but above all, the superstitions of the time, a belief in the marvellous, and the credulity of the boatmen, made the navigation of the Strudel and the Wirbel a theme of the wildest romance. At night, sounds that were heard far above the roar of the Danube issued from every ruin. Magical lights flashed through their loopholes, and casements—festivals were held in the long deserted halls—maskers glided from room to room—the waltzers maddened to the strains of an infernal orchestra—armed sentinels paraded the battlements; while at intervals the clash of arms, the neighing of steeds, and the shrieks of unearthly combatants smote fitfully on the boatman’s ear. But the tower in which these scenes were most fearfully enacted, was that on the Longstone, commonly called the Devil’s Tower, as it well deserved to be—for here, in close communion with his master, resided the Black Monk, whose office it was to exhibit false lights and landmarks along the gulf, so as to decoy the vessels into the whirlpool, or dash them against the rocks. He was considerably annoyed in his quarters, however, on the arrival of the great Soliman in these regions; for to repel the turbanned host—or at least to check their triumphant progress to the Upper Danube—the inhabitants were summoned to join the national standard, and each to defend his own hearth. Fortifications were suddenly thrown up—even churches and other religious edifices were placed in a state of military defence; women and children, the aged and the sick were lodged in fortresses, and thus secured from the violence of the approaching Moslem. Among the other points at which the greatest efforts were made to check the enemy, the passage of the Strudel and Wirbel was rendered as impregnable as the time and circumstance of the case would allow. To supply material for the work, patriotism for a time got the better of superstition, and the said Devil’s Tower was demolished and converted into a strong breastwork. Thus forcibly dislodged, the Black Monk is said to have pronounced a malediction on the intruders, and to have chosen a new haunt among the recesses of the Hartz mountains.