A little below Mölk on the left bank is the small town of Emmersdorf, another one-time robber stronghold, and on the opposite side where the river Bielach comes in is, I believe, technically the beginning of the Wachau—the gorge through which the Danube finds its way to the plain on which Vienna stands. The whole of this tract is said to have been given by Charlemagne to the Bishop of Passau. There is much to delight the visitor who has time to linger about this vineyard district of the river, much variety in the way of mountain and rocky scenery, many fascinating old villages, towns and ruins.
For the most part the places of chief importance, the places most promising as centres in which to stay, are on the left bank—though, as will be seen, there are exceptions. Indeed, the very first object that arrests attention is on the right, where the rocky hills are once more close to the water-side. This is the castle of Schönbühel—a white-towered building standing on a massy rock at the very point where the valley narrows between the hills. Schönbühel, unlike so many of the Danubian castles, is still inhabited. The slender tower gives a singular appearance to the rock-perched group of buildings, and it is without surprise that we learn that this romantically placed château has its ghost, and even—according to one story—a more sinister visitant in the person of Lucifer himself.
The ghost—I am not quite clear whether of the murderer or of the murdered—haunts the place in consequence of a horrid crime said to have been perpetrated by an old-time owner of the place who, believing his wife to be guilty of some offence, killed her, apparently without any inquiry into the matter of her supposed crime. The story has been rendered into ballad form, and the following stanzas indicate the nature of the tragedy:
“The blood still reddens the mouldering oak,
Where, clasping the blessèd rood,
And bowing her neck to the headsman’s stroke,
Fair Cunigonda stood.
‘I know not the crime for which I die,
My cruel lord,’ said she,
‘But my cause I leave to God on high—