He may be callèd, by right skill
King y-christened of most renown
Strong Richard Cœur de Lion!’”
DÜRRENSTEIN
If Richard was incarcerated in the chamber hollowed out of the great mass of granite, and that was at the time, as it was later, enclosed within walls, it is a little difficult to realize how the minstrel’s voice ever penetrated the monarch’s prison; but the legend is so pleasant a one that it would perhaps be a more gracious task to find out how it might have been true, rather than to show how it is probably a fiction. The theme is one that has inspired poets, painters, and musicians. When Gretry’s opera on the subject of “Richard Cœur de Lion,” was produced in Paris early in the nineteenth century, an artist was sent to Dürnstein to sketch the castle that the scenery might be true. Mrs. Hemans wrote a narrative poem on the subject of Blondel’s search for his captive master, and described the position of the king’s prison as though she had visited it:
“He hath reached a mountain hung with vine....
The feudal towers that crest its height