Legends of the Rhine

The Rhine has always been more than a river. It is a vein of myth running through the heart of Europe, and for centuries the people who lived along its banks have poured their fears, hopes, and wildest imaginations into the stories collected here. Wilhelm Ruland, born to the Rhineland, gathered these tales from oral tradition and older literary sources, preserving legends that had been whispered in village taverns and sung in courts. Here you will find the tragic Lorelei, her song luring sailors to watery graves, the grim legend of the Mouse Tower where a bishop fed children to mice as punishment, and fragments of the Nibelungen saga with its treasure and its terrible curse. Some stories are gentle, others darkly brutal. All of them carry the weight of centuries. This is the living folklore of a landscape that has shaped German identity as much as Germany has shaped it.