Legends of the Rhine
Folk tales and legends have a way with most of us. They can catch the attention of most anyone, and children’s ears usually perk up when you start telling a story in the way it was meant to be told. Even unfamiliar folk stories have a way of speaking to something in us, and they always sound so very familiar. They may have that unusual mark of antiquity, where some stories bear multiple repetitions over time, or they may have worked their way into the popular imagination so that they indeed are familiar. Perhaps we have heard a retelling from a distant relative, or we’ve seen a movie where the storyline is based on an original folk tale. Traveling in the Rhine has that same uncanny sense, even without the folk tales, but they’re a splendid accompaniment to any journey here.
Cochem is one of the particularly interesting little towns, with a lot of history and a lot of mystery. A castle that’s over a thousand years old, fantastic scenery, and a magnificent sense of the faraway are all available here. It’s also spectacularly built for tourists, with a number of visitors coming through to taste the old world sensibility, as well as the hospitality. Cochem’s hotels are terrifically equipped to provide all the comforts of the contemporary world, but in a wonderfully quaint setting.
It would be very much worth your while to pick up a copy of Wilhelm Ruland’s Legends of the Rhine before setting foot here. It won’t help with any of the usual tourist attractions, but can offer a beautiful sense of the depth of folk cultures here. Ruland lived and wrote between the 19th and 20th centuries, and the stories capture some of the inner life of the people who lived here, before the old ways of Europe had faded away completely into modernity. The stories take place in multiple locations, and multiple times, but they all have that sense of existing somewhere in the olden days, and in Cochem, this time sometimes feels close again.
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