![[the emperor's great pike.]](hecht_klein.jpg)
A long time ago a great fishpond partly surrounded the imperial castle at Lautern, though not until long after was it named the Emperor's Pond (Kaiserwoog). The pond teemed with well-fed fish, charming to the eye, delicate to the palate.
On November 6th, 1497 a rare fish indeed was caught, a pike, 19 feet long and weighing 350 pounds. A plaque commemorating the event once hung in the castle at Kaiserslautern. Around its neck the fish bore a gilded copper ring made of small links, inscribed with Greek letters. The pike soon graced the table of the Elector Phillip at Heidelberg. The ring with its inscription was long displayed in the electoral treasury, with a note that "This is the shape of the ring or chain that the pike wore about his neck for 267 years." The Greek inscription on the ring was translated by Bishop Johannes of Worms, who was the baron of Dalberg and also the chancellor of the Count Palatine, and read: "I am the fish, placed first of all the fishes in the lake by the hands of Emperor Frederick the Second, October 5th of the year 1230."
The year 1793 was a year of great misery for the citizens of Kaiserslautern. The terrible winter was called the "Plunder Winter". Nothing was safe from the rapacious French troops, no goods nor property, not even life itself. Some of the families banded together and fled with everything they could carry into Danseberg Forest three miles to the southwest, where they lived in a cave. Among their provisions they had brought a number of chickens. But it did not take long for the plunderers to pursue the helpless refugees and search for them in the wood. Very soon the looters were on their traces, for the cocks could not be kept from crowing. The refugees were not willing to kill the birds. The French followed the sound of the crowing to the terrified citizens. The enemy rushed into the cave among the stunned villagers, and slaughtered them all.
From that time the wood there was called Misery Slope (Jammerhalde), and a nearby location was called Cock's Notch (Hahnenfalz). Both are on the road to Pirmasens, near Red Hollow (Rote Hohl). People say that every seven years a great lamentation can be heard in the forest.
![[the maiden and the Beilstein toad.]](beilstein_klein.jpg)
Not far from the entrance to the Heiligenberg Tunnel between Kaiserslautern and Hochspeyer lie the ruins of Beilstein Castle about four miles east of Kaiserslautern. Its last inhabitants were robber knights, one of who was such a scoundrel that he had his horse shod backwards so that the merchants he cozened couldn't follow his traces. He laid up a lot of stolen goods and buried them in a cellar. Nowadays the castle is in ruins, and this treasure gotten by pillage and murder is guarded by a fiery toad, as large as an oven and with eyes the size of dinner plates, and nobody has ever been able to take the treasure from him.
Two men from Hochspeyer once went to dig the treasure up. Just as the bells in the Stiftskirche in Kaiserslautern tolled twelve o'clock, the toad came hopping toward them. Terrified they hastened away, looking back to see the monstrous toad sitting on top of the hole they had dug. The next day, a great stone lay on top of the hole.
Another time a young man and a maiden from Kaiserslautern went to visit Beilstein Castle. They hadn't quite come to the ruins when the young man tarried behind. A frog came hopping up to the maiden, a crown on his head and a golden key in his mouth. He gave the her the key and told her to go alone to the castle, unlock the door, and take whatever of the treasure her heart desired. She was to tell no one what had happened. But the maiden ran to the young fellow and told him everything that had happened. When they both approached the castle, the maiden had lost the golden key.
In former times the people of Morlautern did not have the fine two mile highway south to Kaiserslautern they have today. They had to take the old Panner's Path through the wood to the east. One evening a farmer on his way to the city saw a glowing hearth in the wood. He tried to light his pipe with a glowing coal from the hearth. When his pipe did not light, he threw the coal away and tried another, and another, and another, but still he could not light his pipe. Then he began to curse dreadfully. In a moment the hearth vanished. When he returned, he saw a number of ducats at the same spot. Suddenly he understood: the hearth had been made of pure gold ducats, which had vanished the moment he began to curse.
Stories like this are told about many places in the Palatinate. When someone wanders across a field in the hour after midnight, he may find a bed of live coals. The coals do not come from a fire, but are in fact a treasure. If the man is wearing a new piece of clothing, he must lay it down where he sees the embers. If he has none with him, he must go home and get one. When he returns the next morning, he will find the glowing coals have turned to gold.
![[the maiden and the serpent queen.]](schlange_klein.jpg)
One warm day a peasant maid went to mow hay by the Vogelwoog pond about a mile west of Kaiserslautern. She laid her bodice and her red scarf on the bank while she labored. The Queen of the Serpents, hot and blushing from the chase, hastened to the pond to cool herself. She laid down her crown on the peasant maid's red scarf and plunged into the water. The maiden beheld the crown that lay on her scarf, wrapped it up, and hastened swiftly to her little village upon the mountain. She arrived at her dwelling and swiftly shut the door behind her. The Queen of the Serpents, as soon as she saw that her crown had been stolen, followed the traces of the maiden to her house, and lept mightly at the door. The door cracked in two, but the serpent burst into many pieces. The maiden was saved, and the crown remained her own.
Kaiserslautern is first named in the history books in the ninth century, and owes its prominence as a city to the noble and mighty Hohenstaufen Emperor Frederick I. It is supposed to be one of the oldest places in the Palatinate. According to one ancient chronicle Julius Caesar built the city more than two thousand years ago, and it was destroyed by Attila the Hun several centuries later, around the year 450.
Another legend relates that during the persecution of Christians under the Roman emperors Diocletian and Maximian about the year 300 more than 20,000 people suffered martyrdom at Trier, far to the west, so that the river Moselle ran red with blood for six miles. Many people fled to hide in desolate places and in the wilderness. At this time a pious woman named Lutrina, one of the noble Assyrian stock who had founded Trier, fled with her courtiers into the forest. After wandering about for a long time, they found themselves in a wilderness inhabited by a hermit - the place is still called Einsiedel [or Einsiedlerhof] after him - where they founded a dwelling place called Lutrea (Lautern).
The fair Hildegard of Hoheneck loved the hunt, and often she roamed for days in the wood about Hohenecken Castle southwest of Kaiserslautern. One evening, as she rested by a stone well, an ancient woman approached on the path, and drank from the spring with the hollow of her hand. Hildegard asked the little mother who she was and wherefrom she hailed. "Folk call me the Woman of the Wood," she replied,"for my home is in this forest." Hildegard had heard of the old woman, and knew that she was a soothsayer. And so she said to her, "They say you can read the mysterious lines in the hand. Read them for me!", and held out her right hand to her. "O maiden!" spoke the ancient woman, "Would you be so bold as to look into the future? But you have asked, so let us see!" And after she had looked at the delicate lines of the maiden's hand for a few moments, she said in a low voice, "The arrow of her whose arrows you bear in your quiver will pierce Nibling of Floersheim."
The maiden was not a little affrighted, for Nibling of Floersheim was her betrothed. But she soon recovered herself, and took the old woman's words for idle chatter. As she returned to the castle she again took up the hunt, and shot at a raven. The bird fell wounded, but into a thicket, so that she could not find it.
A few days later a woodcutter came to the castle and announced that the knight of Floersheim lay dead in the wood; he had been struck down on the road to Hoheneck by an arrow in his back. Hildegard hastened outside and suddenly beheld that her betrothed had been slain with one of her own arrows. A rival of the knight of Floersheim had found the arrow, and let it fly at the youth as he rode through the forest.
The maiden made a pious bequest to the convent at Enkenbach, and erected a chapel on the spot where her beloved had fallen.
And some said a rival of the knight of Floersheim had found the arrow, and let it fly at the youth as he rode through the forest of Hoheneck. But what the woman of the wood kept in her heart, no one ever knew.
In downtown Kaiserslautern a fellow got drunk and bet he could hang a burning lantern in the top window of the bell tower. For good luck he took a black cat up with him. As he went up the spiral staircase a white apparition stood in his way and cried:
Hadst thou not that great black cat,Up at the top window of the belfry the cat lept away from him, and he fell headlong down the stairway and broke his neck. And it is said that a stone in the tower wall to this day sweats blood in his memory.
hadst thou not old Scratch-the-Rat;
foolish drunken lout,
I would cast thee out!
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