Peterka

Prologue - with the advent of the Middle Ages and onto the Renaissance, progress had come to Europe, and important men took the seat of familiarity, it was the time of: William Tell (1306 AD), Edward the III of England, Louis the IV of Bavaria (1333 AD); Othman Empire founded 1299 AD, the first clock, 1348 AD; the French used the cannon in 1308 AD; the Compass, 1320 AD. Window glass was introduced in around 1300, the Dark Ages was over, and on came Martin Luther, 1521 AD; William Shakespeare, 1546, ended up reading his plays to Queen Elisabeth. And then there was growing legends in Kulmbach, and its Castle called Plassenburg.

The Ghost of Plassenburg

Perhaps the ghost did it, so many have said in the past,
or perhaps its been bad luck or poor leadership, whatever
Plassenburg Castle was ill-fated for much of its past.

I have myself heard many a ghost stories in Germany,
heard their footsteps in an old Babenhausen, fortress (1973);
a World War II story, someone was thrown out a window
four stories high, those were those footsteps, still alive.

But the White Lady, of legend, of Plassenburg,
still haunts its dark corridors; I saw her one morn.
Ive heard her called by many names, Agnes is one,
but all are the same, the White Lady of Kulmbach.

The legend goesshe killed her two children cold,
for the love of a fashionable young count;
and when he washed his hands clean of her, suicide,
but with her dying breath, she left a curse, for her ghost.

In 1553, Kulmbach and its castle were under siege;
and the thirty-year war was also extended to thee.
Napoleon besieged it in 1806, blew it to bits.
You see: ill-fatedbad luck, or the White Lady!

Notes: This writer has lived and traveled in West Germany for five-years, in the 1970s, and traveled it extensively, and seen many of its castles, rivers, Abbeys or Monasteries and the spirit of its land still haunts me, its legends and lore still have moisten my spirit to were I seem to crave more of its spectator design. 7-22-2007 (No: 1914)

See Dennis' web site: http://dennissiluk.tripod.com