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 it’s 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.
I’ve heard her called by many names, Agnes is one,
but all are the same, the ‘White Lady’ of Kulmbach.
The legend goes—she 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-fated—bad 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, Abbey’s 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)