though dating from the Middle Ages, are still in perfect condition.
Here knight and baron caroused, here mummers have played and bears
have danced, whilst sword and spur clanked upon the rude stone floor.
In the ladies' bower above many a minne-singer has struck his lyre.
Nay, Oswald von Wolkenstein, a prince amongst troubadours, wearing
his golden chain and brilliant orders, has brought tears from many a
gentle eye as he sang to his harp his pathetic elegies, the cruelty of
Sabina his lady, and his adventures in England, Spain and Persia.
He was a noble, courtly knight, conversing in French, Moorish,
Catalonian, Castilian, German, Latin, Wendisch, Lombardic and Russian;
and his bones lie in the great cloister of Neustift, not half a day's
journey from Taufers.

How often, too, has the shrill sound of the bugle called to feats
of arms in the court, to hawking and hunting in valley and
mountain-forest! How many a crusader against Turk, infidel, _Prussian_
and _Hussite_ has crossed the wooden drawbridge upon his war-horse!
Yes, and what an excitement in the noble Catholic household when in
the adjoining Ahrnthal the peasants, becoming enamored of Lutheranism,
rose in the peasant war of 1525! How darkly, too, must they have
painted the fanatical bauer Barthlmä Duregger of St. Peter's in the
Ahrnthal, who, after being taken prisoner, escaped near their
postern gate to circulate threats of fire and murder throughout the
neighborhood, vowing to reduce Bruneck to ashes! Reappearing with a
band of twelve poachers and twenty-six laborers, and accompanied
by Peter Baszler of Antholz, he robbed and plundered the clergy,
stripping the worthy priest Andreas Spaat of all his worldly goods,
so that he died in the utmost poverty. Although much blood was shed
in their pursuit, this lawless, misguided man and his band were never
taken. Great as their sin would naturally seem to the noble family at