Mouse Tower

a watch tower on a quartz rock in the Rhine River near Bingen. The date of the erection of this tower is not known certainly, but it is said by some authorities to have been built by Bishop Siegfried in the twelfth century as a tollhouse. An old tradition connects the tower with Hatto II, Archbishop of Mainz, who lived some 200 years before the time of Siegfried. The story runs that Hatto was devoured by mice in this tower as a punishment for his cruelty in burning a barn filled with people whom he had caught stealing grain in time of famine. It is possible that the name Mouse Tower, Mausethurm in the German, is a corruption of Mauththurm, or toll tower, and that the legend arose from the fact that the duty collected on corn was especially unpopular. Another explanation of the name is that it came from the German word musen, to spy, the tower having been used as a watch tower. The story has been kept alive by Southey's ballad of Bishop Hatto.