From: jim.speirs@canrem.com (Jim Speirs)
To: dannys@iis.ee.ethz.ch (Danny Schwendener)
Subject: B.-P. Tells a Story
Summary: A ghost story, as told by B.P. in 1932, about the Mice Tower in
 Kandersteg


Article #R166.
--------------


B.-P. Tells a Story
Lord Baden-Powell
The Leader, December 1978


In the December 1932 issue of "The Scouter" (U.K.), the Chief Scout,
Lord Baden-Powell, varied from his usual Scouting message to write the
following ghost story. In the United Kingdom, ghost stories are very
much a tradition at Christmas, hence such well-known ghostly tales as
Dickens "A Christmas Carol". Meant to by read aloud, by flickering
firelight, to the accompaniment of roasting chestnuts and steaming
mugs of cocoa, you might like to incorporate this tradition into your
own Christmas meeting with, perhaps, your boys bringing along their
own favourite ghostly yarns to read aloud in the shadowy semi-
darkness.


The Mystery of the Mice Tower

Regarding our Scouts Camping Ground at Kandersteg in Switzerland, many
Scouts have been there, and many more will go there, to all of whom
the Mice Tower in the Camp Ground will be known. Since this is our
Christmas Number, I venture to give a story of the Mice Tower in place
of my usual homily on Scouting.

I was trying to make out the meaning of the words 'Gott behuete dieses
Hus und all da Gehen in und us', which were carved upon the beam above
me, in the living-room in the timber-built house of the cure in
Kippel. I had, in the course of a hike through Switzerland, wandered
into the Loetschen Valley, a quaint backwater of civilisation which,
until the railway tunnel pierced the surrounding mountains, had been
cut off from the rest of the world except for a pass of 10,000 feet
which was impassable for five months of the year. So the inhabitants
were themselves quaint and original in their ways and customs.

When I came into the agglomeration of ancient brown wooden houses
which, with wonderful picturesqueness and awful smells, constituted
the village, I was surprised to find no one about; the whole place
seemed deserted. At last I hit on an aged priest coming out of the
church, and in reply to my question where were the inhabitants, he
pointed to a notice pinned on what proved to be the mayor's house.
This directed the families named in the margin, one and all, to go
this week haymaking on the high meadows on the mountain. The various
people concerned were not mentioned by name but, as the custom was,
were indicated by their family totem signs. The old priest proved
himself an interesting informant on this and many other points
connected with the life and history of the valley. Finally he kindly
asked me into his house to have a cup of coffee.

When, in the course of our talk, I told him I had just come from the
neighbouring valley of Kandersteg, he grew quite excited and told me
he had only recently unearthed among the old church records a very
interesting document relating to Kandersteg. It purported to be the
statement of a dying man as taken down by a priest of that time, in
the year 1638.

The place had derived its name from an unwelcome swarm of mice which
infested it. So much was this the case that a haunch of beef which had
been left in the tower one night was found next morning to have been
entirely consumed by the mice. This suggested to the blood-thirsty
tyrant the fiendish idea of hanging a victim in an extreme case in
such a way that, when spread-eagled, one foot should remain on the
ground. He argued that the mice would then attack the victim and
gradually devour him from the foot upwards until death released him
from his sufferings.

Another painful form of execution devised by Count Rollo was that of
hanging his victim head downwards from a window in the tower until he
died, and this punishment he had meted out on May 14th, 1631, to
Johann Kostler. Young Albert Kostler, driven to fury by the death of
his father, gathered together a number of young men of the valley, and
they planned together to rid the community of this monster.

Unfortunately for them their plot was discovered before it was ripe,
and Albert was waylaid by Rollo's myrmidons and carried off to the
Mice Tower. It was after nightfall when he was brought in and Count
Rollo was at supper with his companions. He joyously gave the word for
the young man to be hanged forthwith head downwards from the window.
Quickly the victim's feet were tied together with the end of a rope,
which ran up over the end of a beam projecting out from the window,
and he was slung out into the darkness to die a lingering death, while
Rollo and his friends kept up a noisy carousal immediately above him.

For a few moments he hung like this while his executioners returned to
their feast, and then with a sudden plunge he fell heavily to the
ground. The rope had been partially gnawed through by the mice.
Fortunately at that point the ground was covered by a thick growth of
heath. For a few moments he lay practically stunned, but he was not
materially hurt and, on coming to, he realised this, and having
unfastened his bonds he made his way cautiously in the darkness out of
the camp and into the rocky cliffs close by.

By good fortune he came across a small cave, into which he crept. He
found that it receded a good way into the mountain-side, and he
followed it up, crawling on his hands and knees, until he felt himself
secure from pursuit. Here he lay down to rest by a small runnel of
fresh water. Some time later--it may have been several hours--he was
alarmed to hear voices of men evidently searching for him. This caused
him to explore even deeper into the recesses of the mountain, till he
found himself out of reach of any sounds. Haunted, however, by the
fear of re-capture, he continued to creep on and explore farther into
the tunnel-like cave, in the hope that he might find another exit.

How long he struggled on he never knew; in the total darkness it might
have been hours, it might and probably was days and nights. In the
end, starving, weak and utterly worn out, when he had given up all
hope, and had resigned himself to dying in peace rather than at the
hands of torturers, he suddenly saw a faint gleam of light. Dragging
himself onwards, he eventually emerged into what he afterwards
discovered was the Loetschen Valley. Here he was found, and succoured
by friendly hands, and he finally made it his home.

Probably from fear that any report of his being still alive might leak
out to the Kander Valley, he never confided to a soul his identity nor
his story, until eventually, on his death-bed, he confessed it to the
priest. He now lies in the third grave on the left as you enter the
narrow churchyard overhanging the river valley at Kippel.

He asked me whether I had during my stay in the Kander Valley noticed,
near the entrance to the tunnel, a small square tower. This, he said,
was referred to in the document as "The Mice Tower". Certainly I had
seen it, but had not paid it much attention on account of its
insignificant appearance. But, muttering the old Swiss proverb "Little
pigs nevertheless make good pork," he tottered off to the church to
search the muniment chest for the paper. Meanwhile I waited, sipping
my coffee and pondering on the inscription on the beam--"God protect
this house and all who go in and out."

Presently he returned with the document and, deciphering with some
difficulty the crabbed characters on the time-worn paper, he read to
me the following grim story. I give merely the substance of it,
omitting the lengthy if picturesque detail.

A note by the father-confessor explained it was the dying confession
of a man who had come mysteriously to Kippel some years previously,
and had established himself there as a recluse, living in a small hut
high up on the mountain side. Being now about to meet his Maker, and
no longer fearing the vengeance of man, he confessed that he was the
only surviving son of Johann Kostler, a former well-to-do farmer in
the valley of the Kander. (His chalet is still to be seen in
Kandersteg today.)

While this man, Albert Kostler, was yet a young man, the notorious
Count Rollo, known as "Rollo the Roisterer," was tyrant of the valley.
The Count lived in the old castle of Tellesberg perched high upon a
solitary crag commanding the valley. From this fastness with his band
of armed retainers he exacted from the inhabitants all that he wanted
from time to time in the shape of food or money or cattle, etc. When
his demands were not met with the promptitude desired, he inflicted
imprisonment or torture or even death on the wretched peasant; so that
the whole valley was terrorised.

The scene of these cruelties was usually the Mice Tower at the head of
the valley, where his victims went through a form of mock trial before
being condemned to the punishment which he amused himself in devising.
The upper room of this tower was also the scene of wild orgies and
carousals on the part of himself and his boon companions.

Count Rollo had had some iron staples let into the outer wall of the
Mice Tower, to which his victim was triced up by the wrist and ankles
in a spread-eagle position, and exposed naked for hours to the blazing
sun in the summer and to the freezing wind in the winter. (These
staples can still be seen on the walls of this harmless-looking
building.)


My host, having read the confession to me, went on to say that
tradition maintains that Count Rollo the Roisterer, after a life of
cruelty and debaucheries, came to a bad end--as bad men do.

The story went that he was investigating the Blausee, or Blue Lake,
which lies below his castle, when a sudden rise of the water from
melting snow in the mountains forced him to try to cross the lake on a
fallen tree. In doing so he slipped and his foot became entangled and
held, as by a vice, among the branches. The water, rising gradually
higher and higher, submerged him inch by inch; and though his screams
attracted his followers they were unable to do anything to save him
before he was finally submerged and drowned. My friend had not himself
been to the Blausee, but he maintained that on particularly clear days
Rollo's skeleton can still be seen among the trees at the bottom of
that wonderful blue lake.

He also added that it is widely believed that between the hours of
twelve and one in the morning, on September 13th every year, his ghost
may be seen gliding round the Mice Tower, wringing his hands in an
agony of remorse--or it may not.


Note. - The probability is that Count Rollo's Ghost will NOT be seen
because there never was a Swiss proverb that "Little pigs nevertheless
make good pork," nor was there an Albert Kostler, nor even a Count
Rollow the Roysterer, though there IS the Mice Tower and the Blausee! 
So, I'm sorry, but the whole yarn is a fake.    B.-P.