On between beautiful wooded hills the rapid river passes, the next object to attract particular attention being the high-perched castle of Ranariedl. This old castle, which has the distinction of being still inhabited overlooks the delightful valley of the Ranna Bach which here in mountainous haste reaches the Danube by the village of Nieder Ranna. Though still inhabited, the castle saw its share of fighting in the Middle Ages, when the powerful bishops of Passau and various Counts successively struggled for its possession. Shortly beyond, and again on the left, is another and similar hill-top castle--that of Marsbach--with a similar story of disputed ownership. This, too, passed into the hands of the bishops of Passau, not, however, before it had been a bone of contention between father and son; for in the thirteenth century, Ortulph of Marsbach was turned out by his son Otto and only regained the place by paying his rebellious son, a sum “which so reduced his finances that he was compelled to give up the castle after all to Passau, in order to relieve himself from his difficulties.” Its later history accords well with that of other lordly homes that we pass on the banks of the river, for in the fifteenth century it was owned by certain lords of Oberhaimer, who carried on such plundering ways as their fellows did further up and lower down the stream. With robber-nobles every few leagues along the Danube one may well wonder, indeed, how any travellers or merchants ever got themselves or their merchandise safely to the journey’s end. One of these grasping Oberhaimers is said to have attacked the boat of one Valentine Rottenburgher, a councillor of Steyr, and at one fell swoop to have carried off booty amounting to seven hundred florins. In 1626--it would be pleasant to believe as vengeance for such deeds as that just mentioned--a peasant-leader named Spatt attacked the castle successfully and put the garrison to the sword. At Wesenufer is a huge wine-cellar--so huge that it is asserted that a coach-and-four might be turned in it--said to have been hewn in the living rock by the command of the Chapter of the cathedral of Passau, and the story runs that in 1626 Duke Adolf von Holstein with several thousand soldiers hurrying to the relief of some besieged place landed here with disastrous results. His soldiers commandeered the contents of the cellar and drank not wisely but too well, so that “the armed peasantry, descending from the hills before daybreak, fell on the fuddled Swabians, as they lay ‘somno vinoque sepulti,’ and slaughtered the greater part of them. The Duke himself narrowly escaped in his doublet, and with the loss of all his property.”