Brewer's: Mouse Tower

(The), on the Rhine, said to be so called because Bishop Hatto (q.v.) was there devoured by mice. The tower, however, was built by Bishop Siegfried, two hundred years after the death of Bishop Hatto, as a toll-house for collecting the duties upon all goods which passed by. The word maus or mauth means “toll,” and the toll collected on corn being very unpopular, gave rise to the tradition referred to. The catastrophe was fixed on Bishop Hatto, a noted statesman and councillor of Otho the Great, proverbial for his cunning perfidy. (See Hatto.)

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