PEACE OF THE PRIMEVAL FORESTI already feel contented in the woods. The few people who see me going about in the forest gaze after me, unable to understand why I, a young fellow, should be roaming here in the wilderness. Ah yes, it is true, from day to day I am growing younger and am beginning to take a new lease of life. I am recovering. That comes from the fresh, primitive nature which surrounds me.Romantic fancies I do not indulge in. As it is absorbed through the eye and the ear and all the senses, the much loved, the beautiful forest, so I like to enjoy it. The solitary one alone finds the forest; where many seek, it flees and only the trees remain. The woods are lost to them on account of the trees. Nay, still more, or, indeed, still less, they do not even see the trees, but only the wood which serves for timber or fuel and the twigs which may be used for brooms. Or they open the grey eyes of wisdom and say,—"That belongs to this class, or to that"—as if the pines and oaks, centuries old, were nothing but schoolboys.I already feel contented in the woods. As long as I enjoy it, I do not wish to hear a single word of the purpose it serves, as man's love of gain understands this purpose; I wish to be as childishly ignorant as if I had to-day just fallen from heaven upon the soft, cool moss in the shade.A network of roots surrounds me, partly sucking the mother's milk from the earth for its trees, partly seeking to entwine itself about the mossy bank and Andreas Erdmann sitting upon it. Softly I rest upon the arms of the network—upon mother-arms.The brown trunk of the fir towers straight upward, stretching a rich garland of rugged branches in all directions. They have long grey beards, hairy, twisted mosses hanging from bough to bough. Well polished and dripping with balsam is the silvery, shimmering pine. But in the rough, furrowed, knotted bark of the larch-tree, with the mysterious signs and innumerable scars, is engraved the whole world's legend, from that day when the exiled murderer Cain rested for the first time under the wild interwoven branches of the larch, up to the hour when another, also homeless, inhales the perfume of the tender, light-green needles.It is dark, as in a Gothic temple; the pine-forest builds the pointed arch. Above rise the thousand little turrets of branches, between which the deep blue sky lights up the shady ground beneath, forming tiny mosaics. Or white clouds are sailing high above, trying to espy me,—me, a little worm in the woods,—and they waft a greeting to me—from—No, she is hidden by the hand of man under a baronial roof. Clouds, ye have not seen her—or have ye? Alas, no, they are drifted hither from distant deserts and seas.There is a whispering, a rustling. The trees are speaking with one another. The forest dreams.In all my life I have never seen such a remarkable woven mat as this variegated, wonderful network of mossy earth. It is a miniature forest, and in the bosom of its shade perhaps other beings rest, who like myself are watching the endless web of nature. Ah, how the ants hasten and run, embracing the smallest of small things with their slender arms, while endeavouring to poison everything hostile with their corroding fluid! A brilliant beetle has been contemptuously regarding the tiny, painstaking creatures, for it is endowed with wings. It now flutters haughtily upward, and glittering, circles away; suddenly it is ensnared and captured in a net. The spider, quiet and industrious, has been toiling long on this net; a veil, softer than any made on earth, has become the beetle's shroud.The little birds in the branches are also planning their works of art; where the boughs are thickest, they weave a cradle-basket from straws and twigs for their beloved young.Can it then be true that a red thread spins itself on through all races of the human and animal kingdoms, down to the very smallest creature? Does everything then follow one and the same law, the acts of King Solomon on his throne of gold and those of the lazy, writhing worm under the stone? I should like very much to know.Hush! yonder darts a rabbit; the crowned stag is making his way through the underbrush. Each shrub acts as mysteriously as if concealing a hundred beings and wood-spirits within itself. Sharply defined shadow-forms lie upon the ground, over which strings of light spin themselves. And the breath of the forest plays upon these strings.I step out into the clearing. A trembling breeze ripples towards me, plays with my curls, and kisses my cheeks. Here are light-green furze bushes, with their clusters of little red berries, dark, gleaming bilberry, and the evergreen laurel of our Alps, for the worthy poet of the forest. The wood-bee is buzzing about among the bushes, and each leaf is a table spread for her.And above this dim, perfumed field rises the charred trunk of a tree, its one bare branch lifted in defiance, threatening heaven for having once shattered its head with a lightning-stroke. And yonder towers a grey, cloven rock, in whose fissures the nimble lizard and the shimmering adder hide, and at whose feet flourish the serrated leaves of the fern, and the blue gentians, constantly waving greetings with their little caps.Where there is no path, there is mine—where it is steepest, where the tangle of the alder-bushes and briars is thickest, where the dogberry grows, where the adder rustles in the yellow foliage of last year's beech. The partridges are afraid of me and I of them, and my feet are the greatest misfortune of the ants, my advancing body the scourge of God to the spiders, whose house falls in ruins on this summer day.It is a delight to penetrate thus into the wilderness, into the dim and uncertain; that which I anticipate attracts me more than that which I know; that which I hope for is dearer to me than that which I have. I stand on the edge of a green meadow, enclosed by young fir-woods. Close to me a deer springs from the thicket, bounds over the meadow, stopping on the other side, where it now stands in a listening attitude with head thrown high. Following an inborn instinct of man, I raise my juniper stick, lay it beside my cheek like a gun, aiming towards the breast of the deer. It looks over at me, well aware that a juniper stick does not go off. Finally it begins to graze. Laying the stick on the ground again, I walk farther out on the meadow. The deer raises its head quickly and I now expect it to dart away. But it does not hasten, it licks its back and scratches itself behind the ear, and again begins to eat."Little deer," I say, "thou forgettest the respect due to mankind! Dost thou think me incapable of injuring thee? I wonder at that; here in the forest wander poachers and hunters. Thou dost not seem to be a novice, yet thou pretendest to be very inexperienced. Among us men, such behaviour would be called stupidity."The creature, gradually grazing in my direction, stops often to look at me, but tosses its head in fright, preparing for a spring, whenever hearing a noise from any other side. With ears constantly pricked up, its whole being is a picture of anxious watchfulness and readiness for flight."Thou knowest then," I say, "that thou art in the land of the enemy? Not a moment safe from the shot? That is indeed cause for fear."I draw gradually nearer, the deer taking no heed."I am glad," I say, "that I do not repel thee. It cannot be denied that I belong to those monsters who walk on two legs. But all bipeds are not dangerous. I, not at all. A short time ago I composed a few verses, which I should like to recite to thee."At this the creature, startled, leaps to one side."They would not have been long," I say, sorry to have frightened the deer."It is not crafty of thee to hurt my feelings. The poem is written for my sweetheart. Somewhere lives one whom I love from the depths of my soul, but no one suspects it, nor does she herself. So I have composed these verses for her. But they must be forgotten again. How dost thou manage in such affairs?"The animal, stepping two paces nearer to me, again begins to sniff. I now become quite bold."Beloved deer!" I continue, holding out my arms, "I cannot say how interesting thou art to me. If I had a rifle, I might shoot thee down. No, fear nothing from me, for thou breathest the same air as I, thy little eye beholds the same sunshine as mine—thy blood is as warm and as red as my own—why should I kill thee? But if I were hungry and had a rifle, then I should shoot thee after all, then nothing would help thee."In spite of all this, the little deer is coming nearer. I stand there motionless, and ten paces away is the creature looking at me. My sensations are most uncomfortable. There must be something wrong with a man with whom wild game associates."Thou art curious," I say, "to see how I look near by. Well, observe me closely. These rags of linen and woollen stuff do not belong to me. This is only the outer covering. And if thou shouldst see us bare and naked as thyself, then all anxiety and fear of us would disappear. In the beginning we cannot shoot, cannot run as thou dost, cannot nourish ourselves from weeds, cannot dwell in the thicket. So pitiable are we. We—so it is said—would have been able to do it once, but in the same degree in which our reason has grown, have our bodies degenerated, become tender and sensitive, effeminate and weak. And if it continues in this way, all mankind will dissolve in spirit, which must also perish, as the flame dies when wick and oil are gone,—and you will take our place."I do not know," I say, "whether thou art unconsciously searching for something which, when acquired, still does not satisfy. I do not know if it be hatred which animates thee, ambition which hunts and urges thee on, love which makes thee unhappy, pleasure which kills thee. With us it is so. Do I pity thee or dost thou pity me? Whatever thou hast, thou art able to enjoy in full measure, while with us the sweet pleasures of the heart become embittered by the hardness and pitilessness of reason and prejudice. Our feeling degenerates into thought, and that is our misfortune. But after all, thou wouldst willingly exchange places? No, thou art not advanced enough to be discontented. Thy fear is the hunter, as ours is man. Our own kind threaten us with the greatest dangers. Hast thou already seen the latest weekly journal? Ah, thou dost not read leaves, thou eatest them, which is far more wholesome, only beware of newspaper leaves, they are poisonous. They should not be so, but they suck the venom from the ground upon which they stand, from the air that blows around them, from the times which they serve. Thank God, they do not grow in the Winkel forest. There grows the sorrel, and that is something for thee, and the mushroom, which is something for me. For the rest, my little deer, how long shall we stand here? How goes eating from the hand?"I pull some grass from the ground, an occupation which the deer follows with the eye of a connoisseur.A shot is fired. A short whizzing through the air, the deer makes one high bound—and with the utmost display of its speed, runs across the meadow straight into the thicket.In the near branches the sulphurous smoke slowly disappears. I hasten to look for the poacher, to deliver him up to justice because he has fired, and to beg mercy for him because he has not hit. Seeing neither the poacher nor the deer, I am furious with the thought that the creature might take me for the guilty one, for the betrayer, or even for the assassin, and in his eyes I wish to be neither a bad friend nor a bad protector.But what does it all amount to? Such enthusiasm is not enduring; in the late autumn, when, as I hope, the roast venison will appear upon my table, the friendly feelings will surely reawaken, however they will not come from the heart, but from the stomach.The triumphant roaring of a bull or the bells and bleating of a goat is now heard. The shepherd-boy comes skipping by. He will have nothing to do with the juniper-bushes; the thorns prick, the blueberries are bitter. He picks strawberries into his cap, or, what he likes better, into his mouth. Then, plucking the narrow pointed leaf of the goat-majoram he carries it to his lips, and through it brings forth a whistle which re-echoes far away on the slopes and which other shepherd-lads in the distance give back to him. To the little folks of the woods this is the sign of brotherhood. Through the raspberry-bushes wriggles the ant-grubber, searching for the resinous kernels in the ant-hills from which to prepare the incense, that wonderful grain whose smoky veil enchants the eye of mortals, so that they fall before the sacrificial bread and see the Lord.On the ridge beside the purple erica, under the blackberry leaves, flourishes the sweet-root; that is a toothsome spice for the shepherd-boy, and the herdswoman also likes to nibble it, that she may have a ringing voice for yodling on the Alm. The herdswoman, I notice, is often affected in a singular manner; surely she has many, yes, a great many words upon her tongue, but the right one for her heart's desire is not among them; she therefore expresses it in another way and sings a songwithoutwords which in this region, as far as it is heard, is called theJodel.I proceed down through a defile torn away by the wild torrents of the Kar. Trees and bushes arch over it, forming an arbour. A cool breeze fans me as I stand upon the shady bank of a forest lake, enclosed by dark walls and slender brown trunks of the primeval forest. A perfect stillness rests upon the water. The stray leaf of a beech or an oak rustles toward me. I hear that eternal murmuring of deepest silence. A little bell somewhere in space, we know not if on the earth below or in the starry heaven above, is constantly calling us. And in a quiet hour our soul catches the familiar sound and longs,—and longs.Peace of the primeval forest, thou still, thou holy refuge of the orphaned, the deserted, the pursued and world-weary; thou only Eden which remains for the unhappy!Listen, Andreas! Dost thou hear the sound and echo of the song without words? That is the shepherd's hymn. Dost thou also hear the distant hammering and reverberating? That is the woodsman with the axe—the angel with the sword.WITH THE HERDSMENThe earliest people were the herdsmen. They are the most harmless that one meets in these wooded hills. So I have begun with them.And I have already learned something of pastoral life. With the exception of the couple up in the Miesenbach hut, none of them live at home; the herdsmen really have no homes, they are wanderers. They spend the winter in the lower, outlying districts, dwelling in the farmyards to which the herds belong. They eat with the people and sleep with the cows and goats. In the spring-time, when the freshets are over and the maple blossoms are peeping forth from their green sheaves toward heaven to see if the swallows are not already there, the cattle are taken from the stalls and led by the herdsman to the Alm. The cows are bedecked with tinkling bells, the calves and steers with green wreaths, such as the people wear at the feast of Corpus Christi. In the procession to the Alm, when the young people and cattle walk together, the ceremony of crowning with wreaths is conducted with great propriety; but when, after many honeymoons upon the airy heights, the cattle return to the valley in the late autumn with fresh wreaths, the garland of the herdswoman does not always remain green in her hair. On the Alm there is much sun and little shade, and the Alm-boy must bring the fresh water a long distance—then nothing withers more easily than such a tender nosegay in the curly locks.In the lovely summer-time these people lead a good and happy life upon the hills and I—truly and by my faith, I am good and happy with them. Sorrow and woe are like hot-house plants, they will not flourish in the fresh Alpine air. Even the old keeper of oxen, usually so surly, is constantly heard singing and piping his flute.Within the herdsman's hut everything is well arranged and conveniently near at hand. By the hearth sits Domesticity in front of the fire and the brown jugs, and before the shaky table kneels Religion at the crudely ornamentedHausaltar. And where the bedstead stands, the Lord Himself would have been unable to put anything better. The bed is made from rough boards, upholstered with moss and rushes—it must be like that if the young woman of the Alm is to dream happily therein. In the next room are the buckets and pitchers, and here the milk and butter business is carried on, the profits of which are honestly delivered to the owner of the herd.The whole household is shut in by four wooden walls, on which the Alm woman hears at night the little gold man knocking; this is the token of the fulfilment of her most secret heart's desire. I did not like to tell the credulous Aga that I thought the little gold man might be an industrious wood-worm. What in heaven's name would a wood-worm have to do with her heart's desires? But these will be fulfilled all the same: the simple folk about here wish for nothing which cannot be attained. And the maid in the hut, as well as the shepherd-boy and the herd in the stall, sleep with an easy conscience.In the morning the bright sun peeps through the window, calling, "Time to be up!" Now the herdswoman goes with the bucket into the stall, where between four legs flow the little white fountains of milk and butter. The fire on the hearth is ready for the milk and the herdsman is waiting for the soup. He yodles and shouts, and so the time passes. But Berthold manages in the simplest way; he lays himself under the belly of the cow and drinks his breakfast directly from the udder.It was with Berthold and Aga in the Miesenbach hut that I made my observations. After the morning soup Aga takes the basket on her back and descends toward the grazing meadows of the Thalmulde, that like a careful mistress she may prepare the table for her four-footed menials. The herd's meal lasts the whole day; for in the early morning Berthold has already led them down to the pastures wet with dew.Once in such an hour I listened to Aga. She was trilling and singing, and these are the things I like to record."If the Winkel brook were milk,And the Winkel vale were beef as well,And the hills were all of butter,That were a feast, my lad, to tell."Berthold hearing it does not reflect long; a song so grossly material calls for one still more material. Standing upon the wall, he sings to the maid:"If thy red hair were gold,Of thalers full thy throat,Thy bodice stuffed with diamonds,Upon thee I would dote."And then she:"Thy fingers would burn for the thalers,The jewels thou wouldst embrace,But the golden hair were much too fineFor thy rough and bearded face."Oh, they do not remain in one another's debt; they know how to tease. But how does it happen that in the forest-land grow fewer and less appropriate expressions for love and tenderness than for jesting and fun? If love down in the valleys is not exactly communicative, up here with the firs and little cabbage-roses it is as dumb as fish in water. The kiss is not as customary here as in other places. It is, I should say, as if the warm blood did not take the time to mount to the lips, when there is so much to do elsewhere. Everything expresses itself in the arms, and when a love-sick lad knows no other way of showing his feelings, he seizes his maiden, as the miller does a sack of grain, and swings her high in the air, at the same time giving a shout that verily tears the clouds asunder.Berthold does it not a whit differently. They are two poor young people, left to themselves on the lonely Alpine heights. What is there to do? Alas! alas! nothing, I think, for me as yet.WITH THE WOOD-DEVILSIn this wilderness there are trades of which I had no idea. The people literally dig their bread out of the earth and stones. They scrape it from the trees, and by the many-sided resources of their wit force it out of inedible fruits. How strange that man should know so well how to utilise everything! But has he already done so? And was the necessity there before the means were discovered, or was it the result of the things obtained? If the latter were the case, I should consider the thousand acquisitions as no gain.The starved or daring wood-devils hold closer communication with the mass of mankind outside than one would suppose, and than they themselves perhaps imagine. Yet after all they know it well enough. For example, there is the root-digger. His fustian jacket reaches to the calves of his legs; his hat is a veritable family roof, but in places it is already breaking and full of holes. One knows him at once from afar. He climbs around among the rocks and digs out the aromatic roots with his crooked iron puncheon. He then sometimes sings the little song:"When I uproot the spikenard here,That grows upon the Alm,I like to think of the women-folk.—Canst thou guess where the spices go?To Turkey land, that the women-folk,A sweeter perfume may receive.In Turkey land, the women-folk."I do not yet know if it be true that spikenard travels from here over to Turkey. But these people believe it and so it is truth to them. The proud assertion of the root-digger, that he is sending a sweeter perfume to the woman's world in the Orient, is contested.Yonder upon the cliff stands an old comrade, who, hearing the song, unfastens the brass clasp of his jacket, and retorts:"That thou 'rt always thinkingOf the Turkish women-folk,O Lota, is well-known!Go rather and perfume thyselfWith spikenard on the Alm,It might not do thee any harm."Thus they tease one another, and that is their harmless side. But the wood-devil has his cloven foot. The genuine man of the woods has a double-barrelled shot-gun; one barrel is calledGemsennoth(Danger to the chamois), the otherJägertod(Death to the hunter). If he could write, he would engrave these names upon the steel with his crooked knife; but he keeps it in his mind, that aboutGemsennothandJägertod.He would have given up the digging long ago, to lead solely a poacher's life, but he imagines that sometime he is going to find a buried treasure under the stones. Digging for treasures, gold and diamonds under the ground, that he has heard in fairy-tales and can never forget.Gold and diamonds under the ground! Treasure-digging! The fairy-tale is right; the root-digger is right; the ploughman is right; the miner is right. But the treasure-digger is not right.Of one thing I am careful, that is, not to offend the root-digger, the pitch-scraper, or the ant-grubber. These are the people who are said to cause the bad weather, which is all devils' work, and since they live in the forests, thence the many hard storms in the wooded and Alpine regions. But how they manage that the atoms of dew condense into water, that the drops freeze into bits of ice, that the bits of ice become heavy hail-stones, that flaming darts of lightning hiss through the night, and that the mighty thunder rolls, until at last it all bursts upon the trembling men and beasts of the earth—how they manage that, must be a profound secret of these wild fellows which I have not been able to discover.It is a fearful delusion of these people, when they think themselves able to perform deeds which are beyond human power, while neglecting that by which they might accomplish something great.—However, in the world outside, other mistakes occur, still more harmful because made by men of superior wisdom and with greater resources than here. Glorious, O mankind, is thy progress, but with thy monstrous prejudices art thou still very incomplete!Up among the hills is a glen called the Wolfsgrube. I recently visited this place, arriving there just in time to witness the burial of a man, who had been neither root-digger, ant-grubber, pitch-scraper, brandy-distiller, nor poacher, but the most extraordinary wood-devil.He had never worked, but had earned his bread by eating. He was called "the Gormand"; I think he had no other name. He was a human wreck, although physically very strong. His hair had become a hopelessly tangled mat with sweat and resin; so he had no need of a hat. His beard resembled dried pine-needles. His broad and powerful chest was as though spun over with a tenfold spider's web, thus saving a doublet. An entire horny skin had formed itself upon his bulky feet, making shoes superfluous. Almost a terrible sight! I met him a few days ago in the Winkel. Seeing me, he snatched a handful of sand from the ground, offering to swallow it for a small remuneration. He often went to the surrounding villages on church-festival days to exhibit his tricks before the people. He did not consume tow and ribbons and that sort of thing, as jugglers usually do, but cloth, leather, and bits of glass. He has even been known to swallow rusty shoe-nails. His favourite repast was an old boot or felt hat, torn into bits and prepared with oil and vinegar. That paid him well, and his purse, like his stomach, had a good digestion. "For us such food would not be good," said Rhyme-Rüpel, "though a little drink ofSchnappsor wine might cut the pebbles very fine." Day in, day out, he performed this feat; but everything has an end, Easter Sunday as well as Good Friday. He was sitting before his glass of toddy in Kranabethannes' hut, saying in his arrogant way, "Eat your black bread yourself, Hannes; I 'll drink the brandy and take a bite of the glass with it." Just then an old root-digger crawled out from a dark corner of the hearth: "Despise the black bread, do you? You!" At which the Gormand retorted: "Get out, root-digger; I 'll eat you and the yoke on your back!" The old man then drew forth a small root, saying, "Here 's something, you rascal, that's a little stronger than you are." "Bring it on!" screamed the Gormand, seizing the root and thrusting it down his throat. "You 're done for!" chuckled the old man, and he disappeared into the forest. Suddenly springing up, the Gormand staggered out of the house and fell upon the grass, stone-dead. The meaning of it all was now plain. No one knew the old root-digger—he was the devil.Half-fact, half-legend, so the superstitious people interpreted and related it to me. And they would not bury the man in the Holdenschlag churchyard. In the marshy ground of the Wolfsgrube, where only the rushes grow and wave their little woolly flags, they made the grave. Winding the body in thick fir-boughs, they shoved it with a pole, until it rolled into its final resting-place.At the same time a little troop of worshippers came over the heath through the Wolfsgrube. They had been in a defile in the high mountains where a cross is said to be standing among the rocks. The little company paused before the grave, repeating the Lord's prayer for the dead man. Then suddenly a swarthy woman, a charcoal-burner, cried out: "You miserable wretches, your pious prayers will be as useful to that man as dry clothes to a fish in water. He 's already yonder in torment, for he 's the eater of broken glass!""The holy Lord's prayer will serve afterwards for our live-stock at home!" murmured the worshippers as they walked away.A pale, black-haired man, with a melancholy face though restless bearing, still remained standing beside the grave. Gazing into it, with a trembling hand he threw a clump of earth upon the form wrapped in the green travelling-dress and, looking about him, said: "We will cover him with earth nevertheless. The devil has not taken him because of his good appetite; and his heart may have been no worse than his stomach."This was the funeral sermon. And then a few men came and shovelled earth into the grave.Later I again met the sad, pale man, whom they call theEinspanig. "Can you tell me something," I asked, "about the eater of broken glass? It is really a strange, weird tale.""Strange and weird is the whole woodland," he answered; "a better digestion than ours, such a son of the wilderness may have. And superstition is the intellectual life of these people." With these words he turned and quickly stumbled away.What, old man, art thou not thyself a son of the wilderness? Thou art truly strange and weird enough. TheEinspanig, "The Lone One," they call him; of his history they know nothing.I have also made the acquaintance of the pitch-maker. He is a very peculiar fellow. One can scent him from afar and see him glistening through the thicket. The hatchet glistens with which he scrapes the resin from the trees, and the grappling-iron glistens, by means of which he climbs like a wild-cat up the smooth trunks to reap a harvest from their tops, or to make an incision for the resin to flow out later on. And the leather trousers glisten, and the fustian jacket, covered with pitch, and the blade of the long knife at his side—and finally one sees his black, glistening eye. If a blossom or a falling pine-needle grazes him, it sticks to his arm, to his hair, to his beard. If a fly or a butterfly is flitting about, or a spider, swinging from its web, the little insect remains clinging to him; and his dress is gaily decorated with tiny creatures from the plant and animal kingdom when in the darkness of the forest or at evening he returns home to his hermitage. The pitch-maker wounds the trees seriously, at last killing them, and the primeval forest has succumbed to the destruction. He has crippled the old pines and firs, and they now stretch out their long arms after him, as if desiring to strike down their deadly enemy.By a process of evaporation, the pitch-maker prepares turpentine and other oils such as are used in the forest regions for every conceivable malady. I often visit these distilleries, watching the black mass boil and bubble, until it is put into closed earthen receptacles, from which the valuable contents are drawn through slender tubes into kegs and bottles. Packing these in a large basket, the man peddles them from house to house. The wood-cutter buys pitch-oil for every injury which he may receive in his battle with the forest. The charcoal-burner buys it for burns; the brandy-distiller for his casks. The root-digger buys for sprains and colic, the last of which he contracts from so much uncooked food. The small peasant farther out buys pitch-oil for his whole household and cattle, as a remedy against every ill.O thou pitch-oil man! A tiny worm has been gnawing long at my heart—might it not be destroyed with thy gall-bitter oil?In the pitch-maker's hut it is unsafe to sit down, for one would stick fast. And then the little unwashed, tousled children would come and clamber upon one's neck until there would be no escape.The pitch-maker's dwelling is simple enough. Underneath is the bare earth; above, the bark-shingled roof; while the walls are of rough logs, stopped up with moss. The uneven hearth serves at the same time as a table. Under the bedstead is the storehouse for potatoes, mushrooms, and wild pears. The worm-eaten wardrobe is the revered object in the house; it guards the sacred souvenirs of the forefathers, the baptismal gifts of the children, and the rain-coat of the pitch-maker when not in use. The windows have hardly enough glass to have satisfied the appetite of the Gormand. "Besides," as the pitch-maker says, "rags and straw paper are as good as glass panes, if one cannot show a clean face through them." Behind the wardrobe hangs the gun. If my lord, the hunter, on one of his visits, should happen to discover it, it is all right—a gun is a necessity, for there are wolves in the woods. If he does not see it, so much the better. It is the same with the pitch-maker's housekeeper; seeing her, one is compelled to acknowledge that the spring-time of life will return no more to one in the fortieth year; that, as the proverb says, a wen on the throat is better than a hole; that one-eyed is not blind, and that a little crookedness in the legs is neither to be ashamed nor boasted of. If one does not see her, so much the better.But as I have often noticed, to many a pitch-maker clings a young wife. Country wenches are sometimes very different from city maids. The latter are usually well pleased when their lovers are white and delicate, slender, docile, and amorous as doves. The country lass on the contrary prefers one who is hard, rough, and bristly, angular and wild. If a girl has a choice between one who cheerfully darns stockings for her and one who thunders at her with every word—then she takes the thunderer. For after all she has him in her power. How does the song go which the pitch-maker likes so well to sing?"For the pitch I have my axe,For the hare I 've gun and ball,For the hunter two stout fists,For the wench I 've nothing at all.'That,' she says, 'is far too little.'So she drives me out the door;Then I go and flog the hunterTill he troubles me no more."It may not be poetical,—however, the man who occasionally sings such a song does not harm the hunter. He who goes about with gloomy thoughts sings no merry song.Among the wood-devils, the most cordial and, according to my judgment, the most dangerous, is the brandy-distiller. He wears finer cloth than the others and shaves his beard every week. He always carries about with him a little flask, affably treating each person who comes in his way. Whoever drinks is ruined, and follows him to the tavern.The brandy-distiller reaps a double harvest; first the red berries from the mountain-ash, from the hop, from the sweet-broom, from everything that here produces fruit. He believes in the Spirit of Nature, that lives in all created things, and conjures it out of the fruits of the forest and, like the magician in the fairy-tale, into the bottle and, putting the stopple in quickly, imprisons it there. His distillery is a magic circle under a high, gloomy pine, a circle like that which the spider draws and weaves. Soon a few flies are there, wriggling in the net. The woods-people, as they go about, or to and from their work, are at last enticed into the tavern—these are the flies of the two-legged spider, and from them the brandy-distiller now reaps his second harvest.Each man is advised by his wife to avoid the road by "the Pine," it is so dark and rough, as well as being longer than any other. The man appears to be convinced, and besides he has nothing to call him there,—but health is such an uncertain thing, and as he walks along he is suddenly attacked by a pressure in the throat, followed by a most distressing colic. Having no pitch-oil with him, he knows but one remedy and—he takes the road by "the Pine." "The first little glass," says Rüpel, "soothes the smart; the second glass makes warm the heart; the third glass makes it still more warm; one's purse by the fourth will receive no harm; at the fifth, the man wishes to stretch his limbs; at the sixth, the pines sway and his poor head swims; at the seventh, his body is all aglow; at the eighth, to his wife he longs to go."But stumbling homewards, the good man swears at the "bad" wife who is coming to meet him without a light through this ghastly fog; and when finally, his hat awry and jammed low on his forehead, he tumbles into the hut, the woman knows what beatings she has already borne and may receive again, if she does not hasten and escape into the garret or some safe place.My voyages of discovery have cheered me more than I should have thought possible. A sad fate hangs over this little people, but this fate sometimes makes an unspeakably droll face. Besides I do not consider these foresters so utterly depraved and wretched. They are neglected and uncouth. Perhaps something might be made of them; but first the leaven must be added.The race will not die out so easily. Right here in the damp, dark forest-land the little ones flourish like mushrooms. The youngsters follow the path of their elders and carry the grappling-iron for roots, or the herdsman's staff, or the hatchet for pitch, or the axe for wood.But, according to the reports made to the priest in Holdenschlag, the forest children are all girls. The boys are mostly christened with the water of the woods; they are recorded in no parish-register, that they may remain unnoticed outside by the bailiffs and omitted from the military list. The men here say that the government and whatever belongs to it costs them more than it would be worth to them, and they will renounce it. That may be all true, but the government does not renounce the healthy Winkelstegers.The girls also, when they are somewhat fledged, soon take up ant- and root-digging, gathering herbs, and they know of a market for everything; they pick strawberries and hops and the fruit of the juniper for the brandy-distillers. And the little boys, still too young to look after themselves, already help with the brandy-drinking.A short time ago I watched a troop of children. They are playing under a larch-tree. The fallen larch-cones are their stags and roes, which they are pretending to feed with green brushwood. Others run about playing "Hide and Seek" behind the bushes, "Holding Salt," "Driving out Hawks," "Going to Heaven and Hell," and whatever all the tricks and games are called. It is pleasant to watch them; to be sure they are all half naked, but they have well-formed and healthy limbs, and their games are more childishly gay than any which I have ever seen other children play. This is the vulnerable spot of the horny Siegfried, who is here calledWaldteufel.Smiling at the little ones under the larch-tree, I try after a while to mingle with them in their games, but they draw back shyly, only a few keeping near me; but when I attempt to get the better of them in a race or game of tag, then they all join in. And soon I am a good and welcome friend in the mad, whirling circle of these young people. I prattle many things to them, but more often I let them talk to me. I go to school to the children to learn the schoolmaster's art.The forest people do not allow themselves to be drawn up by force; he who would win them for higher things must descend quite to them, must lead them up arm in arm and indeed by a long, circuitous route.IN THE FELSENTHALBelow the slopes of the fore-alps and the cliffs of the Hochzahn with its chain of glaciers, the wooded hills extend on and on toward the west. Seen from above they lie there like a dark-blue sea, concealing in their depths the everlasting shadows and the strange people.A day's journey from the valley of the Winkel toward the west, far below the last hut, is a place where, according to the legend, the world is fastened in with boards.It were better said, walled in with stones; deep fissured precipices shut off the forest-land and here begin the Alps, where the rocky boulders no longer lie or lean, but soar straight up into the sky. A sea of snow and ice with crags, about which hover everlasting mists, extends endlessly, it is said, over the giant strongholds above, which in olden times guarded an Eden now turned to stone. Thus the legend. Strange that this wonderful dream of a lost paradise yet to be regained should dawn in the hearts ofallpeople and nations!These foresters will not believe that on the other side of the Alps there are again regions inhabited by man. Only one old, shy, blinking charcoal-burner repeats the story told him by his grandfather, that over there were human beings, who wore such high pointed hats that they could not walk about on the mountains in the evening without knocking down the stars. So the Lord God was obliged to carefully draw down the clouds every night in order to keep a single star in heaven. The rogue meant the pointed hats of the Tyrolese.In this mountain glen are a number of places held in ill repute. Here many a dead chamois-hunter has been found, shot through the breast by a ball of lead. There is also a legend that a monster, which keeps watch over an inexhaustible treasure of diamonds in the mountains, sometimes bursts forth from one of the numerous rocky caverns. If the forest-land endures a while longer, then a hero is expected to come and slay the beast and recover the treasure. Up to the present such a one has not appeared. Ah, if I could give this monster its true name!The region is adapted to the gloomy myths. It is a dead valley in which no little finch will sing, no wild pigeon coo, no woodpecker chatter, in which loneliness itself has fallen asleep. Upon the grey moss-covered ground piles of rock lie about, just as they have been broken from the high cliff. Here and there a bold little fir-tree has climbed up on one of these grey, weather-beaten boulders and proudly looks about, thinking itself now more fortunate than the other half-dead trees on the sandy soil below. It will not be long before it too will perish from hunger and thirst, and will fall from the barren rock. Here the forest cannot flourish, and if a straight and slender fir shoots up anywhere, its days are numbered. A storm-wind suddenly comes rushing down from the rocky defile and almost gently lays the young tree, together with its broken roots, upon the ground.The Scotch fir alone is still courageous; it climbs the steep sides between the precipices to discover how it looks up there with theEdelweiss, with the Alpine roses, with the chamois, and how far it is yet to the snow. But the good Scotch fir is no daughter of the Alps; soon a dizziness seizes it, and, frightened, it crouches down and crawls painfully upon its knees, with its twisted, crippled arms always reaching out and clutching something, the little heads of the cones stretching themselves upward in curiosity, until finally it comes out into the damp veil of mist and aimlessly wanders about among the stones.Upon one of the fallen rocks of this remotest valley in the forest stands a cross. It is very clumsily made out of two rough pieces of wood; in places the bark is still clinging to it. Silent it stands there in the barren waste; it is like the first message concerning the Redeemer of the world, which in olden times the holy Boniface made from the trees of the forest and set up in the German wilderness.I have often asked the meaning of this cross. Since time immemorial it has stood upon the rock, and no man can say who placed it there. According to the legend it was never placed there. Every thousand years a little bird flew into the forest, bringing a seed of grain from unknown lands. Previously it was not known what had become of the seeds, whether they had been lost, or whether the poisonous plant with the blue berries, or the thorn-bush with the white rose, or something else, evil or good, had sprung from them. But when the bird last appeared it laid the seed upon the rock in the Felsenthal, and from it sprang the cross. Sometimes one goes there to pray before it; the prayer has often brought a blessing at once, but often a misfortune has followed it. So it is uncertain whether the cross is for weal or woe. The Einspanig is the most frequently seen in the Felsenthal, and here he performs his devotions before the symbol; but it is also uncertain whether the Einspanig is good or evil.After many days of wandering I returned once more to my house in the Winkel, much puzzled in my mind about the cross in the Felsenthal and the Einspanig. I learned a little concerning the latter on reaching home.I was surprised to find my housekeeper, usually so good-natured, quite irritable to-day. It appears that seeing the Einspanig passing, the woman, who happened to look out at that moment, thought to herself, "Oh, how I should like to gossip a little with this queer man, and find out something about him." And as he accidentally turned his face toward the door, she cordially invited him to enter and rest a little on the bench. On his accepting her invitation, she hastily brought him bread and milk, and in her own peculiar way asked, "Good man of God, where do you then come from?""Down from the Felsenthal," was the answer."Ihr Närrchen!" cried the woman, "you don't mean that horrible place! Up there in the Felsenthal the world is fastened in with boards."The Einspanig then replied quietly: "Nowhere is the world fastened in with boards. The mountains stretch far, far back behind the Hochzahn, then comes the hilly country, then the plains, then the water which extends many thousand miles, then land again with mountains and valleys and little hills, and again water, and again land and water and land and land——"Interrupting him here, the woman cried, "Mein Gott, Einspanig, how much farther then?""As far as home, into our country, into our forest, into the Winkel, into the Felsenthal. Worthy woman, if God should give you wings and you should fly away toward the setting sun and on and always on, following your nose and the sun, then one day you would come flying from where the sun rises toward your peaceful house.""Oh, you humbug!" cried the woman, "go tell your tales to someone else; I am the Winkel-warden's wife. I 'll give you the milk and with it the honest opinion of old people: Somewhere there is a place where the world is fastened in with boards. That is the old faith, and therein will I live and die.""Woman, all honour to your old faith!" replied the Einspanig, "but I have already travelled the road toward the setting sun and back here from the rising sun."These words seemed to have thoroughly embittered her. "O Du Fabelhans!" she screamed, "the devil has set his mark upon you." And then shaking his head the man walked away.The good woman must have found it hard waiting for me to give further vent to her feelings. As I approached the house she called to me over the fence: "By my troth! By my troth! What kind of people there are upon God's dear earth, to be sure! Now they do not even believe in the end of the world! But I say: Our Lord God has made it all right, and I 'll stick to my old faith, and the world is fastened in with boards!""Of course, of course," I acknowledged, as I climbed over the board fence. "Quite right—fastened in with boards!"And so we will cling to the old faith.
PEACE OF THE PRIMEVAL FOREST
I already feel contented in the woods. The few people who see me going about in the forest gaze after me, unable to understand why I, a young fellow, should be roaming here in the wilderness. Ah yes, it is true, from day to day I am growing younger and am beginning to take a new lease of life. I am recovering. That comes from the fresh, primitive nature which surrounds me.
Romantic fancies I do not indulge in. As it is absorbed through the eye and the ear and all the senses, the much loved, the beautiful forest, so I like to enjoy it. The solitary one alone finds the forest; where many seek, it flees and only the trees remain. The woods are lost to them on account of the trees. Nay, still more, or, indeed, still less, they do not even see the trees, but only the wood which serves for timber or fuel and the twigs which may be used for brooms. Or they open the grey eyes of wisdom and say,—"That belongs to this class, or to that"—as if the pines and oaks, centuries old, were nothing but schoolboys.
I already feel contented in the woods. As long as I enjoy it, I do not wish to hear a single word of the purpose it serves, as man's love of gain understands this purpose; I wish to be as childishly ignorant as if I had to-day just fallen from heaven upon the soft, cool moss in the shade.
A network of roots surrounds me, partly sucking the mother's milk from the earth for its trees, partly seeking to entwine itself about the mossy bank and Andreas Erdmann sitting upon it. Softly I rest upon the arms of the network—upon mother-arms.
The brown trunk of the fir towers straight upward, stretching a rich garland of rugged branches in all directions. They have long grey beards, hairy, twisted mosses hanging from bough to bough. Well polished and dripping with balsam is the silvery, shimmering pine. But in the rough, furrowed, knotted bark of the larch-tree, with the mysterious signs and innumerable scars, is engraved the whole world's legend, from that day when the exiled murderer Cain rested for the first time under the wild interwoven branches of the larch, up to the hour when another, also homeless, inhales the perfume of the tender, light-green needles.
It is dark, as in a Gothic temple; the pine-forest builds the pointed arch. Above rise the thousand little turrets of branches, between which the deep blue sky lights up the shady ground beneath, forming tiny mosaics. Or white clouds are sailing high above, trying to espy me,—me, a little worm in the woods,—and they waft a greeting to me—from—No, she is hidden by the hand of man under a baronial roof. Clouds, ye have not seen her—or have ye? Alas, no, they are drifted hither from distant deserts and seas.
There is a whispering, a rustling. The trees are speaking with one another. The forest dreams.
In all my life I have never seen such a remarkable woven mat as this variegated, wonderful network of mossy earth. It is a miniature forest, and in the bosom of its shade perhaps other beings rest, who like myself are watching the endless web of nature. Ah, how the ants hasten and run, embracing the smallest of small things with their slender arms, while endeavouring to poison everything hostile with their corroding fluid! A brilliant beetle has been contemptuously regarding the tiny, painstaking creatures, for it is endowed with wings. It now flutters haughtily upward, and glittering, circles away; suddenly it is ensnared and captured in a net. The spider, quiet and industrious, has been toiling long on this net; a veil, softer than any made on earth, has become the beetle's shroud.
The little birds in the branches are also planning their works of art; where the boughs are thickest, they weave a cradle-basket from straws and twigs for their beloved young.
Can it then be true that a red thread spins itself on through all races of the human and animal kingdoms, down to the very smallest creature? Does everything then follow one and the same law, the acts of King Solomon on his throne of gold and those of the lazy, writhing worm under the stone? I should like very much to know.
Hush! yonder darts a rabbit; the crowned stag is making his way through the underbrush. Each shrub acts as mysteriously as if concealing a hundred beings and wood-spirits within itself. Sharply defined shadow-forms lie upon the ground, over which strings of light spin themselves. And the breath of the forest plays upon these strings.
I step out into the clearing. A trembling breeze ripples towards me, plays with my curls, and kisses my cheeks. Here are light-green furze bushes, with their clusters of little red berries, dark, gleaming bilberry, and the evergreen laurel of our Alps, for the worthy poet of the forest. The wood-bee is buzzing about among the bushes, and each leaf is a table spread for her.
And above this dim, perfumed field rises the charred trunk of a tree, its one bare branch lifted in defiance, threatening heaven for having once shattered its head with a lightning-stroke. And yonder towers a grey, cloven rock, in whose fissures the nimble lizard and the shimmering adder hide, and at whose feet flourish the serrated leaves of the fern, and the blue gentians, constantly waving greetings with their little caps.
Where there is no path, there is mine—where it is steepest, where the tangle of the alder-bushes and briars is thickest, where the dogberry grows, where the adder rustles in the yellow foliage of last year's beech. The partridges are afraid of me and I of them, and my feet are the greatest misfortune of the ants, my advancing body the scourge of God to the spiders, whose house falls in ruins on this summer day.
It is a delight to penetrate thus into the wilderness, into the dim and uncertain; that which I anticipate attracts me more than that which I know; that which I hope for is dearer to me than that which I have. I stand on the edge of a green meadow, enclosed by young fir-woods. Close to me a deer springs from the thicket, bounds over the meadow, stopping on the other side, where it now stands in a listening attitude with head thrown high. Following an inborn instinct of man, I raise my juniper stick, lay it beside my cheek like a gun, aiming towards the breast of the deer. It looks over at me, well aware that a juniper stick does not go off. Finally it begins to graze. Laying the stick on the ground again, I walk farther out on the meadow. The deer raises its head quickly and I now expect it to dart away. But it does not hasten, it licks its back and scratches itself behind the ear, and again begins to eat.
"Little deer," I say, "thou forgettest the respect due to mankind! Dost thou think me incapable of injuring thee? I wonder at that; here in the forest wander poachers and hunters. Thou dost not seem to be a novice, yet thou pretendest to be very inexperienced. Among us men, such behaviour would be called stupidity."
The creature, gradually grazing in my direction, stops often to look at me, but tosses its head in fright, preparing for a spring, whenever hearing a noise from any other side. With ears constantly pricked up, its whole being is a picture of anxious watchfulness and readiness for flight.
"Thou knowest then," I say, "that thou art in the land of the enemy? Not a moment safe from the shot? That is indeed cause for fear."
I draw gradually nearer, the deer taking no heed.
"I am glad," I say, "that I do not repel thee. It cannot be denied that I belong to those monsters who walk on two legs. But all bipeds are not dangerous. I, not at all. A short time ago I composed a few verses, which I should like to recite to thee."
At this the creature, startled, leaps to one side.
"They would not have been long," I say, sorry to have frightened the deer.
"It is not crafty of thee to hurt my feelings. The poem is written for my sweetheart. Somewhere lives one whom I love from the depths of my soul, but no one suspects it, nor does she herself. So I have composed these verses for her. But they must be forgotten again. How dost thou manage in such affairs?"
The animal, stepping two paces nearer to me, again begins to sniff. I now become quite bold.
"Beloved deer!" I continue, holding out my arms, "I cannot say how interesting thou art to me. If I had a rifle, I might shoot thee down. No, fear nothing from me, for thou breathest the same air as I, thy little eye beholds the same sunshine as mine—thy blood is as warm and as red as my own—why should I kill thee? But if I were hungry and had a rifle, then I should shoot thee after all, then nothing would help thee."
In spite of all this, the little deer is coming nearer. I stand there motionless, and ten paces away is the creature looking at me. My sensations are most uncomfortable. There must be something wrong with a man with whom wild game associates.
"Thou art curious," I say, "to see how I look near by. Well, observe me closely. These rags of linen and woollen stuff do not belong to me. This is only the outer covering. And if thou shouldst see us bare and naked as thyself, then all anxiety and fear of us would disappear. In the beginning we cannot shoot, cannot run as thou dost, cannot nourish ourselves from weeds, cannot dwell in the thicket. So pitiable are we. We—so it is said—would have been able to do it once, but in the same degree in which our reason has grown, have our bodies degenerated, become tender and sensitive, effeminate and weak. And if it continues in this way, all mankind will dissolve in spirit, which must also perish, as the flame dies when wick and oil are gone,—and you will take our place.
"I do not know," I say, "whether thou art unconsciously searching for something which, when acquired, still does not satisfy. I do not know if it be hatred which animates thee, ambition which hunts and urges thee on, love which makes thee unhappy, pleasure which kills thee. With us it is so. Do I pity thee or dost thou pity me? Whatever thou hast, thou art able to enjoy in full measure, while with us the sweet pleasures of the heart become embittered by the hardness and pitilessness of reason and prejudice. Our feeling degenerates into thought, and that is our misfortune. But after all, thou wouldst willingly exchange places? No, thou art not advanced enough to be discontented. Thy fear is the hunter, as ours is man. Our own kind threaten us with the greatest dangers. Hast thou already seen the latest weekly journal? Ah, thou dost not read leaves, thou eatest them, which is far more wholesome, only beware of newspaper leaves, they are poisonous. They should not be so, but they suck the venom from the ground upon which they stand, from the air that blows around them, from the times which they serve. Thank God, they do not grow in the Winkel forest. There grows the sorrel, and that is something for thee, and the mushroom, which is something for me. For the rest, my little deer, how long shall we stand here? How goes eating from the hand?"
I pull some grass from the ground, an occupation which the deer follows with the eye of a connoisseur.
A shot is fired. A short whizzing through the air, the deer makes one high bound—and with the utmost display of its speed, runs across the meadow straight into the thicket.
In the near branches the sulphurous smoke slowly disappears. I hasten to look for the poacher, to deliver him up to justice because he has fired, and to beg mercy for him because he has not hit. Seeing neither the poacher nor the deer, I am furious with the thought that the creature might take me for the guilty one, for the betrayer, or even for the assassin, and in his eyes I wish to be neither a bad friend nor a bad protector.
But what does it all amount to? Such enthusiasm is not enduring; in the late autumn, when, as I hope, the roast venison will appear upon my table, the friendly feelings will surely reawaken, however they will not come from the heart, but from the stomach.
The triumphant roaring of a bull or the bells and bleating of a goat is now heard. The shepherd-boy comes skipping by. He will have nothing to do with the juniper-bushes; the thorns prick, the blueberries are bitter. He picks strawberries into his cap, or, what he likes better, into his mouth. Then, plucking the narrow pointed leaf of the goat-majoram he carries it to his lips, and through it brings forth a whistle which re-echoes far away on the slopes and which other shepherd-lads in the distance give back to him. To the little folks of the woods this is the sign of brotherhood. Through the raspberry-bushes wriggles the ant-grubber, searching for the resinous kernels in the ant-hills from which to prepare the incense, that wonderful grain whose smoky veil enchants the eye of mortals, so that they fall before the sacrificial bread and see the Lord.
On the ridge beside the purple erica, under the blackberry leaves, flourishes the sweet-root; that is a toothsome spice for the shepherd-boy, and the herdswoman also likes to nibble it, that she may have a ringing voice for yodling on the Alm. The herdswoman, I notice, is often affected in a singular manner; surely she has many, yes, a great many words upon her tongue, but the right one for her heart's desire is not among them; she therefore expresses it in another way and sings a songwithoutwords which in this region, as far as it is heard, is called theJodel.
I proceed down through a defile torn away by the wild torrents of the Kar. Trees and bushes arch over it, forming an arbour. A cool breeze fans me as I stand upon the shady bank of a forest lake, enclosed by dark walls and slender brown trunks of the primeval forest. A perfect stillness rests upon the water. The stray leaf of a beech or an oak rustles toward me. I hear that eternal murmuring of deepest silence. A little bell somewhere in space, we know not if on the earth below or in the starry heaven above, is constantly calling us. And in a quiet hour our soul catches the familiar sound and longs,—and longs.
Peace of the primeval forest, thou still, thou holy refuge of the orphaned, the deserted, the pursued and world-weary; thou only Eden which remains for the unhappy!
Listen, Andreas! Dost thou hear the sound and echo of the song without words? That is the shepherd's hymn. Dost thou also hear the distant hammering and reverberating? That is the woodsman with the axe—the angel with the sword.
WITH THE HERDSMEN
The earliest people were the herdsmen. They are the most harmless that one meets in these wooded hills. So I have begun with them.
And I have already learned something of pastoral life. With the exception of the couple up in the Miesenbach hut, none of them live at home; the herdsmen really have no homes, they are wanderers. They spend the winter in the lower, outlying districts, dwelling in the farmyards to which the herds belong. They eat with the people and sleep with the cows and goats. In the spring-time, when the freshets are over and the maple blossoms are peeping forth from their green sheaves toward heaven to see if the swallows are not already there, the cattle are taken from the stalls and led by the herdsman to the Alm. The cows are bedecked with tinkling bells, the calves and steers with green wreaths, such as the people wear at the feast of Corpus Christi. In the procession to the Alm, when the young people and cattle walk together, the ceremony of crowning with wreaths is conducted with great propriety; but when, after many honeymoons upon the airy heights, the cattle return to the valley in the late autumn with fresh wreaths, the garland of the herdswoman does not always remain green in her hair. On the Alm there is much sun and little shade, and the Alm-boy must bring the fresh water a long distance—then nothing withers more easily than such a tender nosegay in the curly locks.
In the lovely summer-time these people lead a good and happy life upon the hills and I—truly and by my faith, I am good and happy with them. Sorrow and woe are like hot-house plants, they will not flourish in the fresh Alpine air. Even the old keeper of oxen, usually so surly, is constantly heard singing and piping his flute.
Within the herdsman's hut everything is well arranged and conveniently near at hand. By the hearth sits Domesticity in front of the fire and the brown jugs, and before the shaky table kneels Religion at the crudely ornamentedHausaltar. And where the bedstead stands, the Lord Himself would have been unable to put anything better. The bed is made from rough boards, upholstered with moss and rushes—it must be like that if the young woman of the Alm is to dream happily therein. In the next room are the buckets and pitchers, and here the milk and butter business is carried on, the profits of which are honestly delivered to the owner of the herd.
The whole household is shut in by four wooden walls, on which the Alm woman hears at night the little gold man knocking; this is the token of the fulfilment of her most secret heart's desire. I did not like to tell the credulous Aga that I thought the little gold man might be an industrious wood-worm. What in heaven's name would a wood-worm have to do with her heart's desires? But these will be fulfilled all the same: the simple folk about here wish for nothing which cannot be attained. And the maid in the hut, as well as the shepherd-boy and the herd in the stall, sleep with an easy conscience.
In the morning the bright sun peeps through the window, calling, "Time to be up!" Now the herdswoman goes with the bucket into the stall, where between four legs flow the little white fountains of milk and butter. The fire on the hearth is ready for the milk and the herdsman is waiting for the soup. He yodles and shouts, and so the time passes. But Berthold manages in the simplest way; he lays himself under the belly of the cow and drinks his breakfast directly from the udder.
It was with Berthold and Aga in the Miesenbach hut that I made my observations. After the morning soup Aga takes the basket on her back and descends toward the grazing meadows of the Thalmulde, that like a careful mistress she may prepare the table for her four-footed menials. The herd's meal lasts the whole day; for in the early morning Berthold has already led them down to the pastures wet with dew.
Once in such an hour I listened to Aga. She was trilling and singing, and these are the things I like to record.
"If the Winkel brook were milk,And the Winkel vale were beef as well,And the hills were all of butter,That were a feast, my lad, to tell."
"If the Winkel brook were milk,And the Winkel vale were beef as well,And the hills were all of butter,That were a feast, my lad, to tell."
"If the Winkel brook were milk,
And the Winkel vale were beef as well,
And the Winkel vale were beef as well,
And the hills were all of butter,
That were a feast, my lad, to tell."
That were a feast, my lad, to tell."
Berthold hearing it does not reflect long; a song so grossly material calls for one still more material. Standing upon the wall, he sings to the maid:
"If thy red hair were gold,Of thalers full thy throat,Thy bodice stuffed with diamonds,Upon thee I would dote."
"If thy red hair were gold,Of thalers full thy throat,Thy bodice stuffed with diamonds,Upon thee I would dote."
"If thy red hair were gold,
Of thalers full thy throat,
Of thalers full thy throat,
Thy bodice stuffed with diamonds,
Upon thee I would dote."
Upon thee I would dote."
And then she:
"Thy fingers would burn for the thalers,The jewels thou wouldst embrace,But the golden hair were much too fineFor thy rough and bearded face."
"Thy fingers would burn for the thalers,The jewels thou wouldst embrace,But the golden hair were much too fineFor thy rough and bearded face."
"Thy fingers would burn for the thalers,
The jewels thou wouldst embrace,
The jewels thou wouldst embrace,
But the golden hair were much too fine
For thy rough and bearded face."
For thy rough and bearded face."
Oh, they do not remain in one another's debt; they know how to tease. But how does it happen that in the forest-land grow fewer and less appropriate expressions for love and tenderness than for jesting and fun? If love down in the valleys is not exactly communicative, up here with the firs and little cabbage-roses it is as dumb as fish in water. The kiss is not as customary here as in other places. It is, I should say, as if the warm blood did not take the time to mount to the lips, when there is so much to do elsewhere. Everything expresses itself in the arms, and when a love-sick lad knows no other way of showing his feelings, he seizes his maiden, as the miller does a sack of grain, and swings her high in the air, at the same time giving a shout that verily tears the clouds asunder.
Berthold does it not a whit differently. They are two poor young people, left to themselves on the lonely Alpine heights. What is there to do? Alas! alas! nothing, I think, for me as yet.
WITH THE WOOD-DEVILS
In this wilderness there are trades of which I had no idea. The people literally dig their bread out of the earth and stones. They scrape it from the trees, and by the many-sided resources of their wit force it out of inedible fruits. How strange that man should know so well how to utilise everything! But has he already done so? And was the necessity there before the means were discovered, or was it the result of the things obtained? If the latter were the case, I should consider the thousand acquisitions as no gain.
The starved or daring wood-devils hold closer communication with the mass of mankind outside than one would suppose, and than they themselves perhaps imagine. Yet after all they know it well enough. For example, there is the root-digger. His fustian jacket reaches to the calves of his legs; his hat is a veritable family roof, but in places it is already breaking and full of holes. One knows him at once from afar. He climbs around among the rocks and digs out the aromatic roots with his crooked iron puncheon. He then sometimes sings the little song:
"When I uproot the spikenard here,That grows upon the Alm,I like to think of the women-folk.—Canst thou guess where the spices go?To Turkey land, that the women-folk,A sweeter perfume may receive.In Turkey land, the women-folk."
"When I uproot the spikenard here,That grows upon the Alm,I like to think of the women-folk.—Canst thou guess where the spices go?To Turkey land, that the women-folk,A sweeter perfume may receive.In Turkey land, the women-folk."
"When I uproot the spikenard here,
That grows upon the Alm,
I like to think of the women-folk.—
Canst thou guess where the spices go?
To Turkey land, that the women-folk,
A sweeter perfume may receive.
In Turkey land, the women-folk."
I do not yet know if it be true that spikenard travels from here over to Turkey. But these people believe it and so it is truth to them. The proud assertion of the root-digger, that he is sending a sweeter perfume to the woman's world in the Orient, is contested.
Yonder upon the cliff stands an old comrade, who, hearing the song, unfastens the brass clasp of his jacket, and retorts:
"That thou 'rt always thinkingOf the Turkish women-folk,O Lota, is well-known!Go rather and perfume thyselfWith spikenard on the Alm,It might not do thee any harm."
"That thou 'rt always thinkingOf the Turkish women-folk,O Lota, is well-known!Go rather and perfume thyselfWith spikenard on the Alm,It might not do thee any harm."
"That thou 'rt always thinking
Of the Turkish women-folk,
O Lota, is well-known!
Go rather and perfume thyself
With spikenard on the Alm,
It might not do thee any harm."
Thus they tease one another, and that is their harmless side. But the wood-devil has his cloven foot. The genuine man of the woods has a double-barrelled shot-gun; one barrel is calledGemsennoth(Danger to the chamois), the otherJägertod(Death to the hunter). If he could write, he would engrave these names upon the steel with his crooked knife; but he keeps it in his mind, that aboutGemsennothandJägertod.
He would have given up the digging long ago, to lead solely a poacher's life, but he imagines that sometime he is going to find a buried treasure under the stones. Digging for treasures, gold and diamonds under the ground, that he has heard in fairy-tales and can never forget.
Gold and diamonds under the ground! Treasure-digging! The fairy-tale is right; the root-digger is right; the ploughman is right; the miner is right. But the treasure-digger is not right.
Of one thing I am careful, that is, not to offend the root-digger, the pitch-scraper, or the ant-grubber. These are the people who are said to cause the bad weather, which is all devils' work, and since they live in the forests, thence the many hard storms in the wooded and Alpine regions. But how they manage that the atoms of dew condense into water, that the drops freeze into bits of ice, that the bits of ice become heavy hail-stones, that flaming darts of lightning hiss through the night, and that the mighty thunder rolls, until at last it all bursts upon the trembling men and beasts of the earth—how they manage that, must be a profound secret of these wild fellows which I have not been able to discover.
It is a fearful delusion of these people, when they think themselves able to perform deeds which are beyond human power, while neglecting that by which they might accomplish something great.—However, in the world outside, other mistakes occur, still more harmful because made by men of superior wisdom and with greater resources than here. Glorious, O mankind, is thy progress, but with thy monstrous prejudices art thou still very incomplete!
Up among the hills is a glen called the Wolfsgrube. I recently visited this place, arriving there just in time to witness the burial of a man, who had been neither root-digger, ant-grubber, pitch-scraper, brandy-distiller, nor poacher, but the most extraordinary wood-devil.
He had never worked, but had earned his bread by eating. He was called "the Gormand"; I think he had no other name. He was a human wreck, although physically very strong. His hair had become a hopelessly tangled mat with sweat and resin; so he had no need of a hat. His beard resembled dried pine-needles. His broad and powerful chest was as though spun over with a tenfold spider's web, thus saving a doublet. An entire horny skin had formed itself upon his bulky feet, making shoes superfluous. Almost a terrible sight! I met him a few days ago in the Winkel. Seeing me, he snatched a handful of sand from the ground, offering to swallow it for a small remuneration. He often went to the surrounding villages on church-festival days to exhibit his tricks before the people. He did not consume tow and ribbons and that sort of thing, as jugglers usually do, but cloth, leather, and bits of glass. He has even been known to swallow rusty shoe-nails. His favourite repast was an old boot or felt hat, torn into bits and prepared with oil and vinegar. That paid him well, and his purse, like his stomach, had a good digestion. "For us such food would not be good," said Rhyme-Rüpel, "though a little drink ofSchnappsor wine might cut the pebbles very fine." Day in, day out, he performed this feat; but everything has an end, Easter Sunday as well as Good Friday. He was sitting before his glass of toddy in Kranabethannes' hut, saying in his arrogant way, "Eat your black bread yourself, Hannes; I 'll drink the brandy and take a bite of the glass with it." Just then an old root-digger crawled out from a dark corner of the hearth: "Despise the black bread, do you? You!" At which the Gormand retorted: "Get out, root-digger; I 'll eat you and the yoke on your back!" The old man then drew forth a small root, saying, "Here 's something, you rascal, that's a little stronger than you are." "Bring it on!" screamed the Gormand, seizing the root and thrusting it down his throat. "You 're done for!" chuckled the old man, and he disappeared into the forest. Suddenly springing up, the Gormand staggered out of the house and fell upon the grass, stone-dead. The meaning of it all was now plain. No one knew the old root-digger—he was the devil.
Half-fact, half-legend, so the superstitious people interpreted and related it to me. And they would not bury the man in the Holdenschlag churchyard. In the marshy ground of the Wolfsgrube, where only the rushes grow and wave their little woolly flags, they made the grave. Winding the body in thick fir-boughs, they shoved it with a pole, until it rolled into its final resting-place.
At the same time a little troop of worshippers came over the heath through the Wolfsgrube. They had been in a defile in the high mountains where a cross is said to be standing among the rocks. The little company paused before the grave, repeating the Lord's prayer for the dead man. Then suddenly a swarthy woman, a charcoal-burner, cried out: "You miserable wretches, your pious prayers will be as useful to that man as dry clothes to a fish in water. He 's already yonder in torment, for he 's the eater of broken glass!"
"The holy Lord's prayer will serve afterwards for our live-stock at home!" murmured the worshippers as they walked away.
A pale, black-haired man, with a melancholy face though restless bearing, still remained standing beside the grave. Gazing into it, with a trembling hand he threw a clump of earth upon the form wrapped in the green travelling-dress and, looking about him, said: "We will cover him with earth nevertheless. The devil has not taken him because of his good appetite; and his heart may have been no worse than his stomach."
This was the funeral sermon. And then a few men came and shovelled earth into the grave.
Later I again met the sad, pale man, whom they call theEinspanig. "Can you tell me something," I asked, "about the eater of broken glass? It is really a strange, weird tale."
"Strange and weird is the whole woodland," he answered; "a better digestion than ours, such a son of the wilderness may have. And superstition is the intellectual life of these people." With these words he turned and quickly stumbled away.
What, old man, art thou not thyself a son of the wilderness? Thou art truly strange and weird enough. TheEinspanig, "The Lone One," they call him; of his history they know nothing.
I have also made the acquaintance of the pitch-maker. He is a very peculiar fellow. One can scent him from afar and see him glistening through the thicket. The hatchet glistens with which he scrapes the resin from the trees, and the grappling-iron glistens, by means of which he climbs like a wild-cat up the smooth trunks to reap a harvest from their tops, or to make an incision for the resin to flow out later on. And the leather trousers glisten, and the fustian jacket, covered with pitch, and the blade of the long knife at his side—and finally one sees his black, glistening eye. If a blossom or a falling pine-needle grazes him, it sticks to his arm, to his hair, to his beard. If a fly or a butterfly is flitting about, or a spider, swinging from its web, the little insect remains clinging to him; and his dress is gaily decorated with tiny creatures from the plant and animal kingdom when in the darkness of the forest or at evening he returns home to his hermitage. The pitch-maker wounds the trees seriously, at last killing them, and the primeval forest has succumbed to the destruction. He has crippled the old pines and firs, and they now stretch out their long arms after him, as if desiring to strike down their deadly enemy.
By a process of evaporation, the pitch-maker prepares turpentine and other oils such as are used in the forest regions for every conceivable malady. I often visit these distilleries, watching the black mass boil and bubble, until it is put into closed earthen receptacles, from which the valuable contents are drawn through slender tubes into kegs and bottles. Packing these in a large basket, the man peddles them from house to house. The wood-cutter buys pitch-oil for every injury which he may receive in his battle with the forest. The charcoal-burner buys it for burns; the brandy-distiller for his casks. The root-digger buys for sprains and colic, the last of which he contracts from so much uncooked food. The small peasant farther out buys pitch-oil for his whole household and cattle, as a remedy against every ill.
O thou pitch-oil man! A tiny worm has been gnawing long at my heart—might it not be destroyed with thy gall-bitter oil?
In the pitch-maker's hut it is unsafe to sit down, for one would stick fast. And then the little unwashed, tousled children would come and clamber upon one's neck until there would be no escape.
The pitch-maker's dwelling is simple enough. Underneath is the bare earth; above, the bark-shingled roof; while the walls are of rough logs, stopped up with moss. The uneven hearth serves at the same time as a table. Under the bedstead is the storehouse for potatoes, mushrooms, and wild pears. The worm-eaten wardrobe is the revered object in the house; it guards the sacred souvenirs of the forefathers, the baptismal gifts of the children, and the rain-coat of the pitch-maker when not in use. The windows have hardly enough glass to have satisfied the appetite of the Gormand. "Besides," as the pitch-maker says, "rags and straw paper are as good as glass panes, if one cannot show a clean face through them." Behind the wardrobe hangs the gun. If my lord, the hunter, on one of his visits, should happen to discover it, it is all right—a gun is a necessity, for there are wolves in the woods. If he does not see it, so much the better. It is the same with the pitch-maker's housekeeper; seeing her, one is compelled to acknowledge that the spring-time of life will return no more to one in the fortieth year; that, as the proverb says, a wen on the throat is better than a hole; that one-eyed is not blind, and that a little crookedness in the legs is neither to be ashamed nor boasted of. If one does not see her, so much the better.
But as I have often noticed, to many a pitch-maker clings a young wife. Country wenches are sometimes very different from city maids. The latter are usually well pleased when their lovers are white and delicate, slender, docile, and amorous as doves. The country lass on the contrary prefers one who is hard, rough, and bristly, angular and wild. If a girl has a choice between one who cheerfully darns stockings for her and one who thunders at her with every word—then she takes the thunderer. For after all she has him in her power. How does the song go which the pitch-maker likes so well to sing?
"For the pitch I have my axe,For the hare I 've gun and ball,For the hunter two stout fists,For the wench I 've nothing at all.'That,' she says, 'is far too little.'So she drives me out the door;Then I go and flog the hunterTill he troubles me no more."
"For the pitch I have my axe,For the hare I 've gun and ball,For the hunter two stout fists,For the wench I 've nothing at all.'That,' she says, 'is far too little.'So she drives me out the door;Then I go and flog the hunterTill he troubles me no more."
"For the pitch I have my axe,
For the hare I 've gun and ball,
For the hare I 've gun and ball,
For the hunter two stout fists,
For the wench I 've nothing at all.
For the wench I 've nothing at all.
'That,' she says, 'is far too little.'
So she drives me out the door;
So she drives me out the door;
Then I go and flog the hunter
Till he troubles me no more."
Till he troubles me no more."
It may not be poetical,—however, the man who occasionally sings such a song does not harm the hunter. He who goes about with gloomy thoughts sings no merry song.
Among the wood-devils, the most cordial and, according to my judgment, the most dangerous, is the brandy-distiller. He wears finer cloth than the others and shaves his beard every week. He always carries about with him a little flask, affably treating each person who comes in his way. Whoever drinks is ruined, and follows him to the tavern.
The brandy-distiller reaps a double harvest; first the red berries from the mountain-ash, from the hop, from the sweet-broom, from everything that here produces fruit. He believes in the Spirit of Nature, that lives in all created things, and conjures it out of the fruits of the forest and, like the magician in the fairy-tale, into the bottle and, putting the stopple in quickly, imprisons it there. His distillery is a magic circle under a high, gloomy pine, a circle like that which the spider draws and weaves. Soon a few flies are there, wriggling in the net. The woods-people, as they go about, or to and from their work, are at last enticed into the tavern—these are the flies of the two-legged spider, and from them the brandy-distiller now reaps his second harvest.
Each man is advised by his wife to avoid the road by "the Pine," it is so dark and rough, as well as being longer than any other. The man appears to be convinced, and besides he has nothing to call him there,—but health is such an uncertain thing, and as he walks along he is suddenly attacked by a pressure in the throat, followed by a most distressing colic. Having no pitch-oil with him, he knows but one remedy and—he takes the road by "the Pine." "The first little glass," says Rüpel, "soothes the smart; the second glass makes warm the heart; the third glass makes it still more warm; one's purse by the fourth will receive no harm; at the fifth, the man wishes to stretch his limbs; at the sixth, the pines sway and his poor head swims; at the seventh, his body is all aglow; at the eighth, to his wife he longs to go."
But stumbling homewards, the good man swears at the "bad" wife who is coming to meet him without a light through this ghastly fog; and when finally, his hat awry and jammed low on his forehead, he tumbles into the hut, the woman knows what beatings she has already borne and may receive again, if she does not hasten and escape into the garret or some safe place.
My voyages of discovery have cheered me more than I should have thought possible. A sad fate hangs over this little people, but this fate sometimes makes an unspeakably droll face. Besides I do not consider these foresters so utterly depraved and wretched. They are neglected and uncouth. Perhaps something might be made of them; but first the leaven must be added.
The race will not die out so easily. Right here in the damp, dark forest-land the little ones flourish like mushrooms. The youngsters follow the path of their elders and carry the grappling-iron for roots, or the herdsman's staff, or the hatchet for pitch, or the axe for wood.
But, according to the reports made to the priest in Holdenschlag, the forest children are all girls. The boys are mostly christened with the water of the woods; they are recorded in no parish-register, that they may remain unnoticed outside by the bailiffs and omitted from the military list. The men here say that the government and whatever belongs to it costs them more than it would be worth to them, and they will renounce it. That may be all true, but the government does not renounce the healthy Winkelstegers.
The girls also, when they are somewhat fledged, soon take up ant- and root-digging, gathering herbs, and they know of a market for everything; they pick strawberries and hops and the fruit of the juniper for the brandy-distillers. And the little boys, still too young to look after themselves, already help with the brandy-drinking.
A short time ago I watched a troop of children. They are playing under a larch-tree. The fallen larch-cones are their stags and roes, which they are pretending to feed with green brushwood. Others run about playing "Hide and Seek" behind the bushes, "Holding Salt," "Driving out Hawks," "Going to Heaven and Hell," and whatever all the tricks and games are called. It is pleasant to watch them; to be sure they are all half naked, but they have well-formed and healthy limbs, and their games are more childishly gay than any which I have ever seen other children play. This is the vulnerable spot of the horny Siegfried, who is here calledWaldteufel.
Smiling at the little ones under the larch-tree, I try after a while to mingle with them in their games, but they draw back shyly, only a few keeping near me; but when I attempt to get the better of them in a race or game of tag, then they all join in. And soon I am a good and welcome friend in the mad, whirling circle of these young people. I prattle many things to them, but more often I let them talk to me. I go to school to the children to learn the schoolmaster's art.
The forest people do not allow themselves to be drawn up by force; he who would win them for higher things must descend quite to them, must lead them up arm in arm and indeed by a long, circuitous route.
IN THE FELSENTHAL
Below the slopes of the fore-alps and the cliffs of the Hochzahn with its chain of glaciers, the wooded hills extend on and on toward the west. Seen from above they lie there like a dark-blue sea, concealing in their depths the everlasting shadows and the strange people.
A day's journey from the valley of the Winkel toward the west, far below the last hut, is a place where, according to the legend, the world is fastened in with boards.
It were better said, walled in with stones; deep fissured precipices shut off the forest-land and here begin the Alps, where the rocky boulders no longer lie or lean, but soar straight up into the sky. A sea of snow and ice with crags, about which hover everlasting mists, extends endlessly, it is said, over the giant strongholds above, which in olden times guarded an Eden now turned to stone. Thus the legend. Strange that this wonderful dream of a lost paradise yet to be regained should dawn in the hearts ofallpeople and nations!
These foresters will not believe that on the other side of the Alps there are again regions inhabited by man. Only one old, shy, blinking charcoal-burner repeats the story told him by his grandfather, that over there were human beings, who wore such high pointed hats that they could not walk about on the mountains in the evening without knocking down the stars. So the Lord God was obliged to carefully draw down the clouds every night in order to keep a single star in heaven. The rogue meant the pointed hats of the Tyrolese.
In this mountain glen are a number of places held in ill repute. Here many a dead chamois-hunter has been found, shot through the breast by a ball of lead. There is also a legend that a monster, which keeps watch over an inexhaustible treasure of diamonds in the mountains, sometimes bursts forth from one of the numerous rocky caverns. If the forest-land endures a while longer, then a hero is expected to come and slay the beast and recover the treasure. Up to the present such a one has not appeared. Ah, if I could give this monster its true name!
The region is adapted to the gloomy myths. It is a dead valley in which no little finch will sing, no wild pigeon coo, no woodpecker chatter, in which loneliness itself has fallen asleep. Upon the grey moss-covered ground piles of rock lie about, just as they have been broken from the high cliff. Here and there a bold little fir-tree has climbed up on one of these grey, weather-beaten boulders and proudly looks about, thinking itself now more fortunate than the other half-dead trees on the sandy soil below. It will not be long before it too will perish from hunger and thirst, and will fall from the barren rock. Here the forest cannot flourish, and if a straight and slender fir shoots up anywhere, its days are numbered. A storm-wind suddenly comes rushing down from the rocky defile and almost gently lays the young tree, together with its broken roots, upon the ground.
The Scotch fir alone is still courageous; it climbs the steep sides between the precipices to discover how it looks up there with theEdelweiss, with the Alpine roses, with the chamois, and how far it is yet to the snow. But the good Scotch fir is no daughter of the Alps; soon a dizziness seizes it, and, frightened, it crouches down and crawls painfully upon its knees, with its twisted, crippled arms always reaching out and clutching something, the little heads of the cones stretching themselves upward in curiosity, until finally it comes out into the damp veil of mist and aimlessly wanders about among the stones.
Upon one of the fallen rocks of this remotest valley in the forest stands a cross. It is very clumsily made out of two rough pieces of wood; in places the bark is still clinging to it. Silent it stands there in the barren waste; it is like the first message concerning the Redeemer of the world, which in olden times the holy Boniface made from the trees of the forest and set up in the German wilderness.
I have often asked the meaning of this cross. Since time immemorial it has stood upon the rock, and no man can say who placed it there. According to the legend it was never placed there. Every thousand years a little bird flew into the forest, bringing a seed of grain from unknown lands. Previously it was not known what had become of the seeds, whether they had been lost, or whether the poisonous plant with the blue berries, or the thorn-bush with the white rose, or something else, evil or good, had sprung from them. But when the bird last appeared it laid the seed upon the rock in the Felsenthal, and from it sprang the cross. Sometimes one goes there to pray before it; the prayer has often brought a blessing at once, but often a misfortune has followed it. So it is uncertain whether the cross is for weal or woe. The Einspanig is the most frequently seen in the Felsenthal, and here he performs his devotions before the symbol; but it is also uncertain whether the Einspanig is good or evil.
After many days of wandering I returned once more to my house in the Winkel, much puzzled in my mind about the cross in the Felsenthal and the Einspanig. I learned a little concerning the latter on reaching home.
I was surprised to find my housekeeper, usually so good-natured, quite irritable to-day. It appears that seeing the Einspanig passing, the woman, who happened to look out at that moment, thought to herself, "Oh, how I should like to gossip a little with this queer man, and find out something about him." And as he accidentally turned his face toward the door, she cordially invited him to enter and rest a little on the bench. On his accepting her invitation, she hastily brought him bread and milk, and in her own peculiar way asked, "Good man of God, where do you then come from?"
"Down from the Felsenthal," was the answer.
"Ihr Närrchen!" cried the woman, "you don't mean that horrible place! Up there in the Felsenthal the world is fastened in with boards."
The Einspanig then replied quietly: "Nowhere is the world fastened in with boards. The mountains stretch far, far back behind the Hochzahn, then comes the hilly country, then the plains, then the water which extends many thousand miles, then land again with mountains and valleys and little hills, and again water, and again land and water and land and land——"
Interrupting him here, the woman cried, "Mein Gott, Einspanig, how much farther then?"
"As far as home, into our country, into our forest, into the Winkel, into the Felsenthal. Worthy woman, if God should give you wings and you should fly away toward the setting sun and on and always on, following your nose and the sun, then one day you would come flying from where the sun rises toward your peaceful house."
"Oh, you humbug!" cried the woman, "go tell your tales to someone else; I am the Winkel-warden's wife. I 'll give you the milk and with it the honest opinion of old people: Somewhere there is a place where the world is fastened in with boards. That is the old faith, and therein will I live and die."
"Woman, all honour to your old faith!" replied the Einspanig, "but I have already travelled the road toward the setting sun and back here from the rising sun."
These words seemed to have thoroughly embittered her. "O Du Fabelhans!" she screamed, "the devil has set his mark upon you." And then shaking his head the man walked away.
The good woman must have found it hard waiting for me to give further vent to her feelings. As I approached the house she called to me over the fence: "By my troth! By my troth! What kind of people there are upon God's dear earth, to be sure! Now they do not even believe in the end of the world! But I say: Our Lord God has made it all right, and I 'll stick to my old faith, and the world is fastened in with boards!"
"Of course, of course," I acknowledged, as I climbed over the board fence. "Quite right—fastened in with boards!"
And so we will cling to the old faith.