Part 8 (2/2)

But the hopeful rode gaily off through the bars, and came to a castle where a warlike lord was glad to receive any addition to his force.

There he stayed for a year, leading the extreme bandit life of whose outrages and oppressions we read so much during this troubled period. He quickly obtained reputation as daring and merciless:

”Into his sack he stuffed everything; it was all one to him.

Nothing was too small, nothing too great. Helmbrecht took it all, rough and smooth, crooked and straight. He took horses, cattle, jacket, sword, cloak, coat, goats, sheep. From women he stripped everything, and well enough his s.h.i.+p went that first year, 'its sails full.' But after a while, as people are wont to think of going home, he took leave of the court, and commended them to the good G.o.d.”

They heard at the farm that he was coming on for a visit, and in accordance with the ancient custom of giving a present to the bearer of good news, the messenger received a s.h.i.+rt and pair of hose. But when the young man himself arrived, ”how he was received! Did they step forward to meet him? Nay, they ran, all together; one crowded past another; father and mother sprang as if they had never had a care.” It is touching to notice the suggestiveness of a single line in the poet's description of the scene. The plain people understood that their son was no longer one of them, and they knew how his earlier false pride must have grown in this year's absence in the outer world. So in their anxiety that everything should gratify this brilliant, wayward eldest son of their admiration and hope, and that nothing should interfere with his being pleased and gracious to their yearning, timid love, and knowing how in the homely heartiness of their joy at seeing their young master again the two servants would treat him at once in the old familiar way of peasant-farm equality, they instructed their man and their woman in what they thought to be polite salutation. So when the guest appeared, ”Did the woman and the man cry 'Welcome back, Helmbrecht'? Nay, they did not; they had been told not to. They said: 'Master, in G.o.d's name be you welcome.'” There is a touch of humor in their rus.h.i.+ng forward and being the first to greet him, in their rude good-feeling; but we also get a sense of tenderness from seeing the father and mother keeping in the background, behind their daughter Gotelint.

Little education as there was in the middle ages, people fully appreciated the elegance as well as the utility of a knowledge of foreign languages, and no accomplishment was held more desirable.

Especially the Germans, representing an outlying civilization, would send their sons, while still boys, to some French court to serve as pages and acquire especially the language as well as other branches of knightly culture. The praises of various heroes of French as well as German romances, give to linguistic attainments a high place; Gottfried, for example, in his account of the training of Tristan, who was the typical gentleman of the romances, says that from the age of seven until he was fourteen he was studying languages under the care of a tutor, by travelling through different lands. Since this was the fas.h.i.+on, imitations were sure to become popular, and a thin veneering of foreign speech became the mark of a pinchbeck culture, just as it has been so frequently since. Accordingly, after the servants have cried out their ”Master, in G.o.d's name be you welcome,” and Gotelint has thrown her arms about her brother, the young gallant calls her his dear little sister in a phrase of salutation touched with Low Dutch, which he follows by the elegant ”gratia vester.” Then the younger children ran up, and last of all the farmer and his wife, who greeted him over and over. He addressed his father in French: ”Deu sal”; his mother in Bohemian: ”Dobraytra.”

They looked at each other; four strange languages all together--there must be some mistake.

”The housewife said: 'My dear, this is not our son. This is a Bohemian or a Slav.' Her husband replied: 'It is a Frenchman.

My son whom I commended to G.o.d, certainly this is not he, and yet he looks like him.' And Gotelint suggested: 'He answered me in Latin; may be he is a priest.' 'Faith,' put in the hired man, who had caught the phrase in dialect, 'he has lived in Saxony or Brabant, for he said, ”liebe susterkindekin”; he must be a Saxon.'”

The old peasant was devoted and loving, but he had resolution and self-respect under it all. He told the accomplished youth that before he would take him for his son he must talk German. If he would do that and declare himself Helmbrecht, well and good. He should have a chicken boiled, and another roasted, and his horse should be well cared for. But a Bohemian, or a Slav, or a Saxon, or a Brabanter, or a Frenchman, or a priest, should be given nothing. The youth began to reflect. It was getting late, there was no place near by where he could go; so he concluded to waive his elegant manners, and speak in the old style. But the shrewd peasant feigns incredulity, and decides to test his son a little further. In vain the young man protests himself Helmbrecht. His gentility must stoop to vulgar peasant identification, and tell what he knows about the oxen on the farm. He rattles over all four of them, Grazer, Black-spot, Rascal, and White-star, with a little praise for two, and the reconciliation is accomplished. Thereupon the repressed fondness and devotion obtain free expression. The father hurried out to attend to the horse, the mother sent her daughter for a pillow and cus.h.i.+on--”Run, now, and don't walk for it”--and makes a couch for him on the bench close to the stove, so that he may have a nap while she is preparing his dinner. When the boy woke the meal was ready, and Wernher a.s.sures us that any gentleman might have enjoyed it. After was.h.i.+ng his hands, the usual first step in a meal, a dish of fine-cut sauer-kraut was put before him, by it bacon, both fat and lean, and a rich mellow cheese. Then there was as fat a goose as ever roasted on a spit--and with what good-will they provided that extraordinary peasant luxury--a roasted and a boiled chicken. A knight out hunting, and happening on such a meal, would like it well. For besides this they had managed to get delicacies in which peasants never think of indulging. ”'If I had any wine you should be drunk to-night,'” the farmer said; and he added--with such a n.o.ble union of dignity, simplicity, and sentiment for the plain homely blessings which he had appreciated and loved all his life: ”'My dear son, now take a drink of water from the best spring that ever came out of earth. I know no spring fit to be compared with it, except the one at w.a.n.khusen.'”

”'Tell me, son,'” he continued, as they went on with their dinner, for he could not wait to ask him, ”'tell me how about the court fas.h.i.+ons, and then I will tell you how they used to be when I was young.'” But the son was too busy eating to stop to talk then, and he allowed his father to relate his early reminiscences.

”'When I was a boy,' he began 'and your grandfather Helmbrecht had sent me to court with cheese and eggs, just as a farmer does to-day, I took note of the knights, and marked their ways. They were courteous and cheerful and had no rascality about them in those days, such as many men and women too have now. The knights had a custom, to make themselves pleasing to the ladies, that was called jousting.

A man of the court explained it to me when I asked him what they called it. Two companies would come together from opposite directions, riding as if they were mad, and they would drive against each other, as if their spears must pierce through. There's nothing in these days like what I saw then. After that they had a dance, and while dancing they sang lively songs, that made the time go quickly. Presently a playman came forward and struck in with his fiddle; at that the ladies jumped up, and the knights went to meet them, and they took hold of hands. That was a pleasant sight--the overflowing delight of ladies and gentlemen, dancing so gaily, poor and rich. When that was over a man came out and read about some one called Ernest. Each could do whatever he liked. Some took their bows and shot at a target; others went hunting: there was no end to the kinds of pleasure. The worst off there would be the best off with us now. Those were the times before false and vicious people could turn the right about with their tricks. Nowadays the wise man is the one who can cheat and lie; he has position and money and honor at court, much more than the man who lives justly and strives after G.o.d's grace.'”

We find here as in so many other places in thirteenth century poetry, that the serious-minded were already looking back. Just as we have seen Walther and Ulrich bewailing the lost suns.h.i.+ne of chivalry, Wernher laments that the old-time honesty has gone, and with it the knightly light-hearted honorable joys. Already, before 1250, there was a halo about the chivalric court; ladies were honored, knights tourneyed for their pleasure; dancing with them attracted gentlemen quite beyond drinking bouts; the poet's narratives of old German heroes were yet in fas.h.i.+on.

All this seems amusing to the young man; what sappy and goody-goody fas.h.i.+ons those were. He thinks it manly to swagger about the new ways, and tell how the fas.h.i.+onable cry is ”Trinka, herre, trinka trinc!” It used to be good breeding to dangle about pretty ladies, but the correct thing now is just to drink. ”'This is the kind of love-letters we have: ”You dear little bar-maid, fill up our cups. What a fool a man is who wastes his life for women, instead of good wine.” It's a genteel thing to be sharp with your tongue, and get the best of people, and tell clever lies.'”

The old man hears, and with a sigh wishes back the day when gentlemen shouted ”Hey[=a], ritter, wis et fro!” in the tourneys, instead of these new cries of riotry and pillage. The son would tell him more, but he has ridden far and wishes to go to sleep. There were no linen sheets in that farm-house, but Gotelint spread a newly washed s.h.i.+rt on his bed, and he slept until high day. The next morning he displayed the gifts he had brought: for his father, a whetstone, scythe, and axe; for his mother, a fox-skin; for Gotelint, a head-dress with a band of silk and gold, better fitted for a n.o.bleman's child than for her; shoes with straps for the farm-hand; and for his wife, a cloth to cover her hair, and a red ribband. He remained at home for a week, and then he became restless to return. His father again took up his entreaties, begging him in the tenderest tones to stay from the bitter and sour life he has been leading. As long as he lives he will share what he has with him, even if the young man will do nothing but sit still and wash his hands. Only he must not go back.

What, not go back with so much to do? Has not a rich man ridden over the field of his G.o.d-father? Has not another rich man eaten bread with crullers? And still a third, while eating at a bishop's table, loosened his girdle? Each one must be taught better manners through wholesale plunder of cattle, sheep, and swine, to say nothing of a boor who blew the foam off his beer. He and some friends will give them a good training, and he runs over the list of his bandit companions with the cant names borne by each, such as Lambswallow, h.e.l.lbag, Bolt-the-sheep, Coweater, Wolfthroat, and at last his own name, Swallow-the-land.

We may pa.s.s by the exploits of which he boasts--the children of the peasants near him eat water-gruel, their father's eyes he puts out, their beards he draws with pincers, he binds them in ant-hills, or smokes them in the chimney, and so forth, through a revolting list of barbarities.

The youth uncloaks himself as a full-fledged desperado, and his father's short, stern warning in G.o.d's name of vengeance only throws him into a pa.s.sion, and he declares that, though hitherto on their raids he has kept off his companions from the farm, instead of doing so longer, he will give up his father and mother to their will. He reveals what had been a main motive in his visit, an arrangement he had made with his comrade Lambswallow to let him marry Gotelint. But of that brilliant match her father's conduct has deprived the girl; also she will never find another man who can give her such luxuries of dress and fare.

Moreover, his sister was worthy of such a husband, and he stops to repeat the tribute he had paid to her while discussing the alliance with his friend. The lines bring before us a weird mediaeval scene, to which these reckless free-livers looked forward as their a.s.sured end, and which they dreaded most from the lurid light thrown by superst.i.tion upon the picture. The ghastly swinging of their corpses on the gibbet (”The rain has drenched and washed us,” Villon says two hundred years later, ”and the sun dried and blackened us. Magpies and crows have hollowed out our eyes, and plucked away our beards and eyebrows.”[9]) troubled them less than the thought that their falling bones must lie unburied, and their lives be followed by no religious rites to mitigate the eternal justice. French poetry has interpreted this phase of crime and misery in Villon's _Epitaphe_; in English it has been interpreted by Tennyson in _Rizpah_, at once the most intense and the most piteous of all his poems, as free from self-consciousness as an early ballad, the most pathetic expression in all literature of a mother's love, and kept out of the category of the very greatest poems only by the intolerable anguish of its emotion. In this old German story we find an interpretation of it too; the briefest and much the simplest, yet not without an un.o.btrusive power. Young Helmbrecht declares that he told his comrade that he might trust Gotelint never to make him repent his choice.

”I know her,” he represents himself as saying, ”to be so loyal--on this you may count--that she never will leave you hanging long; she will cut you down with her own hands, and carry you to your grave at the cross-roads, with incense and myrrh--of this you can be sure. Nightly for a whole year she will go about you. Or if, less fortunate, you are blinded or crippled by the loss of hands or feet, the good, pure girl will guide you with her own hand over all the paths of every land; every morning she will bring your crutches to your bed, or cut for you, even till you die, your bread and meat.”

From the first, Gotelint has been under the fascination of her brother, and as she hears his long account of the life the wife of Lambswallow must live, she calls young Helmbrecht aside, and arranges to run away from home and marry his friend. So at the appointed time she does, and a great wedding feast, provided at the cost of many widows and orphans, follows the curious mediaeval marriage ceremony. In the midst of it a strange foreshadowing of evil comes over her; she wishes herself back at her father's simple fare; his cabbage was better than the luxury of Lambswallow's fish. She tells her bridegroom that she is afraid strangers are at hand to harm them, and even as the players are receiving their gifts, the sheriff and his force break in upon the revellers. All meet quick justice; nine are hung; Helmbrecht, the tenth, is sent off blind, and with only one foot and one hand. ”What the forsaken bride suffered” let him tell who saw.

The story works to its conclusion in a temper better fitted to the thirteenth century than to ours. The poet feels no complaisance for an obstinate wrong-doer. He says: ”G.o.d is a worker of wonders, and this is the proper lot of a youth who called his father an old peasant and his mother a worthless woman.” Nor does he stop with his own exclamation; he tells in detail how the blind and maimed fellow is brought by a boy to the farm, only to receive his father's taunts and mocking. Brutal and distressing as the pa.s.sage seems, it is true to the age and to the character of the st.u.r.dy old farmer. While there was hope he had borne every insult; he had pleaded persistently, tenderly, and to every limit of generosity and devotion. But when the youth had proved himself susceptible to no claims of virtue or humanity, and, as a last stroke of evil, had seduced his sister from an honorable life, further pity seems sentimentalism. Before the boy's first departure his father had warned him that he would take no part in any ill-won prosperity, and if misfortunes came, they, too, must be borne alone. The foreign phrases are on the father's lips this time, as the sightless cripple creeps up to the farm-house door. He runs over the proud speeches that have thus ended in shame and misery; nor will he listen to the entreaties for shelter, even as a beggar, for a single night. ”'Every one, the country round, is cruel to me; alas! so you are now. In G.o.d's name give me the charity you would give a poor sick man!'” But the farmer ”laughed scoffingly, even though it broke his heart, for this was his own flesh, his child, who stood there before him blind.” He struck the boy who was leading the wretch, and drove them off. ”Yet as they went away his mother put a loaf of bread in his hand, as if he were a child.” For a year he crawled about, skulking in the woods and living on what he might. Then one day, having wandered to the scene of some of his worst crimes, a set of peasants catch sight of him, and recount to one another what their farms, their babes, their daughters, had suffered from this outlaw and his band. As they talk they tremble with hate and rage, and, catching up a rope, they fulfil the last of the dreams that tormented the anxious night of the father just before his son rode out, with his rich clothes and fine horse and wonderful hood covering that long, beautiful hair, to seek his fortune in a court.

Why is it worth while to introduce to English readers this peasant tale of the middle ages? Not on account of its antiquarian value, though it is full of interesting suggestions of old manners. Nor primarily on account of its literary significance, notwithstanding the tact and nervous directness of Wernher's style, and the heightened realism of treatment that gives him distinction beside the romanticists of the time. Its main importance for us lies in that sense of the human unity which we derive from such a story of a time so remote from our own, and in most of its aspects so different. Many of the influences that render man's life desirable--organized society, with respect for property and personal safety, ease of living, humanitarian sensibility even to the guiltiest suffering--we miss, and missing them we rejoice in the progress of our age toward the light. But the traits whereby life in all ages becomes estimable--simplicity of character, contentment with the station of one's birth, if only one can live there with dignity and usefulness; frugality, integrity, natural love which grows most tender and yearning when the kins.h.i.+p of moral worthiness seems in danger of dissolution--are our own best possession, and this ident.i.ty of manhood then and now makes us feel less strange among those distant and dimly remembered generations. Thus serious writers offer to our study many notable and interesting thoughts, and in their courtly poets we find scores of delightful pictures of gracious and n.o.ble dames and knights moving through the pleasures and pains of an ideal world. It is also pleasant to listen to a poet from among the people, and to touch the rough hand of an old German farmer, whose most brilliant recollection was of the time when, as a boy, he carried eggs and cheese to one of the courts of old-fas.h.i.+oned chivalry; whose virtue cast in a decadent era had looked at life sternly, yet whose austerity was softened by a homely simplicity through whose grace he grew old, with his heart true to his plain home life and his family, even to the a.s.surance that no drink could be more refres.h.i.+ng than water from the spring on his own farm.

[Decoration]

FOOTNOTE:

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