In seven hundred years the independent life of the Greeks terminated; about a thousand embraces the growth, dominion, and decline of the Roman power; but the German Empire had lasted fifteen hundred years from the fight in the Teutoburg Forest,[1] before it began to emerge from its epic time. So entirely different was the duration of the life of the ancient world to that of the modern; so slow and artificial are our transformations. How rich were the blossoms which Greek life had matured in the five centuries from Homer to Aristotle! How powerful were the changes which the Roman State had undergone, from the rise of the free peasantry on the hills of the Tiber to the subjection of the Italian husbandmen under German landlords! But the Germans worked for fifteen centuries with an intellectual inheritance from the Romans and the East, and are now only in the beginning of a development which we consider as peculiar to the German mind, in contradistinction to the Roman, of the new time, to the ancient. It is indeed no longer an isolated people which has to emerge from barbarism by its own creations; it is a family of nations more painstaking and more enduring, which has risen, at long and laborious intervals, from the ruins of the Roman Empire, and from the intellectual treasures of antiquity: one nation reciprocally acting on the other, under the law of the same faith.
The Romans from free peasants had become farmers, and they were ruined because they could not overcome the social evil of slavery. The German warriors also, in the time of Tacitus, took little pleasure in cultivating their own fields, and were glad to make use of dependents. It was only shortly before the year 1500, that the German cities arrived at the conviction that the labour of freemen is the foundation of prosperity, opulence, and civilisation. But in the country, even after the Thirty Years' War, the mass of the labourers--more than half of the whole German nation--were in a state of servitude, which in many provinces differed little from slavery. It is only in the time of our fathers that the peasant has become an independent man, a free citizen of the State: so slowly has the groundwork of German civilisation and of the modern State been developed.
All earthly progress does not take the straight course which men expect when improvement begins; thus the position of the German husbandman in 1700 was worse in many respects than a hundred years before; nay, even in our time it is not comparatively so good as it was 600 years earlier, in the time of the Hohenstaufen.
The German peasant for centuries lost much that was valuable in order to attain a higher condition; his freedom and elevation to citizenship in our State was effected in an apparently indirect way. At the time of the Carlovingians more than half the peasants were free and armed, and the pith of the popular strength; at the time of Frederick the Great, almost all the country people were under strict bondage,--the beasts of burden of the new State, weak and languishing, without political object or interest in the State. Somewhat of the old weakness still clings to them.
We shall therefore first take a short review of an earlier period, comparing it with the peasant life of the last two centuries.
What the Romans mention of the condition of the German agricultural districts, is only sufficient to give us a glimpse of ancient peasant life. According to their accounts, the Germans were long considered to be a wild warrior race, who lived in transition from a wandering life to an uncertain settlement, and it was seldom inquired how it was possible that such hordes should for centuries carry on a victorious resistance to the disciplined armies of the greatest power on earth. When Cheruskers, Chattens, Bructerers, Batavers, and other people of less geographical note, occasioned terror, not only to single legions, but to large Roman armies, not once, but in continual wars for more than one generation,--when a Markomannen chief disciplined 70,000 infantry and 4000 cavalry after the fashion of legions; when a Roman, after a century of devastating wars between the Rhine and the Elbe, puts before us with great emphasis the powerful masses of the Germans,--we may conclude that single tribes which, with their allies, could sometimes bring into the field more than 100,000 warriors, must have counted a population of hundreds of thousands. And we equally approach to a second conclusion, that such a multitude in a narrowly limited space, surrounded by warlike neighbours, could only exist by means of a simple, perhaps, but regular and extensive cultivation of field products. That the agriculture of the Germans should appear meagre to the Romans, after the garden cultivation of Italy and Gaul, is comprehensible; nevertheless they found corn, millet, wheat, and barley; but the common corn of the country was oats, the meal of which they despised, and rye, which Pliny calls an unpalatable growth of the Alpine country, productive of colic. But in the year 301, the corn which made the German black bread, was introduced as the third article of commerce in the corn bourse of Greece and Asia Minor. And from barley the German brewed his home drink, beer; he also brewed from wheat.
Now we know that in the time of the Romans, most of the German races lived in a condition similar to that in which it appears from records they lived shortly after their great exodus, in the early centuries of the Christian era: sometimes on single farms, but generally in enclosed villages, with boundaries marked out by posts. They had a peculiar method of laying out new village districts, and the Romans found it difficult to understand the mode of farming customary to the country. Probably the dwellers in the marshes near the North Sea had, as Pliny writes, made the first simple dykes against the encroachments of the water; already were their dwellings built on small hillocks, which, in high tides, raised them above the water, and their sheep pastured in the summer on the grass of the new alluvial soil;[2] but further from the coast the peasant dwelt in his blockhouse, or within mud walls, which he then loved to whitewash. Herds of swine lay in the shadows of the woods,[3] horses and cattle grazed on the village meadows, and long-woolled sheep on the dry declivities of the hills. Large flocks of geese furnished down for soft pillows; the women wove linen on a simple loom, and dyed it with native plants, the madder and the blue woad; and made coats and mantles of skins, which had already borders of finer fur introduced from foreign parts. Well-trod commercial roads crossed the territory from the Rhine to the Vistula in every direction. The foreign trader, who brought articles of luxury and the gold coins of Rome in his wagon to the house of the countryman, exchanged them with him for the highly-prized feathers of the goose, smoked hams, and sausages, the horns of the ure ox and antlers of the stag, fur skins, and even articles of toilet, such as the blonde hair of slaves, and a fine pomade to colour the hair. He bought German carrots, which had been ordered as a delicacy by his Emperor Tiberius; he beheld with astonishment in the garden of his German host, gigantic radishes, and related to his country-people that a German had shown him honeycombs eight feet long.
The warlike householder, it is true, held his weapons in higher esteem than his plough, not because agriculture was unimportant or despised, but because in the free classes there was already an aristocratic development. For, although the warrior did not employ himself in any field labour, he insisted upon his household cultivating his ground, and his bondmen had to pay a tribute in corn and cattle. The bondman dwelt with his wife and child near his master in special huts, which were erected on the land that was allotted to him for cultivation. Freemen were not only associated in communities, but several races were joined in one confederacy, being by the old constitution knit together by religious memories and public worship. The boundaries of the province were marked out, like those of the village, by casts of the holy hammer, and consecrated by processions of divine cars. Notwithstanding the numerous feuds of individual tribes, there were many points of union which served to reconcile and keep them together,--blood relationship and marriage alliances, similitude in customs and privileges, and, above all, the feeling of the same origin, the same language, and those pious rites which keep alive the memory of ancient communion.
Although the German of Tacitus appears to us as a fierce warrior, who, clothed in skins, watched with spear and wooden shield over the abatis which guarded his village against the assaults of enemies; yet this same German is shown, by the results of new researches, to have been a householder and landlord. He looked with satisfaction on the great brewer's copper which had been wrought by his neighbour, the skilful smith; or he stood in coloured linen smock-frock before the laden harvest wagon, on which his boy was throwing the last sheaf of rye, and his daughter placing the harvest wreath with pious ejaculations.
The German is incomprehensible to us, when, according to the Roman, he worshipped Mercury as the highest god; but we can realise the figure of the Asengott Woden, when we see the connection, of the wild hunter of our traditions and the sleeping Emperor of Kyffhäuser, with German antiquity. Now, we know how lovingly and actively the gods and spirits hovered round the hearths, farms, fields, rivers, and woods of our forefathers. From this tendency also the old Chatte or Hermundure has been transformed into a Hessian or Thuringian householder, who in the twilight looks wistfully up to his rooftree, on which the little household spirit loves to sit, and who, when the storm rages, carefully covers the window-openings, in order that a spectral horse's head from the train of the wild god who rides on the blast may not look into his hall.
Even from the productions of the Germans in that century that were most full of heart and soul, their songs, which no careful hand transcribed on parchment, we may draw some conclusions. Their oldest kind of poetry is not entirely unknown to us,--the native epic verse, with its alliterations--and in some of the popular songs and proverbs which have been preserved, we still find the ancient love of contests of wit and of enigmas, with which a troubadour delighted his hearers by the hearth of the Saxon chief.
After the great national exodus, written records begin slowly to appear in Germany. They came, together with that irresistible power which changed so much of the whole spirit of the German people,--with Christianity. However energetically religion turned the mind into new paths, and however fearful was the destruction occasioned by popular tumults at that period of immigration, the changes in the Germans arising from both sources were not sufficient to shatter everything ancient into ruins. We are too apt to consider the national exodus as a chaotic process of destruction. It is true that it drove from their homes many of the most powerful German nationalities that were located in and beyond East Germany, and the depopulated domiciles were filled with the Sclavonians who followed. The Bavarians migrated from Bohemia to the Danube; the Suevi, Allemanni, and Burgundians, southwards to their present localities. The names of old nationalities have disappeared, and new ones have spread themselves far across the Rhine. But nearly half the Germany which was known to the Romans--the wide territory from the North Sea to the Thuringian woods and the Rhone, from the Saal to near the Rhine--retains, on the whole, its old inhabitants; for the Thuringians, the Chattens, and indeed most of the races of Lower Saxony, only came in partial swarms; they probably greatly diminished in marching through foreign lands, and by emigrations of their kinsmen; they were also, as for example the Thuringians, frequently intermingled with foreign hordes, who settled among them. But the nucleus of the old inhabitants remained through all fluctuations, and maintained their own old home traditions, peculiarities of speech, customs, and laws.
About the year 600 the oldest law books and records in the new Franconia, afford us the richest insight into the life of the German countryman. Each had a right to a holding, generally of 30 morgans, on the common land, the morgan being decided according to the nature of the soil. On each holding there was a yard fenced round, closed by a gate, within which was the dwelling-house with stables and barn, and by the side of it a garden; and in the southwest of Germany frequently a vineyard. These homesteads formed villages divided by lanes; it was only in part of Lower Saxony that the inhabitants of the marsh and hilly country lived in separate farms, in the midst of their holdings. But amongst most Germans the holding is not a connected tract of land. The collective arable land of the village was divided into three portions--winter, summer, and fallow fields; each of these fields, according to soil and situation, again into small parcels; and in each of these parcels in every field each holder had his share. Thus the arable land of every holding consisted of a number of square acres which, lying dispersed through the three principal divisions of the village district, gave, as far as possible, an equal measure of land in each. Besides this, a share of the pastures, meadows, and wood of the community belonged to the holding; for round the arable land lay the meadow land of the community, and its woods, in which were the treasured acorns. Already the boundaries were carefully marked, and on the boundary hills boys received blows on their cheeks and had their ears pulled, and already was it called an old custom to set up a small bundle of straw as a warning on a forbidden footway. Already we find the property not unfrequently divided, where the vassals dwell in the house and farm, the grades of their vassalage and their burdens being various. The households of freemen also contained bondservants, who differed little from Roman slaves; only in the service of God could they be equal with the free; they shared in all the holy usages of the Church; they could become priests and perform marriages with the permission of their masters, but the master had a right over their life.
Among the farms of freemen and vassals might be found the farm of a larger landed proprietor, who had a manor house with a hall, and a great number of huts for domestics and labourers. For as yet, artisans, wheelwrights, potters, armourers, and goldsmiths were most of them bondmen; as the number of markets and cities were small, their influence in the country was still unimportant. All kinds of grain were cultivated in the fields, which are now used in our succession of crops, and in the gardens, almost all the vegetables of our markets, also gherkins, pumpkins, and melons; the laws were vigilant for the protection of the orchards. The clergy brought from Italy costly grafts, and peaches and apricots were to be found in the gardens of the wealthy. Already the old Bavarian house began to appear, formed of beams, with galleries outside, and its flat projecting roof; and it may be assumed also, that the old Saxon house with its heathen horses' heads on the gable ends, its thatched roof over the porch, its hearth, sleeping cells, and cattle stalls, spread widely over the country, and that the Thuringians, even then, as in a century later, lived in the unfloored hall, in the background of which a raised daïs--the most distinguished part of the house--separated from the hall the women's apartments and the sleeping-rooms. Dwellings were seldom without a bathhouse; for their winter work the women descended into their underground chamber, which had already astonished the Romans, where stood the loom; the places for the mistresses and servants were separated. In the court-yard fluttered numerous poultry, amongst them swans and even cranes, which, up to the Thirty Years' War, were treasured as masters of the German poultry yard. The greatest pleasure of the countryman was the training of his horse, and the steeds which were used in war were of great value. They pastured with their feet hobbled; any one was severely punished who stole them from their pasture; the impositions of horse dealers also were well known, and the laws endeavoured to afford protection against them. All the South Germans fastened bells round the necks of their cattle, and the Franconians round the swine in the woods.
Every means of ascertaining the relative number of bond and freemen in the time of Charles V. is deficient, even in that part of the country which had for a long time been won over to Christianity; yet we see distinctly that the whole strength of the nation lay in the masses of free yeomen. But even in his time, larger landed proprietors, tyrannical officials, and the not less domineering Church, eagerly endeavoured to diminish the number of the free by obtruding upon them their protection, and thus placing them under a gentle servitude. The position of the free peasant must have been frequently insupportable; the burdens laid upon him by the monarchy were very great, such as the tithes, the military service, and the supply of horses and vehicles for the journeys of the king and his officials. There was no law to protect him against the powerful, and he was especially tormented by robber hordes and the violence of his neighbours. Therefore he found safety by giving up his freedom, surrendering his house and farm into the hands of a powerful noble, and receiving it back again from him. Then he delivered to his new master as a symbol of his service, a fowl from his farm yard, and a portion of the produce of his field or of his labour as a yearly tax. In return for this, his new master undertook to defend him, and to perform his military service for him by means of his own followers.
Thus began the diminution of the national strength of Germany, the oppression of the peasants, the deterioration of the infantry, and the origin of the feudal lords, and of their vassal-followers, from which arose in the next century the higher and lower German nobility. Every internal war, every invasion of foreign enemies,--of Normans, of Hungarians, or of Sclaves,--drove numerous freemen into servitude, and without ceasing did the Church work to recommend itself or its saints as feudal lords to repentant sinners.[4]
Yet about the year 1000, under the great Saxon emperors, the free peasant had still some consciousness of strength. The bondman, indeed, was still under severe oppression; he was slightly esteemed, and obliged to give outward proof of the difference between himself and the freeman, by bad dress and short hair. The free peasant then wore the long linen or cloth dress of a similar cut to the Emperor himself; with his sword by his side he went to the assembly under the tree, or to the judgment stone of his village. And if he descended from four free ancestors, and possessed three free hides, he was, according to Saxon law, higher in rank than some of the noble courtiers who had serf blood in their veins, and whoever injured him had to make atonement as to one of princely blood. It was then he began to cultivate his fields more carefully; it appears to have been about this time that the practice arose of ploughing a second time before sowing the summer seed. In the neighbourhood of rich cloisters, fine garden-culture progressed, vineyards were carefully cultivated, and in the low countries of the Rhine, in Holland and Flanders, there was a husbandry of moor and marsh grounds, which in the next century was carried by numerous colonists of these races, into the Elbe country, and far into the east.
The peasant in the time of Otto the Great, had become a good Christian, but the old customs of the heathen faith still surrounded him in his house and fields, his phantasy filled nature, beasts, and plants with warm life. Whatever flew or bounded over his fields, whether hare, wolf, fox, or raven, were to him familiar forms, to whose character and fate he gave a human turn, and of whom with cheerful spirit he used to sing in heroic terms, or tell beautiful tales. In his house were numerous trained birds; and those were valued the highest which could comport themselves most like men. The starling repeated in a comic way the paternoster; the jackdaw welcomed him on his return home; and he rejoiced in the dance of the trained bear. He loved his cattle with all his heart, he honoured his horses, oxen, cows, and dogs with the names of the ancient gods, to whom he still continued to attach ideas of dignity and sanctity. This craving for familiar intercourse with all that surrounded him was the peculiar characteristic of the German peasant in the olden time. This great love of beasts, tame birds, dogs and horses continued long, as late as Luther's time, a few years before the great peasant war. A true-hearted peasant having in the fullness of his joy kissed his decorated foal upon the neck, a lurking monk who happened to see it, cited him before the ecclesiastical court, and inflicted a heavy fine upon him, because it was unseemly. On this account Karsthans clenched his fists at the priests.[5] In the eleventh century, the countryman still sang by his hearth the stirring heroic songs, the subject-matter of which is in part older than the great exodus,--those of Siegfried and the Virgin of Battle Brunhild, of the treachery of the Burgundian King, Gunthar; of the struggle of the strong Walthar with Hagen, and of the downfall of the Nibelungen. Though his language was clumsy in writing, it flowed from his lips solemn and sonorous, with full terminations and rich in alternations of the vowels. Still had the solemnly spoken word in prayer, in forms of law, and in invocations, a mysterious power of magic effect: not only is the meaning of the speech, but also its sound full of significance. A wise saw was the source of great good fortune to him who possessed it; it could be bought and sold, and the buyer could return it again if it was useless to him.
About the beginning of the twelfth century there was a change in the life and position of the peasant. The disquiets and passions of the Crusades reached him also by degrees. To the serf, who lived in an insecure possession of his hut, from which the landed proprietor could eject him and his children, it was very attractive to obtain, by a sign affixed to his shoulder by the hand of a priest, freedom for himself, exemption from rent and other burdens, and the protection of the Church for his family left at home. From this the Lord of the Manor was himself in danger of losing his husbandmen, and becoming a beggar by the departure of his serfs; in order therefore to avert this danger bondmen had often the inheritance of their possessions given to them, and greater personal freedom, thus the position of serfs became more favourable. Besides this, the distinction between the old freemen and bondmen, both in the agricultural districts and the cities, was obliterated by the new societies of citizens and officials. In the cities bond and free-men were under the same law; in the palaces of princes, freemen claimed the same privileges which were originally for the advantage of the vassal retinue of territorial lords, and both bond and free-men bore, as serving men, the knightly shield.
We can obtain an insight into the spirit of the country-people of this period, and many details of their life. Since the middle of the twelfth century, the manuscripts of the Hohenstaufen time have handed down to us many invaluable features of the life of the lower orders. We discover, with astonishment, from these sources, that the countryman of that time formed a portion of the national strength, very different from what he did some centuries later. The thriving peasant lived on his farm; the young people gambolled about, blythesome and fond of enjoyment, on the village green and in the lanes; the countryman passed through life in the calm consciousness of strength, the preserver of old customs, in contradistinction to the nobleman, with his new-fangled modes, who adorned himself with foreign discourse and language, and with great pretentions set up distinguished court usages in opposition to country manners. Great was the pleasure of the country people in the awakening of nature: impatiently did the maidens await the breaking forth of the first catkins on the willow and hazel; they look for the leaves that burst from the buds, and search the ground for the first flowers. The earliest summer game is with the ball, in the village streets or on the tender grass of the green,--it is thrown by old and young, men and women. Whoever has a coloured feather ball to throw sends it with a greeting to her he loves. The agile movements, the powerful throw, the short cheer to friends and opponents, are the pleasures both of players and spectators. When sunny May comes, then the maidens get their holiday attire from the press, and twine wreaths for their own hair and that of their friends. Thus they go, crowned with garlands and adorned with ribbons, the hand-glass as an ornament by their sides, with their playfellows to the green; full a hundred maidens and women are there assembled for the dance. Thither also hasten the men, smart also is their dress, the waistcoat trimmed with coloured buttons, perhaps even with bells, which for a long time had been the most choice attire of persons of distinction; there is no want of silk, nor in winter of fur trimmings. The belt is well inlaid with shining metal, the coat of mail is quilted in the dress, and the point of the sword, in walking, clinks against the heel. The proud youths are defiant, take great pleasure in fight, and are jealous of their own importance. Vehement is the energy displayed in the great dances, they are venturesome in their springs, jubilant in their joy; everywhere there is the poetry of enjoyment of the senses. The chorus of bystanders sing loudly to the dance, and the maidens join softly in the melody. Still greater becomes our astonishment when we examine closer the rhythm and words of these old national dances, there is a grace not only in the language but in its social relation, which reminds us much more of the ancient world than of the feelings of our country people. Introductory strophes, which extol in countless variations the advent of spring, are followed by others which have little coherence, and are, as it were, improvised, like the schnader hüpflen, which is still retained in Upper Germany among the popular dances. The subject is often a dispute between mother and daughter, the daughter dressing herself for the festivity, the mother wishing to keep her back from the dance; or it is the praise of a beautiful maiden, or droll enumerations of dancing couples; often the text conveys attacks upon opposite parties amongst the dancers, who are depicted and turned into ridicule. Parties are easily formed amongst the dancers, the opponents are challenged in caustic verses; the glory of the young lad is not to put up with any slight, and to be the most vigorous dancer, cheeriest singer, and the best fighter. The dances are followed by feasting, with loud and boisterous merriment. The winter brings new pleasures; the men amuse themselves with dice, and with sledging on the ice, and the people assemble in a large room for the dance. Then stools and tables are carried out; the music consists of two violins; the conductor begins the melody, and the head dancer leads off. The rondes and other dances are various in character; more antique and popular is the measure and text of the chain dance in the old national style of two parallel rows; the winter dances are more artistic and modish. For in the song dances, which we may consider as the beautified copy of the old rhythm and text, the courtly law of triplets in the strophes is everywhere followed; one perceives in them the imitation of Romanesque knightly customs. Among the different kinds of dances may be mentioned the Sclave Reidawac. The noble dances and drinks with the peasants in these village diversions, though with the pride of more refined manners; but however much he may be inclined to ridicule those around him, he fears them, not only their fists and weapons, but also the strokes of their tongues. The long-haired and curly peasant offers the goblet to the Junker, and snatches it back as he attempts to grasp it, places it then according to court custom before drinking, on his head, and dances through the room, then the knight rejoices if the goblet falls from the lout's head and is spilt over him; but the knight has no scruple in making use of contemptuous oaths, when the indignant village youths call him to account for having shown too much attention to their wives and sweethearts.
Such is the aspect of village life given us in the songs of Neidhart von Reuenthal, the most witty and humorous songster of the thirteenth century. All his poetry dwells on the joys and sufferings of the peasantry, and the greater part of his life was spent amongst them. He has the complete self-dependence of a refined and cultivated man, but in spite of that, he had not always the advantage over the country people. A peasant youth, Engelhard, occasioned him the greatest sorrow of his life. It appears that he had made his love Friderun, a peasant girl, unfaithful to him; the thorn remained in the heart of the knight as long as he lived; but afterwards, also, in his courtship of the village maidens, the nobleman had much to fear from the wooing of the young peasants, and was frequently tormented by bitter jealousy.
This connection of the knight, Neidhart, and the peasantry was no exception in the beginning of the thirteenth century; for though in the period that immediately followed, the pride of the nobles, with respect to the citizen and peasant, quickly hardened into an exclusive class feeling, yet in 1300, when knightly dignity was in great request, and pride in noble quarterings had risen high, at least in Swabia, Bavaria, and Upper Austria, still the knight married the daughter of the rich peasant, and gave him his daughter in marriage; and the rich peasant's son became vassal and knight, with one knightly shield.[6] Even in the sixteenth century this state of things continued in some provinces--for example, in the Isle of Rügen. After the Reformation also, the wealthy peasants put themselves on an equality with the nobles. They lived, as a nobleman of that time relates, arrogantly and contentiously, and these lamentable marriages were not unfrequent.
Some score of years after Neidhart, in the same districts of Germany, the idealism of knighthood, its courtly manners and refined form, were lost; a large portion of the nobles had become robbers and highwaymen. The ceaseless and sorrowful complaints of the better sort of the nobility testify how bad were the doings of the greater part. In comparison with such fellows, in spite of their privileges, the peasant might well regard his own life with pride. It was still with a sense of wealth and power that he entered on the beginning of a hard period. At this time a travelling singer, Wernher, the Gardener, gave a portraiture of the life of the peasantry, particularly rich in characteristic features--a picture of the times of the highest value, and a poem of great beauty. Unfortunately only an abstract of the contents can be given here; but even in extracts, his narrative gives a surprising insight into the life of the country people in 1240. The poem, "Helmbrecht," is edited by Moriz Haupt, according to the manuscripts in volume iv. of the Zeit periodical on German antiquity.
"The old former, Helmbrecht--in Bavaria, not far from the Austrian frontier--had a son. The blonde locks of the young Helmbrecht hung upon his shoulder; he confined them in a beautiful silk cap, embroidered with doves, parrots, and many figures. This cap had been embroidered by a nun who had run away from her cell on account of an amour, as happens to so many. From her, Helmbrecht's sister, Gotelind, learned to embroider and sew; the maiden and her mother deserved well of the nun, for they gave her a cow, much cheese, and eggs. The mother and sister attired the boy in fine linen, a doublet of mail and a sword, with a pouch and mantle, and a beautiful surcoat of blue cloth, adorned with gold, silver, and crystal buttons, which shone bright when he went to the dances; the seams were trimmed with bells, and whenever he bounded about in the dance, they tinkled in the ears of the women.
"When the proud youth was thus attired he said to his father, 'Now I will go to court; I pray you, dear father, give me somewhat to help thereto.' The father answered, 'I could easily buy you a swift steed that would leap hedge and ditch; but, dear son, desist from your journey to court. Its usages are difficult for him who has not been accustomed to it from his youth. Take the plough and cultivate the farm with me, thus will you live and die in honour. See how I live--true, honourable and upright. I give my tenths every year, and have never experienced hatred or envy throughout my life. Farmer Ruprecht will give you his daughter in marriage, and with her many sheep and pigs, and ten cows. At court you will have a hard life, and be deprived of all affection; there you will be the scorn of the real courtiers,--in vain will you endeavour to be like them; and, on the other hand, you will incur the hatred of the peasants, who will delight in revenging on you what they have lost by the noble robbers.' But the son replied, 'Silence, dear father. Never shall your sacks graze my shoulders; never will I load your waggon with dung; that would ill suit my beautiful coat and embroidered cap; and I will not be encumbered with a wife. Shall I drag on three years with a foal or an ox, when I may every day have my booty? I will help myself to strangers' cattle and drag the peasants by their hair through the hedges. Hasten, father, I will not remain with you any longer.' Then the father bought a steed, and said, 'Alas, how this is thrown away!' But the youth shook his head, looked at himself and exclaimed, 'I could bite through a stone so wild is my courage; I could even eat iron. I will gallop over the fields, without care for my life, in defiance of all the world.' On parting from him his father said, 'I cannot keep you--I give you up; but once more I warn you, beautiful youth, take care of your cap with the silken birds, and guard your long locks. You go amongst those whom men curse, and who live upon the wrongs of the people. I dreamt I saw you groping about on a staff, with your eyes out; and again I dreamt I saw you standing on a tree, your feet fall a fathom and a half from the grass. A raven and a crow sat on a branch over your head, your curly hair was entangled; on the right hand the raven combed it, and on the left the crow parted it. I repent me that I have reared you.' But the son exclaimed, 'Never will I give up my will as long as I live. God protect you, father, mother and children.'
"So he trotted off and rode up to a castle, whose lord lived by fighting, and was glad to retain any who would serve him as a trooper. There the lad became one of the retainers, and soon was the most nimble of robbers. No plunder was too small for him, and none too great; he took horses and cattle, he took mantles and coats, what others left he crammed into his sack. The first year everything went according to his wishes; his little vessel sailed with favourable winds. Then he began to think of home; he got leave of absence from the court, and rode to his father's house. All flocked together--man and maid-servant did not say, 'Welcome, Helmbrecht;' they were advised not to do so. But they said, 'Young gentleman, God give you welcome!' He answered, 'Kindeken, ik yunsch üch ein gud leven'[7] (Children, I wish you a good life). His sister ran and embraced him; then he spoke to her, 'Gratia vestra!' The old people followed, and oft embraced him; then he called to his father, 'Dieu vous salut!' and to his mother he spoke in Bohemian, 'Dobraybra!' The father and mother looked at one another, and the latter said to her husband, 'Goodman, are we not out of our senses? it is not our child; it is a Bohemian or a Wend.' The father exclaimed, 'It is a foreigner; he is not my son whom I commended to God, however like he may appear to him.' And his sister Gotelind said, 'He is not your son, he spoke Latin to me; he must truly be a priest.' And the servant, 'From what I have seen of him he must belong to Saxony or Brabant; he said ik and Kindeken; he must, undoubtedly, be a Saxon.'
"Then the master of the house spoke in homely phrase, 'Are you my son Helmbrecht? Show your respect for your mother and me by speaking a word of German, and I myself will rub down your horse--I, and not my servant.' 'Ei wat segget ihr Gebureken? min parit,[8] minen klaren Lif soll kein bureumaun nimmer angripen' (What are you boors saying? my steed and my fine body shall be touched by no boors). Then the master of the house, quite horrified, replied, 'Are you Helmbrecht, my son? In that case I will this very night boil one hen and roast another; but if you are a stranger--a Bohemian or a Wend--you may go to the winds. If you are of Saxony or Brabant, you must take your repast with you; from me you will receive nothing, though the night should last a whole year. For a Junker, such as you, I have no meal or wine; you must seek that from the nobles.'
"Now it had waxed late, and there was no host in the neighbourhood who would have received the youth, so, having weighed the matter, he said, 'Truly I am your son, I am Helmbrecht; once I was your son and servant.' The father answered 'You are not him.' 'But I am so.' 'Tell me the four names of my oxen.' Then the son mentioned the four names, 'Auer, Räme, Erke, Sonne. I have often flourished my switch over them; they are the best oxen in the world; will you recognise me now? Let the door be opened to me.' The father cried out, 'Gate and door, chamber and cupboard, shall all be opened to you now.'
"Thus the son was well received, and had a soft bed prepared for him by his sister and mother, and the latter called out to her daughter, 'Run, fetch a bolster and a soft cushion.' That was put under his arm and laid near the warm stove, and he waited in comfort till the meal was prepared. It was a supper for a lord; finely minced vegetables with good meat, a fat goose as large as a bustard, roasted on the spit, roasted and boiled fowls. And the father said, 'If I had wine it should be drunk to-day; but drink, dear son, of the best spring that ever flowed out of the earth.'
"The young Helmbrecht then unpacked his presents for his father, a whetstone, a scythe, and an axe, the best peasant-treasures in the world; for his mother, a fur cloak, which he had stolen from a priest; to his sister, Gotelind, a silk sash and gold lace, which would have better suited a lady of distinction,--he had taken it from a pedlar. Then he said, 'I must sleep, I have ridden far, and rest is needful for me to night.' He slept till late the next day in the bed over which his sister Gotelind had spread a newly washed shirt, for a sheet was unknown there.
"So the son abode with his father.
"After a time the father inquired of his son what were the court customs where he had been living. 'I also,' he said, 'went once when I was a boy, with cheese and eggs to court. The knights were then very different from now, courteous, and with good manners; they occupied themselves with knightly games, they danced and sang with the ladies; when the musician came with his fiddle, the ladies stood up, the knights advanced to them, took them elegantly by the hand, and danced featly; when that was over, one of them read out of a book about one Ernst;[9] all was carried on then with cheerful familiarity. Some shot at a mark with bow and arrows, others went out hunting and deer shooting; the worst of them would now be the best. For now those are esteemed who are liars and eaves-droppers, and truth and honour are changed for falsehood; the old tournaments are no longer the custom, others are in vogue instead of them. Formerly one heard them call out in the knightly games "Hurrah, knight, be joyful!" There now only resounds through the air, "Hunt knight, hunt; stab, strike, and mutilate this one, cut off this man's foot for me, and the hands of that one, and hang the other for me, or catch this rich man who will pay us a hundred pounds." I think, therefore, things were better formerly than now. Relate to me, my son, more of the new manners.'
"'That I will. Drinking is now the court fashion. Gentlemen exclaim "Drink, drink; if you drink this, I will drink that." They no longer sit with the ladies, but at their wine. Believe me, the old mode of life which is lived by such as you, is now abjured both by man and woman. Excommunication and outlawry are now held in derision.'
"'Son,' said the father, 'have nothing to do with court usages, they are bitter and sour. I had much rather be a peasant than a poor courtling, who must always ride for his living, and take care that his enemies do not catch, mutilate, and hang him.'
"'Father,' said the young man, 'I thank you, but it is more than a week that I have drank no wine; since then I have taken in my girdle by three holes. I must capture some cattle before my buckle will return to its former place. A rich man has done me a great injury. I saw him once riding over the standing crops of my godfather the knight; he shall pay dear for it. I shall trot off his cattle, sheep, and swine, because he has trampled over the fields of my dear godfather. I know another rich man who has also grievously injured me; he eat bread with his tartlets; by my life I will revenge that. I know yet another rich man who has occasioned me more annoyance than almost any other; I will not forgive it him, even if a bishop should intercede for him, for once when he was sitting at table he most improperly dropped his girdle. If I can seize what is called his, it shall help me to a Christmas dress. There is yet another simple fool who was unseemly enough to blow the froth of his beer into a goblet. If I do not revenge that, I will never gird sword to my side, nor be worthy of a wife. You shall soon hear of Helmbrecht.'
"The father answered 'Alack! Tell me who are the companions who taught you to rob a rich man if he eats pastry and bread together.' Then the son named his ten companions; 'Lämmerschling (lamb devourer), Schluckdenwidder (ram swallower), Höllensack (hell sack), Ruttelshrein (shake press), Kühfrass (cow destroyer), Knickekelch (goblet jerker), Wolfsgaumen (wolf's jaw), Wolfsrüssel (wolf's snout), and Wolfsdarm (wolf's gut)[10]--the last name was given by the noble Duchess of Nonarra Narreia--these are my schoolmasters.'
"The father said, 'And how do they name you?'
"I am called Schlingdengau. I am not the delight of the peasants; their children are obliged to eat porridge made with water; what the peasants have is mine; I gouge the eyes of one, I hack the back of another, I tie this one down on an ant-hill, and another I hang by his legs to a willow.'
"The father broke forth. 'Son, however violent those may be whom you have named and extolled, yet I hope, if there is a righteous God, the day will come when the hangman may seize them, and throw them off from his ladder.'
"'Father, I have often defended your geese and fowls, your cattle and fodder, from my associates, I will do it no more. You speak too much against the honour of my excellent companions. I had wished to make your daughter Gotelind the wife of my friend Lämmerschling; she would have led a pleasant life with him; but that is over now, you have spoken too coarsely against us.' He took his sister Gotelind aside, and said to her secretly, 'When my companion, Lämmerschling, first asked me about you, I said to him; you will get on well with her; if you take her do not fear that you will hang long upon the tree, she will take you down with her own hands and carry you to the grave on the cross-road, and she will fumigate your bones with frankincense and myrrh for a whole year. And if you have the good fortune to be only blinded, she will lead you by the hand along the highways and roads through all countries; if your foot is cut off, she will carry your crutches every morning to your bed; and if you lose your hand, she will cut your bread and meat as long as you live. Then said Lämmerschling to me, "I have three sacks, heavy as lead, full of fine linen, dresses, kirtles, and costly jewels, with scarlet cloth and furs. I have concealed them in a neighbouring cave, and will give them to her for a dowry." All this, Gotelind, you have lost, owing to your father; now give your hand to a peasant, with whom you may dig turnips, and at night lie on the heart of an ignoble boor. Go to your father, for mine he is not; I am sure that a courtier has been my father, from him I have my high spirit.'
"The foolish sister answered, 'Dear brother Schlingdengau, persuade your companion to marry me, I will leave father, mother, and relations.' The parents were unaware of the conversation held secretly by the brother and sister. The brother said, 'I will send a messenger to you, whom you are to follow; hold yourself in readiness. God protect you, I go from hence; the host here is as little to me as I to him. Mother, God bless you.' So he went on his old way, and told his companion his sister's wish. He kissed his hands for joy, and made obeisance to the wind that blew from Gotelind.
"Many widows and orphans were robbed of their property when the hero Lämmerschling and his wife Gotelind sat at their marriage feast. Young men actively conveyed in waggons and on horses stolen food and drink to the house of Lämmerschling's father. When Gotelind came, the bridegroom met her, and received her with, 'Welcome, dame Gotelind.' 'God reward you, Herr Lämmerschling.' So they gave each other a friendly greeting. And an old man, wise of speech, rose, and placing both in the circle, asked three times of the man and the maiden, 'Will you take each other in marriage, yea or nay?' So they were united. All sang the bridal song, and the bridegroom trod on the foot of the bride.[11] Then was the marriage feast prepared. It was wonderful how the food disappeared before the youths, as if a wind blew it from the table; they eat incessantly of everything that was brought from the kitchen by the servants, and there remained nothing but bare bones for the dogs. It is said that any one who eats so immoderately approaches his end.[12] Gotelind began to shudder and to exclaim, 'Woe to us! Some misfortune approaches; my heart is so heavy! Woe is me that I have abandoned my father and mother; whoever desires too much, will gain little; this greediness leads to the abyss of hell.'
"They had sat awhile after their meal, and the musicians had received their gifts from the bride and bridegroom, when a magistrate appeared with five men. The struggle was short; the magistrate with his five, was victorious over the ten; for a real thief, however bold he may be, and willing to confront a whole army, is defenceless against the hangman. The robbers slipped into the stove and under the benches, and he who would not have fled before four, was now by the hangman's servant alone dragged out by the hair. Gotelind lost her bridal dress, and was found behind a hedge terrified, stripped, and degraded. The skins of the cattle which the thieves had stolen were bound round their necks, as the perquisite of the magistrate. The bridegroom, in honour of the day carried only two, the others more. The magistrate could sooner have been bribed to spare a wild wolf than these robbers. Nine were hung by the hangman; the life of the tenth was allowed to the hangman as his right, and this tenth was Schlingdengau Helmbrecht; the hangman revenged the father, by putting out his eyes, and the mother, by cutting off a hand and a foot. Thus the blind Helmbrecht was led with the help of a staff, by a servant, home to his father's house.
"Hear how his father greeted him: 'Dieu salue, monsieur Blindman, go from hence, monsieur Blindman; if you delay, I will have you driven away by my servant; away with you from the door!'
"'Sir, I am your child.'
"'Is the boy become blind, who called himself Schlingdengau? Now do you not fear the threats of the hangman or all the magistrates in the world! Heigh! how you 'ate iron' when you rode off on the steed for which I gave my cattle. Begone, and never return again!'
"Again the blind man spoke. 'If you will not recognise me as your child, at least allow a miserable man to crawl into your house, as you do the poor sick; the country people hate me; I cannot save myself if you are ungracious to me.'