Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844

“When she had yielded her aid, desire took her to return from out the hill, home; she took leave of the sick woman, (without having any thing touched of the meats and liquors that were offered her,) and the former damsel anew joined her, and brought her back unharmed to the castle. At the gateway the damsel stood still, thanked her highly in her mistress’s name, and drew off from her finger a golden ring, which she presented to the noblewoman with these words, ‘Have this dear pledge in right heedful keeping, and let it not part from you and from your house. They of Alvensleben will flourish so long as they possess this ring. Should it ever leave them, the whole race must become extinct.’ Herewith vanished the damsel.

“It is said that the ring, at this day, is rightly and properly kept in the lineage, and for good assurance deposited at Lubeck. But others, that it was, at the dividing of the house into two branches, diligently parted in two. Others yet, that the one half has been melted, since when it goes ill with that branch: the other half stays with the other branch at Zichtow. The story moreover goes, that the benevolent lady was a married woman. When she upon the morrow told her husband the tale of that had betid her in the night, he would not believe her, until she said, ‘Forsooth, then, an’ ye will not trow me, take only the key of yon room from the table: there lieth, I dare warrant, the ring.’ Which was exactly so. It is marvellous the gifts that men have received of the fairies.”

The most touching by far of the traditions at our disposal for illustrating at once the dependence of the fairies upon man, and their anxiety concerning their souls’ welfare, is one in which the all-important hope which we have said that they sometimes solicit from the grave and authorized lips of priests, appears as floating on the lightest breath of children. Our immediate author is James Grimm, speaking in his German Mythology of the water spirit. The tradition itself is from Sweden, where this mythological   being, the solitary water fairy, bears the name of “The Neck.”

“Two lads were at play by the river side. The Neck sate and touched his harp. The children called to him—

“‘Why sittest thou here, Neck, and playest? Thou wilt not go to heaven.’ Then the Neck began bitterly weeping, flung his harp away, and sank in the deep water. When the boys came home they told their father, who was a priest, what had happened. The father said—

“‘Ye have sinned towards the Neck. Go ye back, and give him promise of salvation.’

“When they returned to the river, the Neck sate upon the shore, mourning and weeping. The children said—

“‘Weep not so, thou Neck. Our father hath said, that thy Redeemer too liveth.’

“Then the Neck took joyfully his harp, and played sweetly until long after sundown.”

“I do not know,” tenderly and profoundly suggests Dr Grimm, “that any where else in our traditions is as significantly expressed how needy of the Christian belief the Heathen are, and how mildly it should approach them.”

III. A few words shall here satisfy the claims of a widely-stretching subject. Is there one order of spirits which, as the Baron Walckenaer has assured us, lavishes on chosen human heads love unattracted, and hate unprovoked? We must look well about us ere fixing the imputation. Spirits, upon the other hand, undoubtedly there are, and those of not a few orders, fairies of one or another description being amongst them, who exert, in the choice of their human favourites, a discrimination challenging no light regard.

A host of traditions, liberally scattered over a field, of which, perhaps, Ireland is one extremity and China the other, now plainly and emphatically declare, and now, after a venturous interpretation, may be understood to point out, simplicity of will and kindness of heart as titles in the human being to the favour of the spirits. At times a brighter beam irradiates such titles, to which holiness, purity, and innocence, are seen to set their seal. We cull a few instances, warning the reader, that, although of our best, he will possibly find them a mere working upwards to the most perfect which we have it in our power to bring before him in the beautiful tale of Maud.

Amongst the searchers who seem to have been roused into activity by the German traditions of the brothers Grimm, Ludwig Bechstein takes distinguished place for the diligence with which he has collected different districts of Germany. Our inquiry shall owe him the two following

TRADITIONS OF THE GRABFELD

No. LVII. The little Cherry-Tree upon Castle Raueneck

“There prevails, concerning the ruins of the old hill-castle Raueneck, a quite similar tradition to that which holds of the like named ruined strength near Baden, in Austria. There lies yet buried here a vast treasure, over which a spirit, debarred from repose, keeps watch, anxiously awaiting deliverance. But who is he that can and shall actually lift this treasure and free the spirit? Upon the wall there grows a cherry seedling that shall one day become a tree; and the tree shall be cut down, and out of it a cradle made. He that, being a Sunday’s child, is rocked in this cradle, will grow up, but only provided that he have kept himself virginally pure and chaste, at some noontide hour set free the spirit, lift the treasure, and become immeasurably rich; so as he shall be able to rebuild Castle Raueneck and all the demolished castles in the neighbourhood round. If the plant wither, or if a storm break it, then must the spirit again wait until once more a cherry stone, brought by a bird to the top of the lofty wall, shoot and put forth leaves, and haply grow to a tree.”

No. LXII. The Hollow Stone

“In the wood near Altenstein there stands a high rock. The inhabitants   of the neighbourhood say that this rock is hollow within, and filled with treasure in great store from the olden time. At certain seasons and hours, it is given to Sunday children to find the rock doors open, or to open them with the lucky flower.”

The singular superstition of spiritual favour fixing itself upon the human child, consecrated, as it were, by the hallowed light upon which the eyes first open, will shortly return upon us in The Fairies’ Sabbath.

Lo! where, from the bountiful hand of the Brothers Grimm, fall two bright dewdrop of tradition upon the pure opening flower of childhood.

GERMAN TRADITIONS

NO. CLIX. The Treasure at Soest

“In the time of the Thirty Years’ war, there was to be seen standing not far from the town of Soest, in Westphalia, an old ruin, of which the tradition ran that there was an iron trunk there, full of money, kept by a black dog and a bewitched maiden. The grandfathers and grandmothers Who are gone, used to tell that a strange nobleman shall one day arrive in the country, deliver the maiden, and open the chest with a fiery key. They said that divers itinerant scholars and exorcists had, within the memory of man, betaken themselves thither to dig, but been in so strange sort received and dismissed, that no one since further had list to the adventure, especially after their publishing that the treasure might be lifted of none who had once taken woman’s milk. It was not long since a little girl from their village had led her few goats to feed about the very spot; one of which straying amongst the ruins, she had followed it. Within, in the castle court, was a damsel who questioned her what she did there: and when she was informed, pointing to a little basket of cherries, further said, ‘It is good; therefore take of that thou see’st before thee, with thy goat and all, and go; and come not again, neither look behind, that a harm befall thee not.’ Upon this the frightened child caught up seven cherries, and made her way in alarm out of the ruins. The cherries turned, in her hand, to money.”

NO. CLX. The Welling Silver

“In February of the year 1605, in the reign of Henry Julius, Duke of Brunswick, at a mile’s distance from Quedlinburg, where it is called at the Dale, it happened that a poor peasant sent his daughter into the next shaw to pick up sticks for fuel. The girl took for this use a larger basket upon her head, and a smaller in her hand; and when she had filled them both and was going home, a mannikin clad all in white came towards her, and asked:—

“‘What art carrying there?’

“‘Gathered sticks,’ the girl made answer, ‘for heating and cooking.’

“‘Empty the wood out,’ said further the little manling, ‘take thy basket and follow me. I shall show thee something that is better and more profitable than thy sticks.’

“He then took her by the hand, and led her back again to a knoll, and showed her a place which might be of two ordinary tables’ breadth of a fair pure silver, being smaller and larger coins of a moderate thickness, with a image stamped like a Virgin Mary, and all round an impress of exceedingly old writing. As the silver welled up, as it were, abundantly out of the ground, the little girl was terrified and drew back, neither would she empty out the sticks from her small hand-basket. Accordingly, the little man in white himself did so, filled the basket with the money, and gave it back to the little damsel with saying, ‘That shall be better for thee than thy sticks.’ She was confounded and took it; but upon the mannikin’s requiring that she should likewise empty out her larger basket and take silver therein, she refused and said—‘That she must carry fuel home too; for there were little children at home who must have a warm room, and there must be wood ready likewise for cooking.’ This contented the manling, who said, ‘Well, then, go; take it all home,’ and thereupon disappeared.

“The girl carried the basket of silver home, and told what had happened to her. The boors now ran flocking with pickaxes and other tools, and would have their share of the treasure, but none of them was able to find the spot where the silver had welled out.

“The Prince of Brunswick had a pound of the coined silver brought him, as did moreover a burgess of Halberstadt, N. Everkan, purchase the like.”

The quick-sighted reader will not easily have missed detecting the sudden effect produced upon the two spirits by the truthful right-mindedness of the two little girls.

Correspondingly, James Grimm, from surveying collectively the Teutonic traditions of bewitched or mysteriously hidden treasure, says—

“To the lifting of the treasure is required silence and innocence. * * * Innocent children’s hands are able to lay hold upon it, as to draw the lot. * * * Who has viciously stained himself cannot approach it.”[13 - Grimm’s German Mythology, p. 544.]

Two short instances more from the copious fraternal collection, and we have done. With a temper of pure childlike antiquity, they express in the persons of the dwarfs—Teutonic approximative, fairies—the sympathy of the spirits with unstained and innocent human manners; and may, if the traditions which exhibit the fairies under a cloud of sin and sorrow should have been felt by the reader as at all grating upon his old love of them, help to soothe and reconcile him by a soft gleam of illumination, here lingering as in a newly revealed Golden Age of his own.

GERMAN TRADITIONS

No. CXLVII. The Dwarfs upon the Tree

“In the summer, the dwarfs often came trooping from the cliffs down into the valley, and joined either with help, or as lookers-on at least, the human inhabitants at their work, especially the mowers, in hay-harvest. They, then and there, seated themselves at their ease and pleasantly, upon the long and thick arm of a maple in the embowering shade. But once there came certain evil-disposed persons, who, in the night, sawed the bough through, so that it held but weakly on to the trunk; and when the unsuspecting creatures, upon the morrow, settled themselves down upon it, the bough cracked in two, the dwarfs tumbled to the ground, were heartily laughed at, fell into violent anger, and cried aloud—

‘O, how is the heaven high and long!
And falsehood waxen on earth so strong!
Here to-day, and for ever away!’

They kept their word, and never again made their appearance in the country.”

No. CXLVIII. The Dwarfs upon the Crag Stone

“It was the wont of the dwarflings to seat themselves upon a great crag stone, and from thence to watch the haymakers; but a few mischievous fellows kindled a fire upon the stone, made it red-hot, and swept away embers and ashes. Morning came, and with it the tiny folk, who burned themselves pitiably. They exclaimed in high anger—

‘O wicked world! O wicked world!’

cried vengeance, and vanished for evermore!”

We have shown,—1. The Anti-christian character imputed by tradition to the fairies. 2. The occasional dependence of the more powerful spirits upon the less powerful human beings; and, 3. The strong affectionate leaning in the will of the spirits towards moral human excellence. Of the ability which, in virtue of this excellence, the human creature possesses to help, Maud must, for the present, be permitted to stand for the   sole, as she is beyond all comparison our best, example.

The book of Ernst Willkomm takes a position in strong contrast to the corresponding works due to the Brothers Grimm, and other great gatherers of legendary lore. He has a personal poetic interest in the tales which they have not. He presents himself as the expositor, not only of his native superstitions, but also, zealously, of the Upper Lusatian manners. Himself cradled amongst the mountains, he has drawn with infinite pains, and by slow degrees, as he best could, from the deep interior life of the people, their jealously withheld credences, and the traditions which are sacredly associated with every nook of their craggy district.

“The tract of country,” says Willkomm in his Preface, “the true Highlands of Upper Lusatia, called by the inhabitants themselves the Upper Country, to which the tales are native, is one very narrowly circumscribed. It amounts to scarcely ten square (German) miles. I have, however, selected it for my undertaking,” he continues, “because it is intimately familiar to me; because the innermost character of the small population who inhabit it is confidentially known to me; because there is hardly a road or a path in the country which, on the darkest night, I could not find. Interesting, romantic, magnificent is the piece of earth which, at the confines of Bohemia, runs over hilly heights and lofty hill, tops on to the high mountain-chain. But still more interesting, I maintain with confidence, is the race of people.”

It may seem strange at first, that the wise and profound explorers whom we have so often had occasion to cite, the brothers Grimm, should have failed to present us with any traditions from a corner of ground around which they have so successfully laboured. We have hinted already at the sufficient reason of the blank. Willkomm tells us, that the rest of the world, which “the cabin’d cribb’d” Lusatian has himself learned to call “o’ th’ outside,” has taken no cognisance of his beautiful hill country. Lusatia has a literature of her own, and no one is acquainted with it. “She had, and partly still has, her own, similar to the Imperial cities, exceeding free and energetic municipal constitution.” But no one cares about it. Celebrated and learned historians, questioned by Willkomm on the subject, have acknowledged their ignorance in regard to the character and laws of its small people. A more cogent reason, however, lies nearer home, in the impenetrable reserve and self-insulation of the mountaineers themselves. Willkomm confesses that their coldness towards strangers is unparalleled; they have no confidence whatever in foreigners; “and let a Lusatian but suspect,” he says, “that you come a-fishing to him, and to listen out his privacies; then may you,” as we may render the Lusatian proverb, “‘Lose yourself before you find his mushroom.’” He will communicate to strangers little of his manners and customs; of his superstitious practices, his sacredly guarded traditions, absolutely nothing. “He is unpliant, self-sequestered, coarse-grained; beyond all conception easy and phlegmatic.”

Every genuine people, however, is rough-handed; and Willkomm proceeds, after an ingenuous description of their defects, to vindicate the natural heart of his brother highlanders. “Let him amongst the gentle,” he proudly exclaims, “who desire to hear for once something novel, something right vigorous, sit down beside me. He need not fear that morals and decency will be cast out of doors. No, no! The people are thoroughly moral and chaste at heart, if they are somewhat coarse in expression;—ay, and tender withal. Their imagination glides as delighted along fragrant threads of gold, as it eagerly descends amongst the powers of darkness, amidst the dance of will-o’-the-wisps and horrible ghost-reels. They are, at once, a blunt, good-hearted, aboriginal stamp of men, with all the advantages and deficiencies appurtenant.”