Flaxius

While swimming onwards down the stream of Time, it chanced all in the merry, golden hours of spring, when rivulets dance, and birds are on the wing:

‘And a starry silver glory
Is at daybreak over all,
When the dews, like gems in story
On the queen like blossoms fall,’

that Flaxius, when in Innspruck, sat one afternoon in a shady beer-garden by the rushing river, listening to two nightingales in a cage, which were singing duets or holding talk in nightingale tongue, with two wild ones outside. The latter were complaining bitterly of the hard time they had of it to pick up a living; while the imprisoned ones bewailed that their engagements to sing to select audiences did not allow them the least liberty, though they lived in luxury, being taken in whenever it rained and fed on ants’ eggs, ad libitum; which are the same to nightingales as Whitby oysters, caviare and pâté aux truffes are to us.

Flaxius observed that a broad-shouldered, big-bearded, tall, and knightly man, who seemed to be half soldier and as much minstrel, sitting at the next table, also listened to the bird-songs with a smile, as if he partly understood them. On a closer examination, Flaxius recognised in him the Ritter Hans Breitmann, whom he had met in earlier times,—the same Breitmann, having in a small and very quiet way a humble little sixpenny immortality, just as the odd fish in nature have been preserved from the earliest types, while better kinds, which shone more brightly in their day, have vanished.

The sage bowed to the minstrel, the Breitmann waved his beer-mug to Flaxius, and the two drank politely, one to the other, and to old times.

‘You seem to understand bird-language,’ remarked the other.

‘Nun, yoost a liddle,’ replied the bard, who spoke all tongues in a curious patois. ‘Enough to get hints or dips for songs. All poets know someding of it, most of dem a crate deal petter as I. Yoost so de Gypsy Zigeuners play bird-songs—de whole orchestra—nefer twice alike, ach ja! alles sehr schön, peaudiful!’

‘Could you sing me a song learned from the nightingales?’ asked Flaxius.

‘Cerdainly,’ replied Breitmann, ‘mit bleasure,’ and, draining off his beer, he unslung the lute from his back, tuned two chords, hemmed, and then sang of—

Long, Long Ago

‘When de nightingale was singing,
All in de cool of eve,
To de pleasant breeze,
And de birds were flingin’
Perfume from de trees,
Hei da, ri dé!
Hei da, ri do!

I sat by my love so fair and gay,
As we had sat for many a day,
And ach! wir warn so frô,
Loving—as dere we lay!

Dame Nightingale, de wood bird small,
Sang to us a melody,
How love outliveth all
Whate’er on earth may pe; Hei da, ri dé!
Hei da, ri do!
“Love passeth all both great and small,
So now sing afder me!”

We sang old songs togedder,
Songs of de merry time,
And light ash any fedder,
We maked full many a Rhyme,
Hei da, ri dé!
Hei da, ri da
He da ri da Laun!
Unto a lute we sang dis lay,
And so we passed de live-long day
Until de Sun went down.

We sang old songs togedder
Of loves long passed away,
All in de pleasant wedder
Ash in de grass we lay.
Hei da, ri da
Hei da, ri dá!
No more can I rememper, yet
What I recall I’ll ne’er forget
So long as life is gay!’

And as the Breitmann sang and tinkled his lute, the nightingales who were present joined in—’twas like Jenny Lind and Parepa Rosa in a duet. I mention this, because in a later age the souls of the two caged nightingales did actually reappear in human form as J. L. and P. R.; even as vultures whom I could mention have reappeared on the Stock Exchange; and black-beetles as clergymen about town; and butterflies as professional beauties; and divers ducks as doctors; and an old owl as Premier. But to return.

As they sat there at twilight tide, talking over old times when they had met at the court of brave King Roosevelt in Holland, there came the sound of a far-off bell ringing vespers, and Flaxius said:

‘Ever since the earliest times men have believed that there was a holy influence in the sound of a bell. The old Etruscans and their children, the Romans, made them of bronze, and sometimes of silver, all to keep away witches and evil spirits. In fact, from the immense number which are found, it would seem as if there had been, at least, one to every human being.

‘And dot was kept up py de Christians,’ added Breitmann, ‘who peliefed a great deal still more in dem, and to dis tay it is said dot witches are afraid of bells, witch is de reason de priests keep a ringing dem all the while. As you see py de woonderful story of der bell of Kaltern, here in Tyrol.’

‘Tell it,’ replied Flaxius.

‘I can sing it if you would care to hear it,’ answered Herr Breitmann. ‘Dot comes easier to me.’

‘All the better,’ quoth the sage.

And Breitmann chanted:

The Bell of Kaltern

‘Oh the church bells at even,
How sweetly they ring!
Like angels in heaven,
They murmur and sing!
Where music can travel
Their echoes are found:
And naught that is evil
Can list to the sound:
So softly, so quaintly they chime in their play,
So gently, so faintly, then dying away,
Fading out, with the day.

Now no witch can hold out where the church Glocke hang,
For the bells being blest they’re afraid of the clang:
At the very first sound when ’tis heard they are lost,
And shrivel like roses when touched by a frost;
And the devil himself would be off on the wing
When the great bell of Kaltern began with its ring,
Ha, that “busted up” as a terror to see
In grand scatteration the whole company:
And good Christians, like us, aren’t more frightened of hell
Than the witches were scared by the sound of that bell.
Until at the last, when their patience was past,
And the very end-thread of the skein being spun,
They swore there must certainly something be done.
And something they did too at once in the cause:
And you soon will surmise what the handiwork was.

There’s a widow in Eppan
With glance like a dart,
A terrible weapon,
Which strikes every heart,
With the softest of laughter,
The sweetest of smiles,
Lord knows what comes after,
When once she beguiles!
And this lady of Eppan
Is charmingly dressed.
She feeds upon capon,
With wine of the best.
Though whence she derived all her food and the clothes,
Or how she got these things, or came to have those,
Is what she did never to any disclose,
Which kept people talking as all may suppose
Either “over the pumpkin”[7] or “under the rose!”

Now when people before them have always a curtain,
There’s something behind it, not right, that is certain.
And all were assured that this beautiful widow
Hung out what the French call a very large rideau; [In German Gardine; a kind of a pun;
Since in dialect, girl and a curtain are one.]
But Hermann von Valk,
A chivalric young blade,
Who was not of talk
Or of scandal afraid,
Was all the more taken,
Enchanted and shaken,
Enraptured and mashed,
Bèglamoured and smashed,
By the beautiful eyes and the wonderful mystery
That seemed to envelop this Lamia’s history.
And one day when in sport the fair widow would task him
He swore he would do anything she might ask him,
He cared not a straw, if ’twere that or were this,
If she only would give him one rapturous kiss!

With the winsomest smile,
That would fetch you a mile,
And a soft in her voice
That would give you no choice,
But to do as she wanted. “My dearest,” said she,
“I can only ask something chivalric of thee,
Such as noble young gentlemen ever perform
When their hearts and their heads are courageous and warm.
And that which I want, you can easily grant—
It isn’t a matter of shall I? or shan’t—
In fact ’tis as easy as jumping a hurdle.
Just climb a church-steeple while bearing this girdle,
The steeple of Kaltern—you know it full well—
And binding—you shall turn this belt round the bell:
Bind it and wind it, when you have twined it—
When this is done and my love is returnéd, he
May kiss, if he like, to the end of Eternity.”

Now as you may have guessed,
This young Hermann von Valk
Was not—truly confessed—
A man easy to balk;
So as soon as the widow her yarn had spun
He jumped to his feet and cried eagerly—done!
“For such a reward I here swear, by my soul!
I’d belt all the bells in the land of Tyrol!
Give me the girdle! I’ll tell you what,
I’ll return this evening”—and off he shot.

Now though this Hermann had no scrupulosity,
Yet, as a German, he’d great curiosity,
Which thing is the mother of all suspicion,
So he turned it all over with great precision,
And he said to himself, “I wish I could tell
What it is that she means by a-belting the bell?
It’s very mysterious—hem!—let me see!
Suppose I first try it a bit on a tree!
There is nothing at all in the way to prevent
Such a little and harmless experiment.”
So half-unthinking and half in joke
He bound the girdle about an oak.

It was a grand tremendous tree,
As vast as man did ever see,
Standing alone so grave and solemn,
With trunk as tall as the highest column;
But scarce that girdle was brought around,
And scarce the belt on the bark was bound,
When a crash like a thousand thunders came,
And before his eyes all swam in flame,
As if hell had broke loose in very fact,
And from top to bottom the oak-tree cracked,
And the fragments flew afar and wide:
While Hermann von Valk lay stunned aside.

The bells, in time, had rung several tenses,
Before the young gentleman came to his senses,
And, when he got there—“My life!” said he:
“I am glad that I tried that belt on a tree,
For if I had bound it round the bell,
Which the witches all fear, like poison and hell——”

When having said this, he suddenly stopped
As if an idea on his senses had dropped,
And he roared “Donnerwetter mit Hagel und pitch!
Now may I be shot! but the widow’s a witch!
Es leuchtet mir ein! I behold it clear
As I see yon moon in her silver sphere;
That was a nice little task the “widder”
Gave me to do, now I come to consider!
Suppose instead of a tree, I had placed
That elegant article round my waist!
That were a beautiful change of scene?
The devil take her—where would I have been?
So sure as Bohemians drink slivovitz,
Burst to pieces and blown to bits,
So now I will go to my home, alone,
Beautiful Madame—with you I’ve done
“I can stand a great deal,” he said with a sigh
“But not the devil—and so good-bye.”

By this adventure you plainly see,
That two of a trade can never agree,
What one had tolled, the other can’t tell,
And a belle, if a witch, is afraid of a bell!’

‘Well sung, Herr Breitmann,’ exclaimed Flaxius. ‘And the tones were as sweet as the story is strange.’

‘Vot do you really dink of it?’ inquired the singer with some interest. ‘Can it pe true?’

‘H’m! very likely. You must know, friend Breitmann, that from much strange but little thought of proof, I believe that from the Etruscan and Roman priesthood, the witches and wizards of a later time inherited much knowledge, and many strange secrets regarding electricity; and this granted, we can explain many of the most remarkable miracles attributed to them. Now, admitting that they were up to producing a spark by a small charge and making an explosive, the widow’s belt becomes intelligible. In fact, a few ounces of dynamite——’

‘Vould pe a mighty crate power, when a woman wanted to plow a man oop,’ laughed the minstrel. ‘And denn dere was poison, vitch dey understanded petter still. As is set fort in a pallad of de town of Munich.’

‘I would like to hear it,’ replied Flaxius.

‘We would like to hear it,’ sopranoed the nightingales.

‘I would like to hear it,’ chirped a sparrow on the wall in contralto.

‘And we also,’ cooed the baritone spirits of the evening breeze, as they stole through the dense foliage, rustling overhead.

The Breitmann tuned his lute, and sang the ballad of

Narr Hans’l[8]

‘Oh! Munich is a merry town, ’tis writ by many a pen,
And all its city counsellors are wondrous merry men,
And when they meet for banqueting, to revel or to sing,
From the Rathshaus to the Frauenkirch you hear the music ring.

And every master hath a squire that on his lord must wait,
To fill his goblet up with wine or change or fill his plate,
And it always was expected, like the chorus to a song,
He must laugh at all his master’s jokes and help the fun along.

Now one of these attendants was an odd fantastic wight—
You could see it in his features that something wasn’t right—
An anxious, solemn countenance with sorrow interwrought,
Like one who knows that he is mad, and trembles at the thought!

And if cruel people vexed him when his heart was stirred with drink,
He would rave and cry the maddest things that any one could think,
And scream and weep and beg them all for mercy in his pain,
Which made them roar with laughter and begin to tease again.

They called him the Narr Hans’l, that is Jack Lunatic.
And all the lords resolved one day to play this man a trick.
So they made him eat a herring till he almost died with thirst;
And then gave him wine to quench it, but that was not the worst.

For the wine had all been mingled with pepper for a trick,
And a subtle drug or medicine, which made him sadly sick,
So that he ran about in pain, with many a mad grimace:
It made the noble gentlemen all roar to see his face.

Well, well! the fun was over and the jest was half forgot:
When again there was a banquet in that ever merry spot,
And since Narr Hans’l made such sport for every guest—to dine,
They chose him for the Kellner, or Master of the Wine.

The music pealed so merrily, there all was Saus und Braus,
Till the chairman gave the word “Schenk’ein!” and then the sign “Trink aus!”
And this was at the Ending, when every gentleman
Must drink the Supernaculum—drain to the last his can.

To a drop upon the thumb-nail, nor leave behind a “rest.”
And the wine for this last drinking was of the very best;
Every cupful cost a florin—of that there was no doubt,
It glowed like golden sunlight when Hans’l poured it out.

Ha! What can be the matter with the noble President,
That he looks as pale as ashes and extremely discontent?
And now he’s falling backwards in deadly agony:
And now—O Lord! the others are all as ill as he!

Ha! What can be the matter with Narr Hans’l through it all?
He is laughing, he is screaming, he is dancing in the hall.
He is changed into a devil—he gave a comic sigh,
And played upon his Cithern as he saw the Herren die!

There are four-and-twenty dead men a-lying in the room,
The tapers burning lowly, all fading into gloom;
The waiters with the music have all in terror fled:
There sits alone Narr Hans’l, a-singing to the Dead!

A-singing wailing ditties, all in the saddest strain:
How they poisoned him with pepper, and he poisoned them again.
Till he screams: “It all is over—and the wine is of the best!”
He drank a flowing goblet, and is lying with the rest.’

‘It is a sad song!’ murmured Breitmann, as he struck the last chorus.

‘Very sad,’ replied the nightingales.

‘It makes me cry,’ chirped the sparrow.

‘Mournful, indeed,’ sang the evening breeze.

‘Well, away! There’s a lesson in it for all,’ concluded Flaxius.

---

Comment by the Editor.—If there are any readers who would prefer these ballads of Hans Breitmann in the original German English, he or she may find them, and many more quite as good or better—or even worse—in a little book entitled Hans Breitmann in Germany, published by T. Fisher Unwin. Of which book, several critics remarked that there was so much German in it as to render it unintelligible, which, as elsewhere remarked, was much like declaring that there is too much Latin in the poems of Virgil or Horace, or, in truth, of Merlinus Coccaius, or the bard who sang the Polemo-Middiana. So reflecting on him who proposed to make a translation of Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus into English, the editor has ventured to clothe these two Breitmann ballads in so much of our current tongue as his humble means permitted.

Which reminds him of a little story.

There was once a French artist who found a picturesque old beggar on the Pont Neuf.

The beggar was striking.

Il sautait aux yeux, he leapt to your eyes.

He was seventy years of age.

He had a long white beard.

He was clad in a long, picturesque, ragged gabardine.

A gabardine is a dressing-gown.

For ladies it is a peignoir.

Short sentences make long copy.

Copy is paid for by the page.

To return to our sheep.

The beggar held a long, rude staff.

Like Esculapius.

Or a Chinese barber.

The artist was charmed with his appearance.

He asked the beggar to come next day to his studio.

The beggar assented.

Now as he had never had his portrait taken before,

The beggar supposed that he must come in his best.

That is to say endimanché, that is to say in Sunday togs.

So he removed his beard,

And appeared in a shabby steel-pen or tail-coat.

With a cane with a glass head,

And his shoes blacked,

And a red waistcoat.

When the artist beheld him,

He exclaimed with horror,

‘Oh, mon Dieu!

You are spoiled, you are spoiled!’

Now if this artist had been a Leonardo da Vinci, who could make a beautiful Madonna out of an old man as a model, he would have copied the beggar all the same, seeing the Reality which was in him.

But he did not see it.

1. ‘Over the pumpkin’ (also the sun-flower) i.e. openly, these being very visible objects. ↩

2. Jack-fool. ↩