Part 15

{365}At first all went well; but at the end of three weeks Putskuchen looked sad and melancholy; Putskuchen only took half a dozen meals a day; Putskuchen was slowly fading away; Putskuchen was in love, in love with a young giantess, who taunted him with having become the servant of these wretched pygmies and reproached him with his poverty. The unhappy creature fell off more and more, the _omelette soufflee_ fell down flat, and Putskuchen was a mere lath of thirty feet in length.

Kreiss had always felt a certain tenderness for him, and hence, after having asked the consent of all the other chieftains, he placed in the giant’s hands a large heap of gold scales such as the dwarfs were in the habit of collecting in the neighboring mountains.

It was enough to buy three wives, instead of one.

The fact had no sooner become known than all {366}the happy giant fathers of the country desired him as a son-in-law, and when they saw how liberally his services had been rewarded by his new masters, they were all eager to become the serfs of the dwarfs.

Thus, thanks to Kreiss, the giants gradually came all, one by one, and entered the service of the dwarfs.

Certain skeptics have maintained that the whole story is symbolic.

According to their interpretation the giant fastened to the ground and muzzled by the dwarfs, is the people, the people always kept down and always held in subjection, in spite of its gigantic strength. The dwarfs, who lived under the oak, the sacred tree of all nations of Celtic origin, are the priests.

We say: Shame upon people, who would change a legend into an apologue and our friend Kreiss into a Druid!

When the dwarfs became reconciled again to men, they compelled the giants to execute for them great works of public utility, such as bridges and highroads, which were afterwards generally ascribed to the Romans.

The belief in little dwarfs continues to this day to exist in most of the Northern countries. They still live in myriads in the subterranean regions {367}and in the rocks in Westphalia, in Sweden, and in Norway, and they are still hard at work amassing vast treasures.

XV.

{371}Wizards and the Bewitched.--_The Journey of A sa-Thor and his Companions.--The Inn with the Five Passages.--Skryinner.--A Lost Glove found again.--Arrival at the Great City of Utgard.--Combat between Thor and the King’s Nurse.--FREDERICH BARBAROSSA AND THE KYFFHAUSER.--Teutonia! Teutonia!--What became of the Ancient Gods.--Venus and the good Knight Tannhauser.--Jupiter on Rabbit Island.--A Modern God._

Hear! hear! New and greater marvels still! But, unfortunately, we shall be under the sad necessity of returning to our giants once more, much as we have already spoken of them, from giant Ymer down to Quadragant, and there may be too much even of the best things in this world. But let the reader take courage; this time my giants are not real giants; or at least they are giants of a very peculiar species. But instead of losing time with limitations and explanations, let us begin our story.

It was in the days when the Scandinavian gods were still in the full enjoyment of their power.

One fine day the god Thor, curious to see certain distant lands of which they had told him most marvelous stories, set out on his travels, accompanied by Raska, Tialff, and Loki. Leaving Sweden and Norway behind, they arrived at the sea-shore and crossed over by swimming. A mere trifle, of course, for people of their kind. On the opposite shore they found a vast plain, and as night was approaching and they began to feel that rest would be acceptable, they looked out for a shelter. In this vast and deserted plain they see but one single building; a huge, ill-shapen, and abandoned house, {373}rather broad than high and of altogether exceptional appearance. It has neither doors nor windows, nor even a roof; but the night fog may possibly conceal a part of the edifice. The travellers enter and find a square, low vestibule, and at the end of it five long passages; each of the travellers takes one of these passages, looking for a door or a bed in the dark. As they find neither bed nor chamber, they resign themselves and lie down on the floor, with their backs to the wall.

But even the walls seem to be elastic, and so does the floor; perhaps a layer of straw or of moss was spread over them and gave them the softness of felt, rather coarse, to be sure, but not unpleasant. The travellers felt that they could sleep there comfortably and warm. So they did.

At daybreak Thor rubbed his eyes, stretched his arms and proposed to take a turn in the country, to stretch his legs and to shake off the heaviness of sleep. Through the white mists which were still hanging on the tops of high hills he thought he saw a huge mass of disheveled hair, and then he discovered in the centre of that head two eyes. At first he thought this head and these eyes were simply a rock covered with shrubbery and two small pools of water shining in the rays of the rising sun. But soon the disheveled head began to move, bent down to the ground, and turned now {374}to one side and now to another. In the meantime the mists had risen and Thor found that he was standing before a giant of such enormous size that those whom he was generally engaged in hunting down would not have reached to his knee.

The giant advanced toward him, always looking here and there, and still with his eyes fixed on the ground, as if he were looking for something he had lost.

Thor, who was easily incensed by the sight of a giant, went straight up to meet him and said in an arrogant tone:--

“What are you doing here? What is your name? Who are you?”

“My name is Skrymner,” replied the other. “Did you not know? As for me, I have no need to ask you any such question; you are the god Thor, one of those under sized gods who live with Odin on the ash tree Ygdrasil. Have you seen my glove? I have lost my glove; yes! yesterday,” he added in the most indifferent manner possible, and as if he were solely occupied with his search.

“I have found nothing of the kind,” replied Thor, who was always in bad humor, and now regretted that he did not have his hammer at hand.

“And do you travel quite alone?” asked Skrymner. {375}

“I have three companions.”

“I do not see them.”

“They are all three still asleep in that house there, in which we have spent the night.”

And with his finger he pointed at the house, which they had used as an inn for the night.

Skrymner looked both surprised and delighted. “My glove!” he cried, “that is my glove! I have found it.” He hastened to pick up this apparent house with its five long passages, and took it up, but not before he had shaken it, holding it close to the ground, and showing thus that he was not without a feeling of humanity.

Loki, Tialft, and Raska tumbled out upon the grass, rather terrified by their sudden ascension and the sudden somerset which they had been forced to make. But as soon as they had recovered from their first surprise, and especially from the discovery that they had spent the night in a glove, they thought of continuing their journey.

The country was unknown to them, but Skrymner offered to act as guide and even to carry their baggage. So much obliging kindness and courtesy drove all aggressive thoughts out of Thor’s mind, especially as he now had his hammer.

At the first stopping place, and just when they were getting ready for breakfast, the giant left them, although only after having pointed out to {376}them the road they ought to take. Thor, however, found he was unable to open the knapsack in which they carried their provisions; all the strings and small chains by which it was fastened, were in knots. They had to proceed on their journey without having had any breakfast, a necessity which is most disagreeable to travellers, and even to gods.

As hour after hour passed and the plain remained deserted and sterile, their hunger became tormenting. They listened with all their might, hoping they might hear the roaring of a bear or the lowing of a cow, determined as they were to dine upon the one or the other; but the dull rumbling of a storm and the distant roll of thunder was all they heard.

Thor was furious at the idea that any one should venture to thunder without having obtained permission from him, the god of thunder, and rushed forward. Following the direction of the noise, he reached a rocky defile, overshadowed by a few oak trees, where he found Skrymner lying at full length between two hills and snoring furiously. This snoring it was which the travellers had taken for the roaring of a storm.

“No doubt,” said Thor to himself, “the wretch is at work digesting the provisions of which he has robbed us. No doubt it was he who tied all those knots in the strings of our knapsack, in order to {377}conceal his theft; but he shall pay for it dear! Besides, did he not speak of me as an undersized god?”

With these words he seized his hammer and threw it at the head of the sleeping giant, who did not stir, but only passed his hand over his brow as if a dead leaf falling from a tree had tickled him a little.

Thor went up closer and struck him once more on the back of his head, directly on the cerebellum, which in giants is unusually developed.

This time the sleeper opened one eye, closed it again, and after having scratched himself at the place where he had been struck, he fell asleep again.

Brutal by nature and doubly so when fasting, Thor had become perfectly furious when he found himself thus mysteriously powerless. Fully determined the next time to make an end, once for all, of his adversary, he put on his invisible belt, which had the gift of doubling his strength, seized his hammer with both hands and threw it with such amazing force at the giant, that it sank up to the handle into one of his cheeks and Thor had no small trouble in getting it to come back to him.

This time Skrymner was fully roused; he opened both of his eyes, raised his hand to his cheek, and exclaimed that it was impossible to sleep comfortably {378}in that place, as a fly had just stung him in the cheek.

Then, perceiving his assailant, who stood right before him, he asked him good-naturedly, how he happened to be there, and whether he had lost his way. In the meantime the other travellers are also coming up and Skrymner offers to show them the way to the great city of Utgard, where he promises they will find a good inn, a good table, a warm reception, and not only enough for their wants but all that their heart can desire.

Thor does not know what to think. Overcome and confounded, he follows the footsteps of his guide, without being able to form any idea except the one: to avenge himself in a signal manner for all his humiliations.

The city of Utgard is of incredible size, the city walls, the houses, the trees, the furniture, all are gigantic. Our travellers could easily pass between the legs of the little children they met in the streets, as we modern people pass under the triumphal arches of the ancients. You see, now we are no longer in Lilliput, we have reached the island of the giants with Gulliver. Gulliver might very well be the offspring of some Scandinavian legend.

The king received Thor and, his friends, laughing heartily at their small size, and the seats they are offered are three times as high as they are. {379}After a host of adventures in which our men, that is to say, our gods, are continually victimized, Thor in his rage challenges the giants to single combat. The king accepts the challenge and offers to back his nurse, a toothless old woman, against the god. Thor consents, eager as he is to vent his wrath on somebody, and determines to pitch His Majesty’s nurse out of the window. But by all his efforts he hardly succeeds in lifting her slightly off the ground, and he himself, exhausted by the struggle, sinks on his knees.

On the next day our travellers came to the conclusion that they had travelled far enough. Skrymner again showed the way, with his usual courtesy, and when they were well out of the town he took the god Thor aside and said to him: “So far you have only known my name and nothing of myself, now you ought to know that I am Skrym-ner, the wizard. You ought, therefore, not to mind anything that has happened to you during these last days. You thought you were striking me three times with your hammer, but in reality you were striking the impenetrable rocks, on which I was apparently sleeping. As to the nurse, you have given proof there of such strength as I should not even have expected from the great Thor, when you lifted her from the ground; for the toothless old woman is none other but Death, yes Death, {380}whom I had compelled to come and take part in our games. The rest was all enchantment, mere delusions! I wanted to see if the power of the art of Magic was equal to that of the gods. Farewell, Asa-Thor, and a pleasant journey to you.”

More enraged than ever, Asa-Thor was about to throw himself upon him; but the pretended giant had fled in the shape of a bird. Then Thor turned back towards the city of Utgard, determined to destroy it utterly, but before his eyes it dissolved into a column of smoke.

Well, I promised you some of Mother Goose’s stories--have I kept word? And do not imagine that this story of Thor and the giants’ city is of doubtful origin--you will find it in chapters 23, 24, 25, and 26 of the sacred book called Edda.

Of magicians and wizards I could say much, but the road is long and I am in haste to reach the end. And who does not know the story of the prowess of Merlin and of the Maugis?

In all the ancient traditions of the North there are found innumerable tales of wizards, witchcraft, and ghosts. Now rocks are changed into palaces, and now brutes into men and men into brutes; and the same fantastic but always epic element prevails largely in all the old romances of chivalry as well as in the great poems of Ariosto and Tasso. {381}In almost all countries we find that epic poetry is closely allied to religious sentiments and through these to the marvelous; for it has always found a first home in temples and a first use for temples. Thus it was in India with the Mahabarata, and in Greece with the myths of Hercules and of Orpheus. It could not be otherwise with the Gallic or German bards, nor with the Scandinavian skalds, all of whose grand poems are most unfortunately unknown at present.

But a feature more peculiarly German than the wizards, are the bewitched, often called the Sleepers. In these Germany incorporates, as it were, the loftiest of her patriotic aspirations, the saddest of her disappointments, the most persistent of her hopes. They represent not only her old faith, that could never be completely eradicated, but also her old favorites, a Hermann and a Siegfried, the hero of the Nibelungen, a Theodoric and a Charlemagne, a Witikind and a Frederick Barbarossa, a William Tell and a Charles V. Her heroes, her beloved, her glory--she has not allowed them to fall into oblivion and be severed from the present; she will not admit that they are dead, they are but asleep. Witikind under the Siegberg in Westphalia, Charlemagne in the lowest rooms of his old castle at Nuremberg. There--and not, as might have been imagined, in Aix-la-Chapelle--the mighty old {382}Emperor rests majestically, surrounded by his brave champions, ready to awake again whenever God shall be pleased to tell him that the moment has come.

As for Frederick Barbarossa, he sleeps in the Kyffhauser, one of the porphyry and granite mountains of the Taunus, and so do others; there is no denying the fact, for they have been seen!

A few years after his disappearance from this world, Frederick showed himself upon the summit of one of these mountains, whenever the sound of a musical instrument was heard in the valley. Knowing his love of music, the Philharmonic Societies of Erfurth and of other towns to this day, are fond of serenading the old warrior.

It is said that one evening, when the clock at Tilleda struck midnight, certain musicians who had ascended the Kyffhauser, suddenly saw the mountain open and a number of women adorned with jewels and carrying torches, came out of the opening. They beckoned to them, the men followed, continuing to play on their instruments and thus they came where the Emperor was. The latter ordered a good supper to be served, and when they were ready to leave again, the fair ladies of the court escorted them back, with their torches in their hands, and at the last moment gave to each of them a poplar branch. The poor musicians had {383}hoped for better things from the Emperor’s generosity, and when they reached the foot of the mountain, they threw their branches into the road, very indignant at having been so badly treated. Only one among the number kept his branch, and when he reached home, carefully stuck it by the side of the consecrated bunch of box which hung over the head of his bed. Immediately, O marvel! each leaf of the poplar branch changed into a gold ducat. When the others heard of this, they hastened to look for their branches, but they never found them again.

On another occasion a shepherd--others say a miner--met on the Kyffhäuser a monk with a white beard, who unceremoniously and just as if he had asked him to come and see his next door neighbor, told him to come with him and see the Emperor Barbarossa, who wanted to speak to him. At first the poor shepherd was dumb-founded; then he began to tremble in all his limbs. The monk, however, reassured him and led him into a narrow, dark valley, and then, striking the ground three times with his rod, he said: “Open! open! open!”

Thereupon a great noise arose beneath the feet of the monk and the shepherd; the earth seemed to quake and then a large opening became visible. They found they were in a long gallery, lighted up {384}by a single lamp and closed at the other end by folding doors of brass. The monk, who no doubt was a magician, knocked three times at the door with his rod, saying again: “Open! open! open!” and the brass doors turned upon their hinges, producing the same noise which they had heard before underground.

They were now in a grotto, whose ceiling and walls, blackened by the smoke of an immense number of torches, seemed to be hung with black as a sign of mourning. It might have been taken for a mortuary chapel, only there was no coffin or catafalque visible. The shepherd had, in the mean time, begun to tremble once more, but the monk repeated his summons before a silver door, which thereupon opened in the same manner as the brass door.

In a magnificent room lighted but dimly and in such a manner that it was impossible to tell where the light came from, they saw the Emperor Frederick, seated upon a golden throne, with a golden crown on his head; as they entered he gently inclined his head, contracting his bushy eyebrows. His long red beard had grown through the table before him and fell down to the ground.

Turning, not without visible effort, towards the shepherd, he spoke to him for some time on different subjects and recommended to him to repeat {385}what he heard to his friends at home. His voice was feeble, but it grew strong and sonorous as soon as he alluded to the glory of Germany. Then he said:--

“Are the ravens still flying over the mountains?”

“Yes!” replied the shepherd.

“Are the dead trees still hanging over the abysses of the Kyffhâuser as in former days?”

“Who could uproot them, unless it be a great storm?”

“Has no one spoken to you of the reappearance of the old woman?”

“No!”

“Well then, I must sleep another hundred years!”

He made a sign to the shepherd that he could go, and then fell asleep, murmuring the name of a woman which died on his lips.

For among these great Sleepers of Germany there is also a woman, but a woman rather of symbolic than real existence. What is the difference? Tradition gives the following account of her:--

When Witikind was beaten by Charlemagne at Engter, a poor old woman, unable to follow him in his flight, uttered lamentable cries and thus added to the panic among the defeated army. When the {386}soldiers obeyed Witikind’s orders and stopped for a moment in the heat of their flight, they threw a mass of sand and rock upon the old woman. They did not expect that she would die when thus buried alive; their commander had told them: “She will come back!”

This old woman, who is to come back, is Teutonia, and it was her name that Frederick Barbarossa was murmuring to himself as he fell asleep for another century.

When the old woman shall have succeeded in extricating herself from this mass of sand and rock which weighs her down, then and then only the great day will come. The heroes who now are held captive in their mountains and subterranean grottoes, will shake off the torpor of their long sleep; they will reappear among their people, the dead trees will bear new foliage to proclaim their return by a miracle, and the cry of: Teutonia! Teutonia! will resound in a thousand valleys, and the birds even will repeat the name!

They say that when this long wished for day does come, Germany will be freed of all her difficulties, and will boast of having but one creed, one law, and one heart; she will be glorious and free, one and indivisible!

We must wait for the birds to tell us so, before we believe it. {387}At that time Teutonia and her emperors were alike asleep. They mention a peasant woman from Mayence, who on her way home became so exhausted and unable to bear the heat of the sun, that she had to seek shelter in an isolated house, standing by the wayside in the midst of a plantation of young trees. It was a dwelling of a skillful magician. She asked him for leave to rest there a few moments. As he was in the midst of some of his most abstruse calculations, he only replied by nodding his head, and glanced with his eye at a bench in the most distant part of the room. She went and sat down, but only on the edge, hardly knowing if she was allowed to do so or not; every moment she got up to ask her host if she disturbed him, and if she had not better leave him, tired and exhausted as she was. She told him that she would much rather endure the heat and the fatigue, than be a burden to him, she begged him not to mind her and to go on just as if she were not there, and a host of similar phrases.

Annoyed by her incessant, idle talk, the magician suddenly turned round and fixedly looked her full in the face. Immediately she fell asleep. (There was no doubt some knowledge of magnetism already in the world at that time, but as yet only of magic magnetism). When the good woman awoke, {388}she was alone; her host had left her. To her great regret she was compelled to leave without being able to thank him for his hospitality in her usual profuse manner, and to beg him to excuse her falling asleep, when he did her the honor of keeping her company.

As she left the house, she was not a little surprised to see around the house, not a copse of young trees, but a number of tall pine trees and noble oaks, but she thought it possible she might have left by another door than that by which she had entered.

When she at last reached her village, new surprises were in store for her. Of all the good people whom she met on her way or whom she saw standing in the doors of their houses, she could not recognize a single one; she had to look a long time before she found her own house, and when she reached it at last, it was inhabited by strange people, who in spite of her protestations, pushed her out and treated her as mad.