Part 13

But all this has nothing to do with the Church proper, as distinct from the parson. Their religious instinct appears born with the Wends. Religion seems to be in all their thoughts and most of their acts. The invariable greeting given is "God be with you." They talk habitually of "God's rain," "God's sun," "God's crops," "God's bread"--to them "every good gift and every perfect gift cometh from above." Worshippers returning from church are hailed with a "Welcome from God's Word." When the sun goes down, it is to "God" that it goes to rest. Whenever a bargain is struck, the appeal to the other party is "God has seen it," or "God has heard it." And although German jurisdiction, with its partiality for oaths slily extracted _after_ a statement, has imported here and there a little false swearing, in the main that ancient confirmation of the contract is still respected. In Wendland the churches are filled as nowhere else in Germany, and however prosily the parson may preach--as he generally does--nowhere is he more attentively and devoutly listened to. In Wendland alone of all Germany have I noticed that Protestants bow at the mention of the name of "Jesus." Barring some ten thousand Roman Catholics in Saxony, the Wends are all staunch Protestants of that nondescript Lutheran-Calvinist creed, which the kings of Prussia have imposed upon their country. But not a few of their beliefs and superstitions and legends hark back to older days. They still keep _Corpus Christi_. In their religious legends, which are of very ancient origin, the Virgin plays a prominent part--leading off, among other things, a nocturnal dance, in which the angels all join, clad in silken gowns with green wreaths on their heads, meeting for the purpose, of all unsuitable places, in the church, and carefully locking the door against human intruders. The Virgin's flight into Egypt is put into strongly agricultural language, "Has a woman with a child passed this way?" ask Herod's ruthless emissaries. "Aye," answers the truthful Wend, "while I was sowing this barley." "You fool, that must have been three months ago." In truth, by a miracle the barley has grown to maturity in one brief hour. By this expedient the Virgin escapes. The Virgin spins; the Virgin sews shirts; the Virgin does all that Wendish women are taught to do. In Scripture-lore the Wends have their own localised versions of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah; of the fight of St. George and the Dragon; and an even more localised tale of the doings of King David. The archangel Michael is made to fight for Budyssin against the Germans. Judas Iscariot, according to their national tradition, comes to grief mainly through gambling. The Saviour gave him thirty pieces of silver to buy bread with. These he staked--tempted by Jews whom he saw gambling by the wayside--on an unlucky card; and to recover them it was that he sold his Master. To cap all this unorthodoxy, the Wends make the Creator call after Judas that he is forgiven. But remorse drives him to hang himself, notwithstanding. He tries a pine and a fir, but finds them too soft, so he selects an aspen tree--hence the perpetual agitation of its leaves. One of their peculiar legendary saints is Diter Thomas, who was so holy that he could hang his clothes when going to bed--which he appears to have done in the daytime--on a sunbeam. One day, however, at church this devout man espied the Devil seated behind the altar, engaged in taking down on a fresh cowhide the names of all whom he saw sleeping in church. There must have been an unusually large number, for the cowhide proved too small, and Satan was fain to stretch it by holding one end with his teeth and pulling at the other with his hands. As it happened, his teeth let go, and back went his head against the wall, with a bang which woke up all the sleepers. This aroused in pious Thomas so much mirth that he forgot the respect due to the holy place, and laughed aloud--in punishment for which offence his grace departed from him, and he was thenceforth reduced to the necessity of using pegs. For their regularity in attendance at church I half suspect that the peculiar fondness of the Wends for singing is, in not a small degree, accountable; and, it may be, also the attraction of a little gossip after service, and the excitement of an occasional little fair.

The Wends would indeed not be Slavs if they were not engrossingly fond of singing. Singing is, in fact, among young folk reckoned the principal accomplishment. And they have a rich store of songs, set to exceedingly melodious airs. They have them of all descriptions--legends and convivial songs, martial songs, sacred hymns, short _róncka_ and _reje_ for the dancing-room, and long elegies and ballads for the field, to shorten the long summer's day out at work. They have their own curious instruments, too, still in use--a three-stringed fiddle, a peculiar sort of hautboy, and bagpipes of two different sizes, the larger one invariably ornamented with a goat's head. To be a _kantorka_ (precentress) in church, or even in a spinning-room, is a thing for a Wendish girl to be proud of, and to remember to her old age. What a Wendish village would in winter time be without those social spinning meetings it is difficult to imagine. To no race do conviviality, mirth, harmless but boisterous amusement, seem so much of a necessary of life. And none appears to be so thoroughly devoted to the practice of homely household virtues. Spinning, poultry-breeding, bee-keeping, gardening, coupled with singing, and nursing children, and making model housewives--these are the things which occupy girls' thoughts. At her very christening the baby-girl, borne back from church "as a Christian," is made to find a spindle and a broom carefully laid in the room, to act as charms in setting her infant thoughts in the right direction. Her "sponsor's letter" is sure to contain some symbolic grains of flax and millet. And a lover's principal gift to his sweetheart invariably consists of a carefully turned and brightly-painted "kriebatsche," an antiquated spindle and distaff that is, which is held dear as a family Bible. Spinning, indeed, is among Wends a far more important occupation than elsewhere. For men and women alike wear by preference linen clothes, made of good, stout, substantial stuff, thick enough to keep out the cold. In rural Germany a peasant girl is expected as an indispensable preparative for marriage to knit her "tally" of stockings. In Wendland the _trousseau_ consists all of spun linen. Servants invariably receive part of their wages in flax. Spinning accordingly is about the most important work to be accomplished in a household. And as it lends itself capitally to sociability and mirth, the Wendish maidens take to it with peculiar zest. The date for beginning these gatherings throughout Lusatia is the 11th of October, St. Burkhard's Day in the Wendish calendar. On that day the young unmarried women tell themselves off into _psazas_, that is, spinning companies, consisting of twelve at the outside, all of them girls of unblemished character. Among no race on earth is purity more valued and insisted upon--in both sexes--than among these poor forest Wends. Wherever corruption has crept in, it is wholly due to the evil seductions of Germans, who have taken advantage of the helplessness of Wendish girls when away on service. In a Wendish village, to have made a _faux pas_ deprives a young fellow and girl alike of their character for life. The girl must not sit with the other girls in church when the young are catechised; she must not walk up to the altar on high festivals; she must not join in the singing; and the spinning companies will not have her. In olden time she was not even allowed to dance. Young men going notoriously astray used to be punished in their own way.

Some time before the eventful eleventh, the _psazas_ assemble to decide in whose house the spinning gatherings are to be held. In that house they meet throughout the winter, spinning industriously with wheel or with spindle from seven to ten, and requiting the housewife for her hospitality with welcome assistance in various kinds of domestic work. On the first evening the company quite expect to be treated to a good supper of roast goose. How all the spinners, with the resident family, and those young fellows who, of course, will from time to time pay the lasses a visit--either in disguise or in their own proper garb--manage to meet, and work, and lark, and dance, where they do, it is rather a problem to solve. For many of the rooms are not large. They are plain, of course, in their equipment, like all Wendish rooms (in which paint is allowed only on chairs, all the other woodwork being subject to the scrubbing-brush), but strikingly peculiar. Almost in one corner--but far enough away from the wall to leave space for a little, cosy nook behind--stands the monster tile stove, very adequately heated with peat or wood, and showing, tolerably high up, a little open fireplace, in which burns a bright little wood fire, rather to give light and look cheerful, than to diffuse warmth. That is the vestal hearth of the Wendish house, without which there would be no home. In another corner stands the solid, large deal table, with painted chairs all round. The walls are all wainscoted with deal boards; and round the whole room runs a narrow bench, similar to the _murka_, a seat far more tempting, which encircles the stove. Nearly all the household implements in use are neatly ranged about the walls, or else placed on the floor--the _boberzge_, a peculiar plate rack; the _polca_, to hold pots and spoons; and the _standa_, for water. There are baskets, cans, tubs disposed about, and a towel hung up for show. This room grows tolerably lively when the spinning company assemble, telling their tales, playing their games, gossiping and chatting, but mostly singing. "Shall we have any new songs?" is the first question invariably asked when the _psaza_ constitutes itself. And if there is a new girl come into the village, the inquiry at once passes round, "Does she know any new songs?" Indeed, the _psazas_ serve as the principal singing classes for the young women in the village. They are kept up throughout the year as special choirs and sub-choirs, so to speak, singing together on all sacred and mundane occasions where singing is required. Whenever "the boys" look in, there is great fun. Sometimes one will dress up as a "bear," in a "skin" made up of buckwheat straw; or else he will march in as a "stork," which causes even greater amusement. Once at least in the season the funny man of the set makes his appearance transformed into what, by a very wild flight of imagination, may be taken for a pantomime horseman, with a horse made up of four big sieves, hung over with a white sheet. Before calling in a real, formal way, the boys are always careful to ask for leave, which means that they will bring _piwo_ and _pálenza_ (beer and spirits), the girls revenging themselves by providing cake and coffee; and then the entertainment will wind up with a merry dance. One very amusing occasion is the _dopalowak_, or _dolamowak_, that is, the last spinning evening before Christmas, when the boys sit in judgment upon the girls, and, should they find one or other to be guilty of idleness, condemn her to have her flax burnt or else her spindle broken, which penalties are, of course, in every case commuted into a fine. This sort of thing goes on till Ash Wednesday, when the "Spinte" is formally executed by stabbing, an office which gives fresh scope to the facetiousness and agility of the funny man. The night before is the social evening _par excellence_. It is called _corny wecor_, "the black evening," because girls and boys alike amuse themselves with blackening their faces like chimney-sweeps, and with the very same material. The boys are allowed to take off the girls' caps and let down their hair--the one occasion on which it is permitted to hang loose. And there is rare merrymaking throughout the night. Indeed, all Shrovetide is kept with becoming spirit, perhaps more boisterously than among any other folk, and in true excitable Slav style. The boys go about a-"zampering," and collecting contributions; the girls bring out their little savings; and then the young people dance their fill, keeping it up throughout Lent. Indeed, they dance pretty well all the year round--

"Njemski rady rejwam, Serski hisce radsjo;"

which may be rendered thus:

"The German way I love to dance, But the Wendish dance I dote on."

To witness the _serska reja_--the only truly national dance preserved among the Wends--at its best, you should see it danced on some festive occasion, when the blood is up, out in the open air, on the grass plot, where stands the sacred lime tree. There is plenty of room there. The very sight of the green--say of the young birches planted around for decoration at Whitsuntide or Midsummer--seems to fire the susceptible spirits. The dancers throw themselves into the performance with a degree of vigour and energy of which we Teutons have no notion. The _serska reja_ is a pantomimic dance. Each couple has its own turn of leading. The cavalier places his partner in front of him, facing her, and while the band keeps playing, and the company singing one of those peculiarly stirring Wendish dance tunes, he sets about adjuring her to grant him his desire, and dance with him. She stands stock still, her arms hanging down flop by her side. The cavalier capers about, shouts, strikes his hands against his thighs, kneels, touches his heart--with the more dramatic force the better. At length the lady gives way, and in token of consent raises her hand. Briskly do the two spin round now for the space of eight bars, after which for eight more they perform something like a cross between a _chassez croisez_ and a jig, and so on for a little while, after which the whole company join in the same performance. As a finish the cavalier "stands" the band and his partner some liquor, and a merry round dance concludes his turn of leading, to the accompaniment of a tune and song, _róncka_, selected by himself.

Lent is a season more particularly consecrated to song. Every Saturday afternoon, and on some other days, the girls of the various _psazas_ assemble under the village lime tree, the seat around which is scrupulously reserved for them, to sing, amid the rapt attention of the whole village, some of their delightful sacred songs peculiar to the season. This singing reaches its climax on Easter night, when young fellows and girls march round the village in company, warbling in front of every door, in return for which they receive some refreshment. For a brief time only do they suspend their music to fetch "Easter water" from the brook, which must be done in perfect silence, and accordingly sets every mischief-maker at work, teasing and splashing, and playing all sorts of practical jokes, in order to extract a word of protest from the water-fetching maidens. As the clock strikes midnight the young women form in procession and march out to the fields, and all round the cultivated area, singing Easter hymns till sunrise. It produces a peculiarly striking effect to hear all this solemn singing--maybe, the same tunes ringing across from an adjoining parish, as if echoed back by the woods--and to see those tall forms solemnly moving about in the early gloaming, like ancient priestesses of the Goddess Ostara. While the girls are singing, the bell-ringers repair to the belfry (which in many villages stands beside the church) to greet the Easter sun with the traditional "Dreischlag," the "three-stroke," intended to indicate the Trinity.

Lent sees the Wends perform another curious rite, of peculiar antiquarian interest. The fourth Sunday in Lent is by established custom set apart for the ceremony of "driving out Death"--in the shape of a straw figure decked out with the last bridal veil used, which the bride is expected to give up for the purpose. This poor figure is stoned to destruction to the cry of _Lec horè, lec horè_, which may be borrowed from the Lutheran name for the Sunday in question, _Laetare_. In some places the puppet is seated in a bower of pine boughs, and so carried about amid much infantine merriment, to be ultimately burnt or drowned. The interesting feature of this rite is, that it does not really represent the Teuton "expulsion of winter" so much as the much older ceremony of piously visiting the site on which in Pagan times bodies used to be burnt after death. It is a heathen All Saints' Day.

I have no space here to refer to anything like all the curious Wendish observances which ought to be of interest to folk-lorists: the lively _kokot_, or harvest home, so called because under the last sheaf it was usual to conceal a cock, _kokota lapac_ with legs and wings bound, which fell to the lot of the reaper who found it; the _lobetanz_; the _kermusa_, or _kirmess_, great and small, the merry children's feast on May Day; the joyful observance of Whit Sunday and Midsummer; the peculiar children's games, and so on. It is all so racy and peculiar, all so merry and yet so modest in the expenditure made upon it, it all shows the Wends so much to advantage as a contented, happy, cheerful people--perhaps a little thoughtless, but in any case making the best of things under all circumstances, and glad to show off their Slav finery, and throw themselves into whatever enjoyment Providence has vouchsafed, with a zest and spirit which is not to be excelled, and which I for one should be sorry to see replaced by the more decorous, perhaps, but far less picturesque hilarity of the prosy Prussians. If only the Wends did not consume such unconscionable quantities of bad liquor! And if in their cups they did not fall a-quarrelling quite so fiercely! It is all very well to say, as they do in one of their proverbs, with truthful pithiness, that "there is not a drop of spirit on which do not hang nine devils." But their practice accords ill with this proverbial wisdom. The public-house is to them the centre of social life. Every new-comer is formally introduced and made to shake hands with the landlord. They have a good deal of tavern etiquette which is rigidly adhered to, and the object of which in all cases is, like George the Fourth's "whitewash," to squeeze an additional glass of liquor into the day's allowance. Thus every guest is entitled to a help from the landlord's jug, but in return, from every glass served is the landlord entitled to the first sip. Thus again, after a night's carousal, the guests always expect to be treated by the host to a free liquor round, which is styled the _Swaty Jan_--that is, the Saint John--meaning "the Evangelist," whose name is taken in vain because he is said to have drunk out of a poisoned cup without hurt. All the invocation in the world of the Saint will not, however, it is to be feared, make the wretched _pálenza_ of the Wends--raw potato fusel--innocuous. It is true, their throats will stand a good deal. By way of experiment, I once gave an old woman a glass of raw spirit as it issued from the still, indicating about 82 per cent. of alcohol. She made a face certainly, but it did not hurt her; and she would without much coaxing have taken another glass.

This article has already grown so long that of the many interesting customs connected with the burial of the dead and the honouring of their memory I can only refer to one very peculiar and picturesque rite. Having taken the dying man out of his bed, and placed him (for economy) on straw (which is afterwards burnt) to die, put him in his coffin, with whatever he is supposed to love best, to make him comfortable--and in addition a few bugs, to clear the house of them--the mourners carry him out of the house, taking care to bump him on the high threshold, and in due course the coffin is rested for part of the funeral service in front of the parsonage or the church. In providing for the comfort of the dead the survivors show themselves remarkably thoughtful. No male Wend is buried without his pipe, no married female without her bridal dress. Children are given toys, and eggs, and apples. Money used to be put into the coffin, but people found that it got stolen. So now the practice is restricted to the very few Jews who are to be found among the Wends and who, it is thought, cannot possibly be happy without money; and, with a degree of consideration which to some people will appear excessive, some stones are added, in order that they may have them "to throw at the Saviour." In front of the church or parsonage the coffin is once more opened, and the mourners, all clad in white--which is the Wendish colour for mourning--are invited to have a last look at the body. Then follows the _Dobra noc_, a quaint and strictly racial ceremony. The nearest relative of the dead, a young person, putting a dense white veil over his or her head and body, is placed at the back of the coffin, and from that place in brief words answers on behalf of the dead such questions as affection may prompt near friends and relatives to put. That done, the whole company join in the melodious _Dobra noc_--wishing the dead one last "Good-night." After that, the lid is once more screwed down and the coffin is lowered into the grave.

There are few things more picturesque, I ought to say, than a funeral procession in the Spreewald, made up of boats gliding noiselessly along one of those dark forest canals, having the coffin hung with white, and all the mourners dressed in the same colour, the women wearing the regulation white handkerchief across their mouths. The gloom around is not the half-night of Styx; but the thought of Charon and his boat instinctively occurs to one. The whole seems rather like a melancholy vision, or dream, than a reality.