Part 9

"'I give you your liberty, my son. But take care that no one yonder hurts your hood and its silk doves, or viciously tears your long yellow hair. And I am afraid that at the end you will be following a staff, or some little boy will be leading you.'"

Then once more, after a pause, comes the abrupt:

"'My son, my own dear boy, give up going. You shall live on what I live, and on what your mother gives you. Drink water, my dear son, before you steal to buy wine. Austrian pie, any one, fool or wise man, will tell you, is food fit for gentlemen. Eat that, dear child, instead of giving an ox you have stolen to some inn-keeper for a chicken. Your mother can cook good broth; eat that, instead of giving a stolen horse for a goose. My son, mix rye with oats sooner than eat fish in a dishonored life. If you will not obey me, go. But though you win wealth and great honors, never will I share them with you. And misfortune--have that alone too.'

"'You drink water, father, but I'll drink wine. Eat your mush, but I'll eat what they call fricasseed chicken there and white wheat bread; oats will do for you. They say at Rome that a child takes after his godfather, and mine was a knight. Thank God for giving me such high and noble ideas.'"

But the old farmer replied that he liked much better a man who did right and remained constant to it.

"Even though his birth might be rather humble, he would please the world better than a king's son without virtue and honor. An honest man of lowly rank, and a nobleman who was not courteous and honorable,--let the two come to a land where neither is known, and the child of lowly birth will outrank the high-born. My son, if you will be noble, on my word I counsel you, do noble deeds. Good life is a crown above all nobility."

There is the old thought, so common in literature from ancient authors down to the poet of Lady Clara Vere de Vere, and especially a favorite with writers of the middle age. Possibly some of them caught it from Boëthius, who expressed it more than once in the testament of wise and generous character that he left to the world from his confinement at Pavia, and that proved so singularly congenial to the mediæval mind; but we need certainly not require the aid of origins to account for its frequency. Aristocratic as many phases of the times were, there were a number of important evening influences, conspicuously two: the church, in whose monastery cloisters the rich and poor met together as brothers of one impartial discipline, and from whose ranks members of low birth might rise to be the peers of dukes; and the orders of chivalry, which received approved squires from the middle class. Thus, in addition to aristocracy of birth, there was a conditional gentility to which those who had the claim of merit might aspire. But though the thought that desert, and not descent, is the test for nobility, is so obvious in the days when position carried with it so strong a connotation of power, and when the upper strata of society bore down so hard and haughtily upon the lower, we always feel satisfaction in coming upon a trim statement of the fine old commonplace whose best mediæval expression we can quote from a poet of our own language:

"Look, who that is moost vertuous alway, Pryvee and apert, and moost entendeth ay To do the gentil dedes that he kan, Taak hym for the grettest gentil man."

"'Alas, that your mother bore you!'" the farmer exclaimed, when the boy's only answer to his appeal was to declare his hair and hood better fitted for a dance than for the plough or the harrow. "'Thou wilt leave the best and do the worst'"; and he goes on to contrast the man who lives against God and the good of others, followed by every one's curses, with the man who helps the world along, trying night and day to do good by his life, and thereby honors God. This one, wherever he may turn, has the love of God and all the world.

"'Dear son,' he says, 'that man you might be, if you would yield to me. Till with the plough, and plenty of people will be the better for your life, poor and rich; nay, even wolf and eagle, and everything that lives on earth. Many a woman must be made more beautiful through the farmer, many a king must be crowned through the produce of the farm. Indeed, there is no one so noble that his pride would not be a very small thing, except for the farmer.'"

How natural all this sounds,--agriculture the basis of society, tillage of the soil alike useful and honorable. With what quiet manliness this old German talks of the dignity of labor, with no touch of the modern arrogance and discontent with the existing social condition. He will keep to his rank in life, and be loyal to his station, yet, though he looks up with a simple-hearted interest and wonder to the great world above him, he reflects as he follows his plough that without him that great world's pride "would be a very small thing." But there is a quality here that is still finer: the undercurrent perception of "the gospel of service." It is not only that honesty is the best policy, though the peasant is shrewd, and appreciates the practical side too; his conversation with the boy breathes the best nineteenth-century spirit of the duty of making one's life valuable to others. That sentence about working night and day to be useful, and thereby honoring God, is no commonplace for our century, to say nothing of the thirteenth. There is something pretty, too, in the touch of sympathy with the animal world; in some way, he feels that even the birds and beasts must be better off for a good farmer.

These times seem often savage in their cruelties and recklessness of giving pain, but they have a gentle side as well, as may be seen in the tales cited by Montalembert of friendly relations between monks and wild beasts, and in examples collected by Uhland in his essay on the old German animal literature. It is pleasant in connection with such barbarities as we shall presently be reminded of in this very poem to recall the myth versified by Longfellow, of the great minnesinger's legacy to the monastery, conditioned on the brethren's every day placing grain and water for the birds upon his grave; and more than one authentic story is told like that of the Abbot of Hirsan, who, when snow was deep in winter, would take oats from his barn to feed the birds.

After the young Helmbrecht has begged God to release him soon from his father's preaching,--"if you only had been a real preacher you might have got up a whole army with your sermons for a crusade,"--and has explained that instead of keeping on ploughing, he is resolved to have white hands, and no longer need to feel mortified whenever he holds ladies' hands at a dance, his father resorts to his last resource--an appeal to superstition, that he has been keeping in reserve. He tells him what he has been dreaming--three dreams that he interprets as ominous of the loss of sight, feet, and arms, and worst of all, a final dream of one of those sights so common for many centuries before and after, but made no less dreadful by familiarity.

"'You were hanging on a tree. Your feet were a fathom from the ground. Above your head on a bough sat a raven, by its side a crow. Your hair was all tangled. On the right hand the raven combed your head for you, on the left the crow.'"

But the hopeful rode gaily off through the bars, and came to a castle where a warlike lord was glad to receive any addition to his force. There he stayed for a year, leading the extreme bandit life of whose outrages and oppressions we read so much during this troubled period. He quickly obtained reputation as daring and merciless:

"Into his sack he stuffed everything; it was all one to him. Nothing was too small, nothing too great. Helmbrecht took it all, rough and smooth, crooked and straight. He took horses, cattle, jacket, sword, cloak, coat, goats, sheep. From women he stripped everything, and well enough his ship went that first year, 'its sails full.' But after a while, as people are wont to think of going home, he took leave of the court, and commended them to the good God."

They heard at the farm that he was coming on for a visit, and in accordance with the ancient custom of giving a present to the bearer of good news, the messenger received a shirt and pair of hose. But when the young man himself arrived, "how he was received! Did they step forward to meet him? Nay, they ran, all together; one crowded past another; father and mother sprang as if they had never had a care." It is touching to notice the suggestiveness of a single line in the poet's description of the scene. The plain people understood that their son was no longer one of them, and they knew how his earlier false pride must have grown in this year's absence in the outer world. So in their anxiety that everything should gratify this brilliant, wayward eldest son of their admiration and hope, and that nothing should interfere with his being pleased and gracious to their yearning, timid love, and knowing how in the homely heartiness of their joy at seeing their young master again the two servants would treat him at once in the old familiar way of peasant-farm equality, they instructed their man and their woman in what they thought to be polite salutation. So when the guest appeared, "Did the woman and the man cry 'Welcome back, Helmbrecht'? Nay, they did not; they had been told not to. They said: 'Master, in God's name be you welcome.'" There is a touch of humor in their rushing forward and being the first to greet him, in their rude good-feeling; but we also get a sense of tenderness from seeing the father and mother keeping in the background, behind their daughter Gotelint.

Little education as there was in the middle ages, people fully appreciated the elegance as well as the utility of a knowledge of foreign languages, and no accomplishment was held more desirable. Especially the Germans, representing an outlying civilization, would send their sons, while still boys, to some French court to serve as pages and acquire especially the language as well as other branches of knightly culture. The praises of various heroes of French as well as German romances, give to linguistic attainments a high place; Gottfried, for example, in his account of the training of Tristan, who was the typical gentleman of the romances, says that from the age of seven until he was fourteen he was studying languages under the care of a tutor, by travelling through different lands. Since this was the fashion, imitations were sure to become popular, and a thin veneering of foreign speech became the mark of a pinchbeck culture, just as it has been so frequently since. Accordingly, after the servants have cried out their "Master, in God's name be you welcome," and Gotelint has thrown her arms about her brother, the young gallant calls her his dear little sister in a phrase of salutation touched with Low Dutch, which he follows by the elegant "gratia vester." Then the younger children ran up, and last of all the farmer and his wife, who greeted him over and over. He addressed his father in French: "Deu sal"; his mother in Bohemian: "Dobraytra." They looked at each other; four strange languages all together--there must be some mistake.

"The housewife said: 'My dear, this is not our son. This is a Bohemian or a Slav.' Her husband replied: 'It is a Frenchman. My son whom I commended to God, certainly this is not he, and yet he looks like him.' And Gotelint suggested: 'He answered me in Latin; may be he is a priest.' 'Faith,' put in the hired man, who had caught the phrase in dialect, 'he has lived in Saxony or Brabant, for he said, "liebe susterkindekin"; he must be a Saxon.'"

The old peasant was devoted and loving, but he had resolution and self-respect under it all. He told the accomplished youth that before he would take him for his son he must talk German. If he would do that and declare himself Helmbrecht, well and good. He should have a chicken boiled, and another roasted, and his horse should be well cared for. But a Bohemian, or a Slav, or a Saxon, or a Brabanter, or a Frenchman, or a priest, should be given nothing. The youth began to reflect. It was getting late, there was no place near by where he could go; so he concluded to waive his elegant manners, and speak in the old style. But the shrewd peasant feigns incredulity, and decides to test his son a little further. In vain the young man protests himself Helmbrecht. His gentility must stoop to vulgar peasant identification, and tell what he knows about the oxen on the farm. He rattles over all four of them, Grazer, Black-spot, Rascal, and White-star, with a little praise for two, and the reconciliation is accomplished. Thereupon the repressed fondness and devotion obtain free expression. The father hurried out to attend to the horse, the mother sent her daughter for a pillow and cushion--"Run, now, and don't walk for it"--and makes a couch for him on the bench close to the stove, so that he may have a nap while she is preparing his dinner. When the boy woke the meal was ready, and Wernher assures us that any gentleman might have enjoyed it. After washing his hands, the usual first step in a meal, a dish of fine-cut sauer-kraut was put before him, by it bacon, both fat and lean, and a rich mellow cheese. Then there was as fat a goose as ever roasted on a spit--and with what good-will they provided that extraordinary peasant luxury--a roasted and a boiled chicken. A knight out hunting, and happening on such a meal, would like it well. For besides this they had managed to get delicacies in which peasants never think of indulging. "'If I had any wine you should be drunk to-night,'" the farmer said; and he added--with such a noble union of dignity, simplicity, and sentiment for the plain homely blessings which he had appreciated and loved all his life: "'My dear son, now take a drink of water from the best spring that ever came out of earth. I know no spring fit to be compared with it, except the one at Wankhûsen.'"

"'Tell me, son,'" he continued, as they went on with their dinner, for he could not wait to ask him, "'tell me how about the court fashions, and then I will tell you how they used to be when I was young.'" But the son was too busy eating to stop to talk then, and he allowed his father to relate his early reminiscences.

"'When I was a boy,' he began 'and your grandfather Helmbrecht had sent me to court with cheese and eggs, just as a farmer does to-day, I took note of the knights, and marked their ways. They were courteous and cheerful and had no rascality about them in those days, such as many men and women too have now. The knights had a custom, to make themselves pleasing to the ladies, that was called jousting. A man of the court explained it to me when I asked him what they called it. Two companies would come together from opposite directions, riding as if they were mad, and they would drive against each other, as if their spears must pierce through. There's nothing in these days like what I saw then. After that they had a dance, and while dancing they sang lively songs, that made the time go quickly. Presently a playman came forward and struck in with his fiddle; at that the ladies jumped up, and the knights went to meet them, and they took hold of hands. That was a pleasant sight--the overflowing delight of ladies and gentlemen, dancing so gaily, poor and rich. When that was over a man came out and read about some one called Ernest. Each could do whatever he liked. Some took their bows and shot at a target; others went hunting: there was no end to the kinds of pleasure. The worst off there would be the best off with us now. Those were the times before false and vicious people could turn the right about with their tricks. Nowadays the wise man is the one who can cheat and lie; he has position and money and honor at court, much more than the man who lives justly and strives after God's grace.'"

We find here as in so many other places in thirteenth century poetry, that the serious-minded were already looking back. Just as we have seen Walther and Ulrich bewailing the lost sunshine of chivalry, Wernher laments that the old-time honesty has gone, and with it the knightly light-hearted honorable joys. Already, before 1250, there was a halo about the chivalric court; ladies were honored, knights tourneyed for their pleasure; dancing with them attracted gentlemen quite beyond drinking bouts; the poet's narratives of old German heroes were yet in fashion.

All this seems amusing to the young man; what sappy and goody-goody fashions those were. He thinks it manly to swagger about the new ways, and tell how the fashionable cry is "Trinkà, herre, trinkà trinc!" It used to be good breeding to dangle about pretty ladies, but the correct thing now is just to drink. "'This is the kind of love-letters we have: "You dear little bar-maid, fill up our cups. What a fool a man is who wastes his life for women, instead of good wine." It's a genteel thing to be sharp with your tongue, and get the best of people, and tell clever lies.'"

The old man hears, and with a sigh wishes back the day when gentlemen shouted "Hey[=a], ritter, wis et fro!" in the tourneys, instead of these new cries of riotry and pillage. The son would tell him more, but he has ridden far and wishes to go to sleep. There were no linen sheets in that farm-house, but Gotelint spread a newly washed shirt on his bed, and he slept until high day. The next morning he displayed the gifts he had brought: for his father, a whetstone, scythe, and axe; for his mother, a fox-skin; for Gotelint, a head-dress with a band of silk and gold, better fitted for a nobleman's child than for her; shoes with straps for the farm-hand; and for his wife, a cloth to cover her hair, and a red ribband. He remained at home for a week, and then he became restless to return. His father again took up his entreaties, begging him in the tenderest tones to stay from the bitter and sour life he has been leading. As long as he lives he will share what he has with him, even if the young man will do nothing but sit still and wash his hands. Only he must not go back.

What, not go back with so much to do? Has not a rich man ridden over the field of his god-father? Has not another rich man eaten bread with crullers? And still a third, while eating at a bishop's table, loosened his girdle? Each one must be taught better manners through wholesale plunder of cattle, sheep, and swine, to say nothing of a boor who blew the foam off his beer. He and some friends will give them a good training, and he runs over the list of his bandit companions with the cant names borne by each, such as Lambswallow, Hellbag, Bolt-the-sheep, Coweater, Wolfthroat, and at last his own name, Swallow-the-land.

We may pass by the exploits of which he boasts--the children of the peasants near him eat water-gruel, their father's eyes he puts out, their beards he draws with pincers, he binds them in ant-hills, or smokes them in the chimney, and so forth, through a revolting list of barbarities.

The youth uncloaks himself as a full-fledged desperado, and his father's short, stern warning in God's name of vengeance only throws him into a passion, and he declares that, though hitherto on their raids he has kept off his companions from the farm, instead of doing so longer, he will give up his father and mother to their will. He reveals what had been a main motive in his visit, an arrangement he had made with his comrade Lambswallow to let him marry Gotelint. But of that brilliant match her father's conduct has deprived the girl; also she will never find another man who can give her such luxuries of dress and fare. Moreover, his sister was worthy of such a husband, and he stops to repeat the tribute he had paid to her while discussing the alliance with his friend. The lines bring before us a weird mediæval scene, to which these reckless free-livers looked forward as their assured end, and which they dreaded most from the lurid light thrown by superstition upon the picture. The ghastly swinging of their corpses on the gibbet ("The rain has drenched and washed us," Villon says two hundred years later, "and the sun dried and blackened us. Magpies and crows have hollowed out our eyes, and plucked away our beards and eyebrows."[9]) troubled them less than the thought that their falling bones must lie unburied, and their lives be followed by no religious rites to mitigate the eternal justice. French poetry has interpreted this phase of crime and misery in Villon's _Epitaphe_; in English it has been interpreted by Tennyson in _Rizpah_, at once the most intense and the most piteous of all his poems, as free from self-consciousness as an early ballad, the most pathetic expression in all literature of a mother's love, and kept out of the category of the very greatest poems only by the intolerable anguish of its emotion. In this old German story we find an interpretation of it too; the briefest and much the simplest, yet not without an unobtrusive power. Young Helmbrecht declares that he told his comrade that he might trust Gotelint never to make him repent his choice.

"I know her," he represents himself as saying, "to be so loyal--on this you may count--that she never will leave you hanging long; she will cut you down with her own hands, and carry you to your grave at the cross-roads, with incense and myrrh--of this you can be sure. Nightly for a whole year she will go about you. Or if, less fortunate, you are blinded or crippled by the loss of hands or feet, the good, pure girl will guide you with her own hand over all the paths of every land; every morning she will bring your crutches to your bed, or cut for you, even till you die, your bread and meat."

From the first, Gotelint has been under the fascination of her brother, and as she hears his long account of the life the wife of Lambswallow must live, she calls young Helmbrecht aside, and arranges to run away from home and marry his friend. So at the appointed time she does, and a great wedding feast, provided at the cost of many widows and orphans, follows the curious mediæval marriage ceremony. In the midst of it a strange foreshadowing of evil comes over her; she wishes herself back at her father's simple fare; his cabbage was better than the luxury of Lambswallow's fish. She tells her bridegroom that she is afraid strangers are at hand to harm them, and even as the players are receiving their gifts, the sheriff and his force break in upon the revellers. All meet quick justice; nine are hung; Helmbrecht, the tenth, is sent off blind, and with only one foot and one hand. "What the forsaken bride suffered" let him tell who saw.