Part 2

Thievish as mice, Strong as oxen, Ferocious as panthers, Cautious as hares, Subtle as serpents, Horrible as dragons, Mettlesome as horses, Obedient (to their rulers) as sheep, Child-loving (of their offspring) as apes, Faithful (to their over-lord) as dogs, Unclean as swine.

Their ferocity led to the report in Greece and Western Europe that they had dog’s heads, and lived on human flesh. The degeneracy of the ancient Slav began with the entrance of the horsemen of Tchep and Subudaï-bagadur into the Russian realm. In the modern Russian, compounded of Finn, Turk, Tatar, and German, scarcely a trace of the nobler Slav lineaments is evident; and from the fourteenth century the current maxim gains continually in veracity: “Scratch a Russian and you find a Tatar.”

[To be continued.]

A GLANCE AT THE HISTORY AND LITERATURE OF SCANDINAVIA.

VI.—THE ROMANCE OF AXEL:

[Concluded.]

Translated by L. A. SHERMAN, PH.D.

* * * * *

From their celestial flight restored Spake Axel first: “Now by my sword, By Northland’s honor, by each star, Which like a bride-maid standing far Looks down on us with beams benign,— By earth and heaven, thou art mine! Oh! it were blessed, far from strife In some sweet vale where peace has made Her home beneath the mountain’s shade, To live with thee in blended life. Alas! my oath, my oath prevents. With hateful look, as here we stand, It speechless thrusts its icy hand Between our hearts, and bids me hence. But fear not; I shall be released With honor from my stringent oath, And when next May shall bid us both To her luxuriant, floral feast, Then shall I surely come again, And claim thee as my bride, my wife. Farewell, thou jewel of my life, Farewell, a long farewell till then!”

And with the word he turned away. He took his sword, and king’s commands, And through Czar Peter’s hundred lands Resumed his swift and dangerous way, Oft hid in woods the whole day through, And guided in his paths by night From heaven’s peerless signal light,— The star of Northland, steadfast, true, Or by those stars in heaven’s crown, Which know no hour of going down, The Wain of Charles, with argent beam, And wheel-spikes forged of brightest gold. And thus he rode through risks extreme, And hordes of foemen manifold, To Mälars palace, where amid The council’s wonderment he told How had escaped their sovereign bold, And gave the letter as he bid.

But meanwhile in her vacant halls Maria murmured Axel’s name, In woods her sighs repeat the same, And vales and hills send back her calls. “What oath, pray, was it so austere? Some maid in that bleak land so dear, An older flame? or is there more Than one? My heart spurns three or four! Thou Northern maid in snow attire, One of us twain must to the grave! Thou knowest naught of Southern fire. Beyond thy farthest frozen wave, Beyond thy snow-peaks burdened high, I’ll search thee out, for thou must die! Yet—went not Axel when a boy From home? Nor has he since that day Returned, and far from all annoy Of camps and strife love flees away. Yes, only truth and honor dwell On such a brow, and arched so well. His steadfast gaze have I looked through, Down to the bottom of his heart, As deep the searching sunbeams dart Through spring-depths, clear and silver-blue. Why fleest thou then? What craved the test Of oaths? Was it to crush this breast? What—but in space my protest dies,— A widow faint with bitter sighs, A dove which roams with weary cry Through earth and heaven without reply. Yes, forests sigh and torrents fall Between us, he hears not my call. What! if I followed him?—But no! It were not meet for woman so. A _woman_,—who will know? If I But wear a sword, the man is made. With danger I have often played, And staked life when I threw the die. From horseback I was never thrown, Nor ever carbine failed me aught. Yes, God inspired in me the thought. Now Axel thou art all my own! I seek thee in thy land of birth, I search for thee throughout the earth, From dale to dale, from strand to strand, And all oaths from thy lips I wring. Now take me, War, upon thy wing, And set me down in Axel’s land!”

So said so done. Resolve and deed Are one with woman, and with speed She is disguised. A casque compressed And hid her dark abundant hair, A doublet stayed her swelling breast, Her powder-sack she filled with care, And from her fair white shoulder slung Death’s telescope, her carabine. Down from a belt of Greek design A crooked sabre gleaming hung, And either lip and cheek she smeared With black,—the hint of future beard.

* * * * *

She seemed, thus girt with belt and sword Like Love in hero’s garb concealed, Or Klinias’ son’s fair form restored, Once painted on the gleaming shield.

“Farewell, my father’s home, farewell! I shall return with love and dwell Again within thy walls some day. I can not wait, I must away. Hide me beneath thy veil, O Night, And give my Axel to my sight.” Already lay upon the strands Of slumbering Sweden’s vanquished lands Czar Peter’s city, which has since Held crowns in pledge from many a prince. Then was it paltry. On its bay It like a new-born dragon lay. Yet nature is betrayed in young That coils itself on heated sands, Already venom in its glands, And hisses on its cloven tongue. A fleet to ravage Svea’s[F] shores Was lading there with murderous stores, And thitherward Maria pressed, And where the ships received their hoard Traced out her way, and made request That she might have a place on board. An officer who walked the quay, And saw, surprised, addressed her then: “You seem more dangerous, Sir youth, To Northern maids than Northern men. However it shall go with thee, They can not tweak thy beard, forsooth! Yet thou canst learn of them the whole Of war: it is for death or life; But either issue of the strife God and Saint Nicholas control.”

The sails are set, the keel cuts through The foam, and hastens toward the west, And Svea’s cliffs soon rise to view In sunset flames: they stand at rest Amid the swirl of tide and wave, The giant landmarks nature gave Of old to warn of dangerous strands. They landed on the famous sands Which skirt the base of Sota’s reef, Where parted Hjalmar[G] from the side Of Ingeborg,[G] his faithful bride, Where afterward she died of grief, When Odin called the youth above To Valhall’s courts, to do his will; And there her ghost sits lingering still Upon the cliff and mourns her love.

* * * * *

But towns are blazing one by one, And children shriek and women fly; Too well they know the war begun, And bells are ringing far and nigh Both night and day the call to arms. Alas! the dead hear no alarms. Woe! wretched land! what arm can save? Thy valiant men are in their grave. But still the peril of the land Joins boys and old men in a band With swords which smote on German mail, And saw Gustavus’s hosts prevail, And halberds wielded with despatch In Denmark, worn with victory, And curious shapes of musketry With rusted locks, and kindled match. Such was the kingdom’s sole defence, A paltry troop, and weaponed ill; Without surprise or doubt it still Went forth to drive the foemen thence. These did not battle hand to hand, But spread their cloud across the land, And lightened from the mountain’s crown Where boldest hearts could not aspire, And unrevenged death thundered down On scanty ranks with ceaseless fire.

But then, as cometh angry Thor With hammer, girt with manhood’s belt, So Axel came and joined the war, Where flight prevailed and horror dwelt,— An angel sent in time of need. His arm is death, his glance a frown; He posts his men, spurs up and down The lines upon his foam-white steed. “Stand, Swedes, close up the ranks again! I have been sent by Carl to bring His greeting home to all his men. Our watchword, God, and Carl our king!” God and King Charles sound through the field. They follow where he leads the way, And heights from which the death-shots play Are stormed, and in a moment yield. And so was stopped the throat of hell, And fields were sown with weapons well, And blindly raged the sword throughout The terrible and bloody rout, Till awe-struck swept the robber-band, With quick-snatched cables from the strand.

Now like a sated beast of prey Lay Slaughter sleeping on the field. From heaven’s tent the moon revealed The awful scene with pitying ray. Along the shore, with sighs, alone, Went Axel where the dead were strewn. They lay by twos, men face to face: How fierce the grasp of their embrace! A faithful clasp wouldst thou behold? Think not of lovers who enfold Each other, smiling tenderly; Go to the battlefield and see How hate, inflamed by death’s fierce smart, Can press its foeman to its heart! Ah! charms of love and happiness Are fleeting as the zephyr’s breath, But hate, and sorrow, and distress Are faithful even unto death. Thus musing, in the darkness nigh He heard the words of weak complaint: “O Axel, water! I am faint,— A last farewell before I die!” He started at the well known sounds, And looking on the rocks espied A youth unknown who leaned beside The sharp cliff, pale and weak with wounds. The moon broke through the cloud and shone Upon the face, and with a groan Of trembling horror bitterly He shrieked, “O Jesus, it is she!”

Yes, it _was_ she. Despite constraint Of pain she spoke in accents faint: “Adieu, O Axel; we must part, For death stands knocking at my heart. Ask not why we meet here to-day. Naught but my love brings me away. Oh! when the endless shadows close And man stands by death’s open door, How changed from what it was before Seems life with all its paltry woes; And nothing but a love like ours Shall rise with him to heaven’s powers. I craved to know thy oath austere, And that it was which brought me here. Now I shall search it out on high Among the stars of purest ray Where it is writ, and shall espy Thine innocence as bright as they. I know I acted foolishly, I know thou sorely mournest me. Forgive me, for my love and trust, Each tear let fall upon my dust! I had not brother, sire or mother; _Thou_ wast my mother, father, brother,— Thou wast my all! O Axel, swear In death that I am dear to thee! Thou sayst it,—thou contentest me. The sweetest of its sagas rare Hath life told me. Shall we not part, Thy maiden folded to thy heart? And shall not here her dust be blended With this dear soil thou hast defended? See, Axel, yonder cloud shut in The moon. When it shines out again, I shall be dead. My spirit then Shall on far-distant shores begin To pray all good, and with all eyes Of heaven, watch thee from the skies. Set on my grave a Southern rose, And when in snows its bloom shall fade, Child of the sun, think of thy maid Who slumbers under Northern snows. Her morning years were quickly passed,— See, Axel, now the cloud moves fast— Farewell,—farewell!”—She sank, and sighed And pressed her lover’s hand, and died.

Then forth from realms of nether air Not death, but death’s young brother rose,— Pale, fierce insanity, which goes With poppy wreaths in streaming hair, And glares up sometimes at the sky, And sometimes downward at the earth, Distorts its ashen lips in mirth, And weeps from its low-burning eye. It comes and touches Axel’s brain, And ever afterwards his feet Pace round the grave with restless beat, As once in saga-days the slain Were wont to flit, and linger nigh Where some deep-buried treasure lay, And all the shore heard night and day His pitiful, dejected cry:— “Be still, ye billows, cease your roar; Ye must not smite so on the shore. What do ye but disturb my dreams? I can not love your foamy streams That dance blood-mixed along the sands, For ye bring death to these my strands. Here lately lay a youth and bled, And roses on his grave I spread, For he was like—I know well whom;— I bear _her_ home in spring’s first bloom. They tell me that earth lulls my love To slumber, that grass grows above Her faithful breast: they are deceived— She sat upon the rock and grieved, Pale was she as one painteth death,— But that came of the moon’s faint light; And cold her lips and cheek that night— That came but of the north wind’s breath. I bade my own beloved stay, Her fingers stroked my locks away: My brain was dark and heavy then, But soon methought it light again. Far off in yonder east there shine The vanished days, alas! how few, Those days as fair as heaven’s blue When Axel lived the life divine. A castle stood in groves of green, And in that castle dwelt a queen. I lay in forests murdered there; She brought my life back in a kiss, And from her heart she gave me bliss,— Her heart of love, so warm and rare. Now lies it frozen in her breast, Her withering breast, and all is past!— Ye stars of yonder spaces vast, Take off from me your burning eyes! A morning star as bright as ye, I saw sink in a bloody sea. It smells of blood yet by the strand And blood there is upon my hand.”

Such was his plaint on Sota’s shore, Where yet he stands at break of day, At night-fall will not go away, But lingers weeping as before. One morning saw him lifeless there, His hands clasped upward as in prayer, While on his cheeks the last tears lie, Half stiffened in the morning’s chill; But on the grave is fastened still The viewless luster of his eye.

* * * * *

Such was the saga that I heard; How deep my tender heart was stirred. Full thirty years have passed away, Yet lives it in my soul to-day. For with lines definite and sharp Stand childhood’s fancies graven well In hearts of skalds, where small they dwell, As Aslög[H] in King Heimer’s harp,

Till summoned they come forth as she, Betraying god-like pedigree In dazzling raiment, gestures high, And golden hair, and kingly eye. Ah! full with golden lyres is hung The heaven of our childhood’s hours, And all that skalds may since have sung, As great as heroes, small as flowers, Already in a fairer guise Has passed before our youthful eyes. Yet when melodiously ring The far-piped notes of quails in spring, When leaves the moon its eastern wave, A ghost uprising from the grave, And paints so mournfully and still The hue of death on dale and hill, Then sounds of sighs invade mine ear, Then seems as if I still could hear The ancient tale, and told so wide, Of Axel and his Russian bride.

[To be continued.]

PICTURES FROM ENGLISH HISTORY.

By C. E. BISHOP.

VII.—THE JOHN BROWN OF THE ENGLISH SLAVES.

Macaulay has remarked as singular the fact that two great relics of barbarism in England were never abolished by law: disappeared, melted away before the advance of civilization. These were feudalism and human slavery.

It is also a remarkable fact that there never was in England an insurrection of the laboring classes, save one, that in the reign of Richard II., of sad fortune. The same can not be said of any other nation. This favorable contrast for England is due to several causes which we need not recount. But England’s one servile rising came very near putting an abrupt end to serfdom by violence; emancipation was sanctioned and pardoned by royal writs, and would have been confirmed by act of Parliament had that body contained fewer slaveholders at the time; _i. e._, had it been more truly a representative body of the English people.

Wat Tyler was the John Brown of that movement, and Richard of Bordeaux came near being its Abraham Lincoln. Death in the guise of the Black Plague had struck a fierce blow at English slavery about the middle of the fourteenth century. [See last CHAUTAUQUAN.] It made labor so scarce that the old laws binding the laborer to the soil and compelling him to work without hire, proved abortive; insomuch that we find Parliament soon at work passing the new “Statute of Laborers.” It was made to reach as well freedmen as serfs, for it said any man who was out of work “must serve the first employer who shall require him to do so,” and must not accept higher wages than obtained before the plague; and it forbade him going beyond his parish to hire out, under pain of arrest as a vagabond, branding on the forehead with a hot iron being one of the penalties. But this statute did not work, either; for succeeding Parliaments adopted it over and over again. That was the way they made laws more binding. King Edward I. reaffirmed to respect the Great Charter some thirty times. And yet, farmers and lords whose lands were lying waste, or whose herds were running wild for want of help, would offer large pay to get it and men were reckless enough to hire out to those who would pay the most, the much-enacted Statute of Laborers to the contrary, notwithstanding.

Then a crazy step was taken. An effort was made to supply landlords with unrequited help by remanding freed serfs to slavery on frivolous pretexts and legal technicalities, the ex-master usually controlling the decision of the manorial court before which these questions were tried. Of course the accused freedman had there little chance for right. The consequence was that the woods and wastes Boon became filled with bands of men who had been slaves, had tasted the sweets of freedom, and had turned outlaws and chronic vagabonds sooner than come within the reach of such “justice.”

While this was going on, during twenty years, other things helped to create the spirit of insubordination. John Wickliffe had begun to thunder against the tyranny of Rome and the corruptions of the clergy, and to preach individual liberty of conscience. The sect of Lollards, of which he was the head, had offshoots of ruder tenets and practices. A preacher named John Ball had for many years itinerated, with all England for his circuit and the fields, market-places and church-yards for his chapels. He “preached politics” with an unction and genuine eloquence, as this condensed report of one of his sermons will show:

“Good people, things will never go well in England so long as there be villeins and gentlemen. By what right are they whom we call lords greater than we? Why do they hold us in serfage? If we all came of the same father and mother, of Adam and Eve, [see the danger of putting the Bible into common people’s hands!] how can they say or prove that they are better than we, if it be not that they make us gain for them by our toil what they spend in their pride? They are clothed in velvet and warm in their furs and their ermine, while we are covered with rags. They have wine and spices and fair bread, we oat-cake and straw and water to drink. They have leisure and fine houses; we have pain and labor, the rain and wind in the fields. And yet it is of us and of our toil that these men hold their state.”

And John Ball, like all men who move the masses, boiled his whole political and religious platform down into a motto with a rhyme to it, so that the most stolid ignorance could learn and remember it—for, mark you, poetry is the aspiration of the ignorant as well as the inspiration of the gifted:

When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman?

Immortal old epigrammatist and poet of democracy! His lines are heard to-day wherever manhood rebels against the pride and tyranny of property. It was in every poor man’s mouth in England for a quarter of a century, and it did a wonderful work, that little couplet. Such is the power of a thought!

There were other street orators and other poets. An Oxford student wrote “The Plaints of Piers, the Ploughman,” the saddest, fiercest protest against caste that England ever heard.

While all this work was going on in the huts and fields of England, her proud nobles were squabbling over the dotage and around the dying bed of Edward III., and for the control of his grandson, Richard II.; and while they were thus dissipating government, her enemies were assailing her on all sides. Armies and fleets were raised, and campaigns and expeditions fooled away, while the treasure was squandered in both military failures and court prodigality and corruption. Taxes were laid, on the heels of defeats which made the old archers of Cressy, Nevill’s Cross, and Poictiers mad with shame and rage.

The crowning act of folly and injustice came when Parliament laid a poll-tax on every person in the kingdom over fifteen years of age. This made the poor man pay as much as the rich; and more, if the poorer the man the larger his family, which was probably the case then as now. There were no census statistics, and the tax-gatherers had to make a domiciliary visit in every case, an inquisition Englishmen especially resent; for the feeling that every man’s house is his castle dates back to the life of family segregation for which they were remarked in old Roman times. The tax, payable in money, came hard on poor people, who generally worked for their food and clothing, paid in kind. With an exaggerated idea of the population of England, Parliament had not levied a large enough unit per head. The rich, instead of helping the poor heads of families to pay the tax, as directed in the writs, shirked their own share. Thus the returns were insufficient to meet government needs, and the tax-gatherers were sent out again, with sheriffs’ posses, to glean more thoroughly.