from Upsala. They say he was once very clever; he knew the learned
languages, could sing and write verses too; but then there was
something that went wrong, and so he gave both his thoughts and
himself up to drinking spirits, and as his health suffered by it, he
came out here into the country, where they paid for his board and
lodging.
"He was as gentle as a child, when the dark humour did not come over
him, for then he was strong, and ran about in the forest like a hunted
deer; but when we got him home, we persuaded him to look into the book
with the dry plants. Then he would sit the whole day and look at one
plant, and then at another, and many a time the tears ran down his
cheeks. God knows what he then thought! But he begged that he might
have the book with him in his coffin; and now it lies there, and the
lid will soon be fastened down, and then he will take his peaceful
rest in the grave!"
They raised the winding-sheet. There was peace in the face of the
dead: a sunbeam fell on it; a swallow in its arrowy flight, darted
into the new-made arbour, and in its flight circled twittering over
the dead man's head.
How strange it is!--we all assuredly know it--to take out old letters
from the days of our youth and read them: a whole life, as it were,
then rises up with all its hopes, and all its troubles. How many of
those with whom we, in their time, lived so devotedly, are now even as
the dead to us, and yet they still live! But we have not thought of
them for many years--them whom we once thought we should always cling
to, and share our mutual joys and sorrows with.
The withered oak-leaf in the book here, is a memorial of the
friend--the friend of his school-days--the friend for life. He fixed
this leaf on the student's cap in the green wood, when the vow of
friendship was concluded for the whole of life. Where does he now
live? The leaf is preserved; friendship forgotten. Here is a foreign
conservatory-plant, too fine for the gardens of the North--it looks as
if there still were fragrance in these leaves!--_she_ gave it to
him--she, the young lady of that noble garden.
Here is the marsh-lotus which he himself has plucked and watered with
salt tears--the marsh-lotus from the fresh waters. And here is a
nettle: what does its leaf say? What did he think on plucking it--on
preserving it? Here are lilies of the valley from the woodland
solitudes; here are honeysuckle leaves from the village ale-house
flower-pot; and here the bare, sharp blade of grass.
The flowering lilac bends its fresh, fragrant clusters over the dead
man's head; the swallow again flies past; "quivit! quivit!" Now the
men come with nails and hammer; the lid is placed over the corpse,
whose head rests on the Mute-Book--preserved--forgotten!
THE ZÄTHER DALE.
* * * * *
Everything was in order, the carriage examined, even a whip with a
good lash was not forgotten. "Two whips would be best," said the
ironmonger, who sold it, and the ironmonger was a man of experience,
which travellers often are not. A whole bag full of "slanter"--that
is, copper coins of small value--stood before us for bridge-money, for
beggars, for shepherd's boys, or whoever might open the many
field-gates for us that obstructed our progress. But we had to do this
ourselves, for the rain pattered down and lashed the ground; no one
had any desire to come out in such weather. The rushes in the marsh
bent and waved; it was a real rain feast for them, and it whistled
from the tops of the rushes: "We drink with our feet, we drink with
our heads, we drink with the whole body, and yet we stand on one leg,
hurra! We drink with the bending willow, with the dripping flowers on
the bank; their cups run over--the marsh marigold, that fine lady, can
bear it better! Hurra! it is a feast! it pours, it pours; we whistle
and we sing; it is our own song. Tomorrow the frogs will croak the
same after us and say, 'it is quite new!'"
And the rushes waved, and the rain pattered down with a splashing
noise--it was fine weather to travel in to Zäther Dale, and to see its
far-famed beauties. The whip-lash now came off the whip; it was
fastened on again, and again, and every time it was shorter, so that
at last there was not a lash, nor was there any handle, for the handle
went after the lash--or sailed after it--as the road was quite
navigable, and gave one a vivid idea of the beginning of the deluge.
One poor jade now drew too much, the other drew too little, and one of
the splinter bars broke; well, by all that is vexatious, that was a
fine drive! The leather apron in front had a deep pond in its folds
with an outlet into one's lap. Now one of the linch-pins came out; now
the twisting of the rope harness became loose, and the cross-strap was
tired of holding any longer. Glorious inn in Zäther, how I now long
more for thee than thy far-famed dale. And the horses went slower, and
the rain fell faster, and so--yes, so we were not yet in Zäther.
Patience, thou lank spider, that in the ante-chamber quietly dost spin
thy web over the expectant's foot, spin my eyelids close in a sleep as
still as the horse's pace! Patience? no, she was not with us in the
carriage to Zäther. But to the inn, by the road side, close to the
far-famed valley, I got at length, towards evening.
And everything was flowing in the yard, chaotically mingled; manure
and farming implements, staves and straw. The poultry sat there washed
to shadows, or at least like stuck-up hens' skins with feathers on,
and even the ducks crept close up to the wet wall, sated with the wet.
The stable-man was cross, the girl still more so; it was difficult to
get them to bestir themselves: the steps were crooked, the floor
sloping and but just washed, sand strewn thickly on it, and the air
was damp and cold. But without, scarcely twenty paces from the inn, on
the other side of the road, lay the celebrated valley, a garden made
by nature herself, and whose charm consists of trees and bushes, wells
and purling brooks.
It was a long hollow; I saw the tops of the trees looming up, and the
rain drew its thick veil over it. The whole of that long evening did I
sit and look upon it during that shower of showers. It was as if the
Venern, the Vettern and a few more lakes ran through an immense sieve
from the clouds. I had ordered something to eat and drink, but I got
nothing. They ran up and they ran down; there was a hissing sound of
roasting by the hearth; the girls chattered, the men drank "sup,"[R]
strangers came, were shown into their rooms, and got both roast and
boiled. Several hours had passed, when I made a forcible appeal to the
girl, and she answered phlegmatically: "Why, Sir, you sit there and
write without stopping, so you cannot have time to eat."
[Footnote R: Swedish, _sup_. Danish, _snaps_. German, _schnaps_.
English, _drams_.]
It was a long evening, "but the evening passed!" It had become quite
still in the inn; all the travellers, except myself, had again
departed, certainly in order to find better quarters for the night at
Hedemore or Brunbeck. I had seen, through the half-open door into the
dirty tap-room, a couple of fellows playing with greasy cards; a huge
dog lay under the table and glared with its large red eyes; the
kitchen was deserted; the rooms too; the floor was wet, the storm
rattled, the rain beat against the windows--"and now to bed! said I."
I slept an hour, perhaps two, and was awakened by a loud bawling from
the high road. I started up: it was twilight, the night at that period
is not darker--it was about one o'clock. I heard the door shaken
roughly; a deep manly voice shouted aloud, and there was a hammering
with a cudgel against the planks of the yard-gate. Was it an
intoxicated or a mad man that was to be let in? The gate was now
opened, but many words were not exchanged. I heard a woman scream at
the top of her voice from terror. There was now a great bustling
about; they ran across the yard in wooden shoes; the bellowing of
cattle and the rough voices of men were mingled together. I sat on the
edge of the bed. Out or in! what was to be done? I looked from the
window; in the road there was nothing to be seen, and it still rained.
All at once some one came up stairs with heavy footsteps: he opened
the door of the room adjoining mine--now he stood still! I listened--a
large iron bolt fastened my door. The stranger now walked across the
floor, now he shook my door, and then kicked against it with a heavy
foot, and whilst all this was passing, the rain beat against the
windows, and the blast made them rattle.
"Are there any travellers here?" shouted a voice; "the house is on
fire!"
I now dressed myself and hastened out of the room and down the stairs.
There was no smoke to be seen, but when I reached the yard, I saw that
the whole building--a long and extensive one of wood--was enveloped in
flames and clouds of smoke. The fire had originated in the baking
oven, which no one had looked to; a traveller, who accidently came
past, saw it, called out and hammered at the door: and the women
screamed, and the cattle bellowed, when the fire stuck its red tongue
into them.
Now came the fire-engine and the flames were extinguished. By this
time it was morning. I stood in the road, scarcely a hundred steps
from the far-famed dale. "One may as well spring into it as walk into
it!" and I sprang into it; and the rain poured down, and the water
flowed--the whole dale was a well.
The trees turned their leaves the wrong side out, purely because of
the pouring rain, and they said, as the rushes did the day before: "We
drink with our heads, we drink with our feet, and we drink with the
whole body, and yet stand on our legs, hurra! it rains, and it pours;
we whistle and we sing; it is our own song--and it is quite new!"
Yes, that the rushes also sang yesterday--but it was the same, ever
the same. I looked and looked, and all I know of the beauty of Zäther
Dale is, that she had washed herself!
THE MIDSUMMER FESTIVAL IN LACKSAND.
* * * * *
Lacksand lay on the other side of the dal-elv which the road now led
us over for the third or fourth time. The picturesque bell-tower of
red painted beams, erected at a distance from the church, rose above
the tall trees on the clayey declivity: old willows hung gracefully
over the rapid stream. The floating bridge rocked under us--nay, it
even sank a little, so that the water splashed under the horse's
hoofs; but these bridges have such qualities! The iron chains that
held it rattled, the planks creaked, the boards splashed, the water
rose, and murmured and roared, and so we got over where the road
slants upwards towards the town. Close opposite here the last year's
May-pole still stood with withered flowers. How many hands that bound
these flowers are now withered in the grave?
It is far prettier to go up on the sloping bank along the elv, than to
follow the straight high-road into the town. The path conducts us,
between pasture fields and leaf trees, up to the parsonage, where we
passed the evening with the friendly family. The clergyman himself was
but lately dead, and his relatives were all in mourning. There was
something about the young daughter--I knew not myself what it was--but
I was led to think of the delicate flax flower, too delicate for the
short northern summer.
They spoke about the Midsummer festival the next day, and of the
winter season here, when the swans, often more than thirty at a time,
sit (motionless themselves) on the elv, and utter strange, mournful
tones. They always come in pairs, they said, two and two, and thus
they also fly away again. If one of them dies, its partner always
remains a long time after all the others are gone; lingers, laments,
and then flies away alone and solitary.
When I left the parsonage in the evening, the moon, in its first
quarter, was up. The May-pole was raised; the little steamer, 'Prince
Augustus,' with several small vessels in tow, came over the Siljan
lake and into the elv; a musician sprang on shore, and began to play
dances under the tall wreathed May-pole. And there was soon a merry
circle around it--all so happy, as if the whole of life were but a
delightful summer night.
Next morning was the Midsummer Festival. It was Sunday, the 24th of
June, and a beautiful sunshiny day it was. The most picturesque sight
at the festival is to see the people from the different parishes
coming in crowds, in large boats over Siljan's lake, and landing on
its shores. We drove out to the landing-place, Barkedale, and before
we got out of the town, we met whole troops coming from there, as well
as from the mountains.
Close by the town of Lacksand, there is a row of low wooden shops on
both sides of the way, which only get their interior light through the
doorway. They form a whole street, and serve as stables for the
parishioners, but also--and it was particularly the case that
morning--to go into and arrange their finery. Almost all the shops or
sheds were filled with peasant women, who were anxiously busy about
their dresses, careful to get them into the right folds, and in the
mean time peeped continually out of the door to see who came past. The
number of arriving church-goers increased; men, women, and children,
old and young, even infants; for at the Midsummer festival no one
stays at home to take care of them, and so of course they must come
too--all must go to church.
What a dazzling army of colours! Fiery red and grass green aprons meet
our gaze. The dress of the women is a black skirt, red bodice, and
white sleeves: all of them had a psalm-book wrapped in the folded silk
pocket-handkerchief. The little girls were entirely in yellow, and
with red aprons; the very least were in Turkish-yellow clothes. The
men were dressed in black coats, like our paletôts, embroidered with
red woollen cord; a red band with a tassel hung down from the large
black hat; with dark knee breeches, and blue stockings, with red
leather gaiters--in short, there was a dazzling richness of colour,
and that, too, on a bright sunny morning in the forest road.
This road led down a steep to the lake, which was smooth and blue.
Twelve or fourteen long boats, in form like gondolas, were already
drawn up on the flat strand, which here is covered with large stones.
These stones served the persons who landed, as bridges; the boats were
laid alongside them, and the people clambered up, and went and bore
each other on land. There certainly were at least a thousand persons
on the strand; and far out on the lake, one could see ten or twelve
boats more coming, some with sixteen oars, others with twenty, nay,
even with four-and-twenty, rowed by men and women, and every boat
decked out with green branches. These, and the varied clothes, gave to
the whole an appearance of something so festal, so fantastically rich,
as one would hardly think the north possessed. The boats came nearer,
all crammed full of living freight; but they came silently, without
noise or talking, and rowed up to the declivity of the forest.
The boats were drawn up on the sand: it was a fine subject for a
painter, particularly one point--the way up the slope, where the whole
mass moved on between the trees and bushes. The most prominent figures
there, were two ragged urchins, clothed entirely in bright yellow,
each with a skin bundle on his shoulders. They were from Gagne, the
poorest parish in Dalecarlia. There was also a lame man with his blind
wife: I thought of the fable of my childhood, of the lame and the
blind man: the lame man lent his eyes, and the blind his legs, and so
they reached the town.
And we also reached the town and the church, and thither they all
thronged: they said there were above five thousand persons assembled
there. The church-service began at five o'clock. The pulpit and organ
were ornamented with flowering lilacs; children sat with lilac-flowers
and branches of birch; the little ones had each a piece of oat-cake,
which they enjoyed. There was the sacrament for the young persons who
had been confirmed; there was organ-playing and psalm-singing; but
there was a terrible screaming of children, and the sound of heavy
footsteps; the clumsy, iron-shod Dal shoes tramped loudly upon the
stone floor. All the church pews, the gallery pews, and the centre
aisle were quite filled with people. In the side aisle one saw various
groups--playing children, and pious old folks: by the sacristy there
sat a young mother giving suck to her child--she was a living image of
the Madonna herself.
The first impression of the whole was striking, but only the
first--there was too much that disturbed. The screaming of children,
and the noise of persons walking were heard above the singing, and
besides that, there was an insupportable smell of garlic: almost all
the congregation had small bunches of garlic with them, of which they
ate as they sat. I could not bear it, and went out into the
churchyard: here--as it always is in nature--it was affecting, it was
holy. The church door stood open; the tones of the organ, and the
voices of the psalm-singers were wafted out here in the bright
sunlight, by the open lake: the many who could not find a place in the
church, stood outside, and sang with the congregation from the
psalm-book: round about on the monuments, which are almost all of
cast-iron, there sat mothers suckling their infants--the fountain of
life flowed over death and the grave. A young peasant stood and read
the inscription on a grave:
"Ach hur södt al hafve lefvet,
Ach hur skjöut al kunne döe!"[S]
[Footnote S: "How sweet to live--how beautiful to die!"]
Beautiful Christian, scriptural language, verses certainly taken from
the psalm-book, were read on the graves; they were all read, for the
service lasted several hours. This, however, can never be good for
devotion.
The crowd at length streamed from the church; the fiery-red and
grass-green aprons glittered; but the mass of human beings became
thicker, and closer, and pressed forward. The white head-dresses, the
white band over the forehead, and the white sleeves, were the
prevailing colours--it looked like a long procession in Catholic
countries. There was again life and motion on the road; the
over-filled boats again rowed away; one waggon drove off after the
other; but yet there were people left behind. Married and unmarried
men stood in groups in the broad street of Lacksand, from the church
up to the inn. I was staying there, and I must acknowledge that my
Danish tongue sounded quite foreign to them all. I then tried the
Swedish, and the girl at the inn assured me that she understood me
better than she had understood the Frenchman, who the year before had
spoken French to her.
As I sit in my room, my hostess's grand-daughter, a nice little child,
comes in, and is pleased to see my parti-coloured carpet-bag, my
Scotch plaid, and the red leather lining of the portmanteau. I
directly cut out for her, from a sheet of white paper, a Turkish
mosque, with minarets and open windows, and away she runs with it--so
happy, so happy!
Shortly after, I heard much loud talking in the yard, and I had a
presentiment that it was concerning what I had cut out; I therefore
stepped softly out into the balcony, and saw the grandmother standing
below, and with beaming face, holding my clipped-out paper at arm's
length. A whole crowd of Dalecarlians, men and women, stood around,
all in artistic ecstacy over my work; but the little girl--the sweet
little child--screamed, and stretched out her hands after her lawful
property, which she was not permitted to keep, as it was too fine.
I sneaked in again, yet, of course, highly flattered and cheered; but
a moment after there was a knocking at my door: it was the
grandmother, my hostess, who came with a whole plate full of
spice-nuts.
"I bake the best in all Dalecarlia," said she; "but they are of the
old fashion, from my grandmother's time. You cut out so well, Sir,
should you not be able to cut me out some new fashions?"
And I sat the whole of Midsummer night, and clipped fashions for
spice-nuts. Nutcrackers with knights' boots, windmills which were both
mill and miller--but in slippers, and with the door in the
stomach--and ballet-dancers that pointed with one leg towards the
seven stars. Grandmother got them, but she turned the ballet-dancers
up and down; the legs went too high for her; she thought that they had
one leg and three arms.
"They will be new fashions," said she; "but they are difficult."
FAITH AND KNOWLEDGE.
* * * * *
Truth can never be at variance with truth, science can never militate
against faith: we naturally speak of them both in their purity: they
respond to and they strengthen man's most glorious thought:
_immortality_. And yet you may say, "I was more peaceful, I was safer
when, as a child, I closed my eyes on my mother's breast and slept
without thought or care, wrapping myself up simply in faith." This
prescience, this compound of understanding in everything, this
entering of the one link into the other from eternity to eternity,
tears away from me a support--my confidence in prayer; that which is,
as it were, the wings wherewith to fly to my God! If it be loosened,
then I fall powerless in the dust, without consolation or hope.
I bend my energies, it is true, towards attaining the great and
glorious light of knowledge, but it appears to me that therein is
human arrogance: it is, as one should say, "I will be as wise as God."
"That you shall be!" said the serpent to our first parents when it
would seduce them to eat of the tree of knowledge. Through my
understanding I must acknowledge the truth of what the astronomer
teaches and proves. I see the wonderful, eternal omniscience of God in
the whole creation of the world--in the great and in the small, where
the one attaches itself to the other, is joined with the other, in an
endless harmonious entireness; and I tremble in my greatest need and
sorrow. What can my prayer change, where everything is law, from
eternity to eternity?
You tremble as you see the Almighty, who reveals Himself in all
loving-kindness--that Creator, according to man's expression, whose
understanding and heart are one--you tremble when you know that he has
elected you to immortality.
I know it in the faith, in the holy, eternal words of the Bible.
Knowledge lays itself like a stone over my grave, but my faith is that
which breaks it.
Now, thus it is! The smallest flower preaches from its green stalk, in
the name of knowledge--_immortality_. Hear it! the beautiful also
bears proofs of immortality, and with the conviction of faith and
knowledge, the immortal will not tremble in his greatest need; the
wings of prayer will not droop: you will believe in the eternal laws
of love, as you believe in the laws of sense.
When the child gathers flowers in the fields and brings us the whole
handful, where one is erect and the other hangs the head, thrown as it
were among one another, then it is that we see the beauty in every one
by itself--that harmony in colour and in form, which pleases our eye
so well. We arrange them instinctively, and every single beauty is
blended together in one entire beauteous group. We do not look at the
flower, but on the whole bouquet. The beauty of harmony is an instinct
in us; it lies in our eyes and in our ears, those bridges between our
soul and the creation around us--in all our senses there is such a
divine, such an entire and perfect stream in our whole being, a
striving after the harmonious, as it shows itself in all created
things, even in the pulsations of the air, made visible in Chladni's
figures.
In the Bible we find the expression: "God in spirit and in
truth,"--and hence we most significantly find an expression for the
admission of what we call a feeling of the beautiful; for what else is
this revelation of God but spirit and truth? And just as our own soul
shines out of the eye and the fine movement around the mouth, so does
the created image shine forth from God in spirit and truth. There is
harmonious beauty from the smallest leaf and flower to the large,
swelling bouquet, from our earth itself to the numberless globes in
the firmamental space--as far as the eye sees, as far as science
ventures, all, small and great, is beauty and harmony.