So they came at length before the throne of the King, and when they
saw his golden axe and his crown of iron they began to tremble with
fear. And he asked them:
"Wherefore have you come to see me, poor little things?"
But they answered him not at all.
"I know you," added the King, "you bud of a witch, and you also,
shoot of a charcoal-burner. By power of sorcery have you penetrated
into this laboratory of Nature, yet now your lips are closed like
capon stuffed with bread-crumbs!"
Nele trembled as she gazed upon the awful aspect of that spirit. But
the manly courage of Ulenspiegel revived, and he made answer bravely:
"The ashes of Claes beat upon my breast. For, Most Divine Highness,
Death now goes gathering his harvest through all the land of Flanders,
mowing down the bravest of her men and the sweetest of her women
in the name of His Holiness the Pope. And the privileges of my
country are broken, her charters annulled, she is wasted by famine,
her weavers and cloth-workers abandon her to look for work in other
lands. And soon must she die if none comes to her aid. Your Highness,
I am naught indeed but a poor little chit of a man that has come into
the world like any other, and I have lived as I was able, imperfect,
limited on every side, ignorant, neither virtuous nor chaste, and most
unworthy of any grace, human or divine. Yet my mother Soetkin died as
the result of torture and grief, and Claes was burned in a terrible
fire, and I have sworn to avenge them. Once I have been able to do
this. But now I long to see the miserable soil of my native land
made happy, the soil where the bones of my parents lie scattered;
and I have asked of God the death of our persecutors, but not yet has
He heard my prayer. This is why, all weary of my complaining, I have
evoked your presence by the power of Katheline's charm, and this is
why we are come to you, I and my trembling comrade here, to fall at
your feet and to beg you, Most Divine Highness, to save our poor land!"
To this the King and his illustrious companion as with one voice
made answer:
By battle and fire,
By death and sword,
Seek the Seven.
In death and blood,
Ruin and tears,
Find the Seven.
Ugly, cruel, wicked, deformed,
Very scourge of the whole earth,
Burn the Seven.
Listen now, attend and see,
Tell us, poor thing, are you not glad?
Find the Seven.
And all the spirits sang now together:
In death and blood,
In ruin and tears,
Find the Seven.
Listen now, attend and see,
Tell us, poor thing, are you not glad?
Find the Seven.
But Ulenspiegel only said:
"Your Highness, and you my Lords Spirits, I understand nothing of
your language. You are mocking me, without a doubt."
But the spirits, without listening to him at all, went on with their
singing:
When the North
Shall kiss the West,
Then shall be the end of ruin.
Find the Seven,
And the Cincture.
And they sang with such an effect of unanimity and such a terrifying
force of sound that the very earth trembled and the heavens
shuddered. And the birds twittered, the owls hooted, the sparrows
chirruped with fear, the sea-eagles wailed aloud, flying hither and
thither in their dismay. And all the animals of the earth, lions,
snakes, bears, stags, roe-bucks, wolves, dogs, and cats, roared,
hissed, belled, howled, barked, and miawed most terribly.
And the spirits kept on singing:
Listen now, attend and see,
Love the Seven,
And the Cincture.
And the cocks crowed, and all the spirits vanished away, excepting
only one wicked lord of the mines, who took Nele and Ulenspiegel each
in one of his arms, and cast them most roughly into the void.
Then they awoke and found themselves lying by each other, as if they
had been asleep, and they shivered in the chill morning air.
And Ulenspiegel beheld the sweet body of Nele, all golden in the
light of the rising sun.
HERE BEGINS THE SECOND BOOK OF THE LEGEND OF THE GLORIOUS JOYOUS AND
HEROIC ADVENTURES OF TYL ULENSPIEGEL AND LAMME GOEDZAK IN THE LAND
OF FLANDERS AND ELSEWHERE
I
One morning in September Ulenspiegel took his staff, three florins
that had been given him by Katheline, a piece of pig's liver and a
slice of bread, and set out to go from Damme to Antwerp, seeking the
Seven. Nele he left asleep.
On the way he met a dog who followed after him, smelling around
because of the liver, and jumping up at his legs. Ulenspiegel would
have driven off the dog, but seeing the persistence of the animal,
he thus addressed him:
"My dear dog, you are certainly ill-advised to leave your home,
where you would find awaiting you an excellent meal of patties and
other fine remains (to say nothing of the marrow-bones), to follow,
as you are now doing, a mere adventurer of the road, a vagabond that is
like to lack so much as a root to give you for nourishment. Follow my
advice, most imprudent little dog, and return to your innkeeper. And
for the future, take good care to avoid the rain and snow, the hail,
the drizzling mists, the glassy frosts and other such wretched fare
as is alone reserved for the back of the poor wanderer. Keep close at
home, rather, in a corner of the hearth, and warm yourself, curled up
in front of the cheerful fire. But leave to me the long wandering in
mud and dust, in cold and heat, to be roasted to-day, to-morrow frozen,
plenished on Friday but on Sunday famished for want of food. For,
trust me, little dog, the wise thing is to return at once like a
sensible and experienced little dog to the place whence you came."
But it would seem that the animal did not hear a single word of what
Ulenspiegel was saying, for he continued to wag his tail and jump his
highest, barking all the while, in his desire for food. Ulenspiegel
imagined that all this was just a sign of friendliness, and gave no
thought to the liver which he carried in his scrip.
So on and on he walked, with the dog following behind. And when
they had gone in this way the better part of a league, they saw a
cart on the roadside with a donkey harnessed thereto, holding his
head down. On a bank, at the side of the road, between two clumps of
thistles, reclined a man. He was very fat, and in one hand he held the
knuckle-end of a leg of mutton, and in the other hand a bottle. He
gnawed the knuckle-bone and drank from the bottle, but when he was
doing neither of these things he would fall to weeping and groaning.
Ulenspiegel stopped on his way, and the dog stopped too, but quickly
jumped up on to the bank, smelling doubtless a good odour of liver and
mutton. There he sat on his hind legs by the fat man's side, and began
to paw at the stranger's doublet, as much as to say, "Please give me
a share of your meal!" But the man elbowed him off, and holding up
the knuckle-bone in the air began to moan aloud most piteously. The
dog did likewise in the eagerness of his desire, while the donkey
(who was weary of being tied to the cart and thus prevented from
getting at the thistles) set up, in his turn, a most piercing bray.
"What's the matter now, Jan?" the man inquired of his donkey.
"Nothing," said Ulenspiegel, answering for him, "except that he would
fain make his breakfast off those thistles that grow there on either
side of you, like the thistles that are carved on the rood-screen at
Tessenderloo, below the figure of Our Lord. Nor would this dog here,
I'm thinking, be any the less inclined to join his jaws together on
the bone you have got there. But in the meanwhile I will give him a
piece of this liver of mine."
The man looked up at Ulenspiegel, who straightway recognized him as
none other than his friend Lamme Goedzak of Damme.
"Lamme," he cried, "you here? And what are you doing, eating and
drinking and moaning? Has some soldier or other been so impertinent
as to box your ears, or what's the matter? Tell me."
"Alas!" said Lamme, "my wife!"
And he would have emptied his bottle of wine there and then had not
Ulenspiegel laid a hand on his arm and suggested that it were fairer
that the drink should be given to him that had none. "Besides," he
added, "to drink thus distractedly profits naught but one's kidneys."
"Well said," answered Lamme, handing his friend the bottle, "but will
you drink, I wonder, to any better purpose?"
Ulenspiegel took the bottle, drank his fill, then handed it back again.
"Call me a Spaniard," he said, "if I've left enough to make a minnow
drunk!"
Lamme inspected the bottle. Then, without ever ceasing to groan,
he rummaged in his wallet and produced another bottle, and another
piece of sausage which he cut up in slices and began to munch in the
most melancholy fashion.
"Do you never stop eating, Lamme?" asked Ulenspiegel.
"Often, my son," he replied. "But now I am eating to drive away sad
thoughts. Where are you, wife of mine?" And as he spoke, Lamme wiped
away a tear. After which he cut himself ten slices of sausage.
"Lamme," said Ulenspiegel, "you should not eat so quickly, taking no
thought at all for the poor pilgrim."
Lamme, who was still whimpering, gave four of the slices to
Ulenspiegel, who ate them up immediately, and was much affected by
their good flavour. But Lamme said, eating and crying all at the
same time:
"O wife, O goodly wife of mine! How sweet she was, how beautiful she
was! Light as a butterfly, nimble as the lightning, and with a voice
like a skylark! For all that, she was overfond of fine clothes. Alas,
but how well she looked in them! And surely, the flowers also, are
they not fond of rich apparel? Oh, if you had seen her, my son--her
little hands, so nimble to caress, such hands as you never could
have suffered to come in contact with saucepan or frying-pan! And
her complexion, which was clear as the day, would surely have been
burnt by standing over the kitchen fire. And what eyes she had! Only
to look at them was to be melted quite with tenderness. Alas, I have
lost her! Go on eating, Tyl; it is good Ghent sausage."
"But why has she left you?" asked Ulenspiegel.
"How should I know?" Lamme replied. "Alas! gone for ever are those
days when I used to go to her home a-courting! Then, verily, she would
fly away from me, half in love and half in fear! And her arms were
bare, as like as not (beautiful arms they were, so round and white),
but if she saw me looking at them she would cover them quickly with
the sleeve of her gown.
"At other times, again, she would gladly lend herself to my caresses,
and I would kiss her closed eyes, and that lovely neck of hers, so
large and firm. She would shiver all over, uttering little cries of
love, and then, leaning her head backwards, she would give me a playful
slap upon my nose. Thereafter she would laugh and I would cry aloud,
and we would wrestle together right amorously, and there was naught
betwixt us but laughter and fun. But there, there. Is any wine left
in the bottle, Tyl?"
Tyl gave him what remained.
"This ham does great good to my stomach," he said.
"To mine also," answered Lamme, "but I shall never see my dear one
again. She has fled away from Damme. What say you, will you come with
me in my cart to look for her?"
"That will I," answered Ulenspiegel.
So they got up into the donkey-cart, and the donkey set up a most
melancholy bray to celebrate their departure.
As for the dog, he had already made off, well filled, without a word
to any one.