gentle and resigned as these three sisters. There are some who bitterly
resent having been abandoned by their lovers, and try to revenge
themselves; these seem to partake to some degree of the character of
the Nixen, or rather,--why should we not say so at once and quite
candidly?--they remain faithful to their instincts as women.
As a proof of this statement I will quote a short but perfect little
drama, which Miss Margaret Rosahl has, at my request, copied from
Busching’s voluminous collection.
Count Herman von Filsen, whose estates lay on the right bank of the
Rhine, between Oslerspey {293}and Brauback, was about to marry the rich
heiress of the castle of Rheins, on the other bank. His messenger had
started to carry the letters of invitation to all the guests, but a
sudden rise of the waters had nearly prevented his crossing a small
stream. In trying to get over, his horse stumbled, and was drowned. The
messenger, however, did not lose courage, but went on his way on foot.
Everywhere he found the brooks swollen into streams, and the torrent
seemed to press him more and more closely, describing curves and
zigzags, with countless cataracts, barring him the way on all sides and
making the usual path impassable.
By the aid of a huge stick and jumping from rock to rock, the poor, half
bewildered man kept on, walking well-nigh at hap-hazard, till he found
himself near the Rhine, into which the swollen torrent, rushing after
him with sudden fury, seemed determined to push him.
Fortunately a small boat was lying quite near the shore: he loosened it,
took the oars, and returned to Filsen.
When he reached the castle he said to the Count: “Sir, a Nix has barred
me the way.”
The Count did not believe in Nixen. He sent out another messenger. But
the same adventure befell him.
The wedding day had been fixed and the Count {294}went on, although he
feared his friends and followers would be few in number.
One morning, as he crossed the river from the right bank to the left,
in order to pay a visit to his lady love, a sudden tempest broke out. He
thought he saw a pale form arise from the waters, bending over the
bow of the boat and trying to draw it down into the abyss beneath
the waters. Thereupon he became thoughtful, sent for his steward,
and ordered him to find out what had become of a certain girl of the
neighborhood, Gott-friede from Braubach.
[Illustration: 314]
{295} “I met her a few days ago,” replied the steward, “as she was going
to St. Marks Chapel, and I offered her holy water. Gottfriede asked me
about your approaching wedding. She was very well, and seemed to be in
good spirits.”
“Go and see if you can find her,” said the Count, “and bring me word.”
[Illustration: 315]
During the wedding feast Hermann von Filsen appeared joyous and
attentive to his bride, the new Countess, but the effort to appear so
caused his perspiration to break out profusely, especially when all of
a sudden a small woman’s foot, white and delicate, appeared to his eyes,
and to his only, on the ceiling of the dinner-hall.
He felt a chill in all his limbs. He rose suddenly {296}and fled to
another room, followed by his wife, his mother, and all the guests, who
thought he had been seized with sudden illness.
In this room he saw, and he alone again saw, a white hand raise a
curtain and with the forefinger beckon him to follow.
Long time ago Hermann had heard, without paying any attention at that
time to the statement, that such a small white foot and a small white
hand indicated the presence of an Undine and the coming of an inevitable
calamity.
Now he believed it.
The bishop, who had performed the marriage ceremony, was at the dinner.
Hermann went straight up to him, knelt down, and confessed aloud, and
with many tears, that a young girl named Gottfriede, fairer and better
than all her sisters, had loved him dearly, and that he had returned
her love and then abandoned her. Gottfriede had sought oblivion of her
sufferings in the river, and now was bent upon revenge.
“Bless me, father, for I am going to die!”
The bishop, before uttering the words of absolution, demanded first that
the Count should abjure his impious faith in such supernatural beings,
of whom the Church knew nothing.
“How can I refuse to believe what I see? There she is! Looking as pale
as she was this morning {297}at the bow of the boat. Her hair, full of
green grass, is hanging in disorder all over her shoulders; she looks at
me with a tearful smile.”
“Nothing but visions!” replies the bishop. “Your eyes deceive you.”
“But it is not only by the eye that I am aware of her presence, I hear
her voice; she is calling me? Forgive me, Gottfriede!”
[Illustration: 317]
“You are out of your mind! These are the devil’s snares! And who tells
you that the girl has ceased to live? That she has committed a crime?
Thanks be to God, Gottfriede came to me, she confessed to me penitently,
and now she is in a convent!” At this moment the assembly, already
deeply excited, was somewhat startled by the entrance of the steward,
who looked terrified, went up to the Count’s mother, and whispered some
words into her ear. She could not repress a cry.
“Dead!” she said.
“Yes, she is dead, and I also must die!” cried Hermann in accents of
despair.
The young bride, offended at this avowal of a previous attachment, had
at first stood aloof; now, consulting her own heart alone, she thought
of contesting {298}the right of this invisible rival, and with open arms
drew near the Count; but he pushed her aside rudely.
The bishop began his exorcisms. While he was repeating the prescribed
words, the Count asked:--
“What do you want of me, Gottfriede? Forgive me and we will all pray
for you. You are seeping and kissing me by turns, but your kisses are
nothing but bitterness and sorrow to me, since I have given my name to
another, since another is my--”
He could not complete the sentence. Uttering a sharp cry he fell at full
length to the ground, and on his neck appeared a long, bluish mark, such
as is seen in strangled persons.
The great Nichus is, as we have seen, the master, the despot, the
_Wassermann_, par excellence, of all this watery, dark world, peopled
by Nixen and Undines. His authority is, moreover, by no means limited
to the exercise of judicial functions; his will, constantly under the
influence of an ill-regulated appetite, is law for everybody; the male
Nixen are his Court, and his harem is kept full by the fairest among
those women who become his own by suicide. This greenish-complexioned
Sardanapalus is said to celebrate incredibly monstrous orgies with his
drowned Odalisques.
He is, in reality, Niord, the Scandinavian god, {299}and this Niord
again is, originally, one of those old Roman emperors, who were deified,
and whose portraits Petronius has left us drawn in mud and blood.
[Illustration: 319]
His principal agent, and the Jack-of-all-trades of the whole community,
Nixcobt, the messenger of the dead, has to maintain communication
between the people who live on the river, and those who live in it.
He is perhaps the most eccentric of all the mythical personages of the
Rhine.
When morning is about to dawn and the mountain tops are beginning to
glow in a faint subdued light, a kind of low, thickset man of the most
hideous appearance, may occasionally be seen gliding along the houses of
a town, keeping carefully in the shade, or slipping down the hill-side
between the long rows of grapes, which are almost as high as he is. His
terrible head turns upon his slender neck as upon a pivot, and thus he
can see and examine everything without stopping for a moment. His bare
shoulders, his elbows, knees, and cheekbones are covered with scales;
small pins appear {300}at intervals at his ankles; his round glamous
eyes have a bright red point in the centre; his teeth and hair are
green, and his enormous mouth, split wide open and shaped like the mouth
of a fish, wears a fixed smile, which strikes terror in the beholder.
This creature is Nixcobt.
[Illustration: 320]
With daybreak he is back in the river to inquire if its mournful
population has been added to over night by some victim, suicide or not.
He takes down a description of each one, draws up a report, inquires as
to what induced them to seek refuge in the new world, and offers them
his services for the purpose of letting the friends and parents
know, {301}whom they may have left behind, ignorant of their fate and
inconsolable at their loss.
Then he amuses the great Nichus with all his stories and all the clever
tricks he has been playing during his nocturnal visits to the people in
the villages and towns on the river.
These merry tricks of Master Nixcobt form even in our day an ever
welcome staple of amusement to the young spinners during the long winter
nights, accompanied as they are by the cheerful hum of the swiftly
turning wheels.
One day Nixcobt calls upon the tax collector of a little town on the
Rhine, whom he finds in great consternation. His wife has left his house
and he does not know what has become of her. To console him Nixcobt
tells him that she is dead, having drowned herself, and as a proof of
it, he shows him a letter which he has with his own hands taken from the
pockets of the deceased.
The husband, whose tears had been flowing freely, dries them quickly,
becomes furious, and looks at his children with fierce glances. He is
jealous of their dead mother. Nixcobt laughs and goes to some one else.
That some one else, an honest vintner of the Rheingau, has the night
before killed his friend in an excess of passion and then thrown the
body into the Rhine, together with the knife with which {302}he had
committed the murder. This knife Nix-cobt now presents to him, for he
takes delight in restoring lost objects of this kind.
While the murderer stands petrified at the sight of the still bloody
knife, the Gnome hastens to the Mayor to report to him the whole matter.
An inquiry is held, the vintner is found, holding the bloody knife in
his hand, he is hanged and Nixcobt laughs heartily.
One night a notary of Badenheim, near Mayence, hears in his sleep a
voice saying:--
“John Harnisch, the great Nichus is courting your wife, who has been
changed into an Undine three months ago; she will not listen to him, and
{303}he wants you to tell him how he must manage to please her.”
The notary thought it was a bad dream, uttered a sigh as he thought of
his deceased wife, and fell asleep once more. But a chilly hand resting
upon his breast waked him once more, and the voice said:--
“John Harnisch, speak, speak promptly and be sincere, or you shall never
sleep again.”
John Harnisch resisted for some time longer, but a red flame dimly
lighted up his alcove and he saw a row of green teeth and scaly cheek
bones. Thoroughly frightened, he said what he could.
“Thanks!” cries Nixcobt, and breaks out into a far sounding laugh.
We might fill folios with all the lugubrious jokes of this messenger
of the dead, but we will abstain. Besides, Nixcobt has lost all respect
now-a-days. He is no longer seen gliding along the houses in towns or
slipping through the rows in the vineyards.
We might in like manner tell a vast number of interesting stories and
quote endless _Lieder_ and ballads, which treat of Nixen and Undines.
For there are, besides, Undines of rivers and Undines of lakes, and
there are even some in the ocean; in Germany all watercourses, down to
the tiniest rills, have their Undines. {304}Only day before yesterday
I was walking on the banks of the Rhine; only yesterday on those of
the Moselle, This morning, wandering about at haphazard I encountered a
brook, a mere rill, which attracted me by its sweet murmurs. I followed
it, followed it for two hours. I happened to have nothing else to do.
My tiny rill, a mere infant so near its source, was turning and twisting
in the thick grass and seemed to try and walk on all fours as little
children do. Farther down it had become a little girl, having increased
in size and bulk; it now wandered hither and thither, carelessly,
capriciously, leaping merrily over the rocks and carrying off here
a flower and there a flower that grew on its banks, no doubt for the
purpose of making a bouquet. Still farther on, I witnessed its marriage
with a big brook that had come down all the way from the mountains; it
was a young woman now, a wife, and walked soberly through the plain,
like a prudent stream, bearing already boats on its surface and
preparing to join an elder sister, the Moselle. Soon I had to cross
it on a bridge; on this same bridge four Prussian soldiers were busy
watching the water as it flowed by, no doubt in the hope of catching
a fair Undine as she was stealthily slipping down the river. As for
myself, I had in vain traced the unknown little river from its birth
all {305}along its banks, under the thick shelter of willows and alder
bushes; neither day before yesterday on the Rhine, nor yesterday on the
Moselle, nor today, did I ever find a trace of a Nymph, a Nix, or an
Undine!
What must be my conclusion?
A thief who had been brought before a police court and was there
confronted with two persons who had seen him steal, said:--
“These men claim that they have seen me, but I, I could bring twenty
other witnesses who would swear that they have not seen me!”
“What does that prove?” asked the judge of the court.
[Illustration: 325]
I saw nothing. “What does that prove?” as the wise judge said to the
thief.
[Illustration: 329]
XIII.
{309}Familiar Spirits.--_Butzemann.--The Good Frau Holle.--Ko-bolds.--A
Kobold in the Cook’s Employ.--Zotterais and the Little White
Ladies.--The Killecroffs, the Devil’s Children.--White Angels.--Granted
Wishes, a Fable._
France, which is skeptic to the core, has no idea of the importance of
certain visible or invisible spirits, who eagerly seek the society of
man, sleeping {310}under his roof, or in certain cases becoming members
of his family, in the strictest sense of the word. Besides, they render
efficient services to a good housekeeper; they may do great harm if they
are made angry, and they give at times most useful advice.
These hobgoblins, little known outside of Germany and England, frequent
also the French provinces watered by the Meuse, the Moselle, and the
Rhine, and are sometimes brought to Paris by cooks from Alsace and
coachmen from Lorraine.
Let us rapidly glance, not at all, but at some of the best authenticated
among these familiar spirits.
Evening has come, the night is dark, and master and mistress are fast
asleep. A servant with a candle in her hand and gaping to her heart’s
content, goes once more over the house, looking in all the corners and
out of the way places and putting everything in order. All of a sudden a
door is swiftly opened and closed again right in her face and her light
is blown out. You will say a window has been left open and the draught
has done all this.
By no means! It is the _Butzemann_.
Some merry companions are assembled in the large dining-room of the
hotel and celebrate there a feast of grapes in memory of the divine
Dionysius. The night advances and there they are still, {311}glass
in hand, singing, drinking.... Silence! all of a sudden singing and
drinking comes to an end; the glasses halt half way in the midst of a
toast; the heavy eyes open wide, the trembling knees grow strong
once more. Every one of the guests hastens home. Three times a hairy,
ill-shapen creature has come and knocked with its wings against the
window. You will say it was a bat.
By no means! It is the _Butzemann!_
The family is gathering around the warm porcelain stove, where they can
safely defy cold winter. The men are smoking, a pot of beer by their
side; the women are knitting and talking of the approaching wedding
of the eldest daughter. Oh misery! Away back in the fireplace, a great
noise is heard; a bright light shines. Coals and sparks are scattered
all around, and some have fallen upon the dress of the betrothed. What
is the matter? You will say again, it was a knot in the wood, perhaps a
chestnut that had been overlooked in the ashes and has burst now.
By no means! it is the _Butzemann!_
The Butzemann, a prophetic family spirit, warns you of coming danger
and bids you prepare for an approaching misfortune. Never undertake
a journey, never get married if a clear sign has made you aware that
Butzemann has put his veto upon your journey or your marriage. The only
difficulty {312}you will have is to distinguish between Butzemann and a
puff of wind, a bat, or an exploding chestnut.
It is much easier to recognize _Frau Holle_, as her presence is always
announced by unmistakable indications. She has assumed the task of
overlooking the poor country girls at their work. But it has never been
found out why this benevolent fairy of work-people does not live in some
great industrial city, or some beautiful country district, where the
signs of active life are abundant and the whirring of wheels or the
stamping of machinery is heard; where the spinners sing, and the
washerwomen beat time at the limpid stream. She prefers, with
unaccountable perverseness, to live in dismal swamps, beside faithless
Will-o’-the-Wisps and low Nixen!
No one has ever dared examine this question so closely as to ascertain
the precise truth.
Some have dropped timid hints that Frau Holle, now occupying a very
humble position and rated among the familiar spirits only, was once upon
a time a high and mighty personage, but they have had nothing more to
say of her past glory, as is the case with poor ladies who have been
“unfortunate.” Others, with more boldness or more knowledge, have
recognized in her the goddess Frigg, Odin’s wife. Dear Frau Holle! what
a coming down! what poor creatures we are, after all. {313}As soon as
the cross was planted on the banks of the Rhine and the Danube, Frigg,
under the name of Hertha (Mother Earth), had taken refuge on an island
in the ocean, where she lived invisible and alone in the heart of a
sacred forest, which was constantly invaded by the waves of the sea.
A priest, who had remained faithful to the old religion, alone knew the
hour and the minute when the goddess would deign once more to appear to
men. At the given moment he drew forth, on the marshy island, a chariot
wrapped in veils. Hertha got in, and for some days travelled through the
world, diffusing all around her good will and consolation. Then all wars
were suspended; not only the sword went back into its sheath, but all
irons, all defensive and offensive weapons and even the iron shoes of
the ploughs, had to be kept carefully concealed. Hertha invited the
world to enjoy peace and repose.
Now let us see in what respect Frau Holle or Holla reminds us of the
good goddess.
At certain periods of the year, especially at Christmas, Frau Holle
leaves her marshy island in order to inspect the world. All who work in
linen, spinning, weaving, embroidery, or starching, are by turns visited
by the good lady. Their idleness and their carelessness are severely
punished. If one fine morning Annie finds her wheel {314}or Kate her
loom covered with green slime, if Bertha notices her work torn in the
place which she repaired only the night before, or if the water has over
night turned greasy and looks discolored, the poor girls may be sure
that Frau Holle has been on her round of inspection.
If she is pleased, on the other hand, the ribbon around the distaff
holds a pretty marshflower, a lily, an iris, or a gladiolus; on the lace
cushion or on the seamstress’s work a little golden needle is stuck, and
on the heap of specially well washed and well folded linen lies a cake
of perfumed soap, which fills the whole house with its sweet odor.
Sometimes Frau Holle finds her way mysteriously to a garret, where a
poor woman is lying sick with fever, the result of overwork. Then she
finishes herself the work that had been begun, and when she leaves she
puts a few florins under the pillow of the sleeping sufferer.
Blessings be upon you, good Dame Holle! Even if you were really once a
goddess of the first rank, you need not blush at your present condition.
Still, we cannot help asking, with a slight tremor of fear, how it can
have come about, that the noble Frigg, the all powerful Hertha,
should have been reduced to play the lady patroness of washerwomen and
seamstresses? How has this island in the ocean, with its sacred forest,
become a wretched {315}marsh, fetid and ill reputed? There is but one
answer to such a question: Frigg has been unfortunate.
But the spinners and seamstresses, the clear-starchers and embroiderers
are not the only ones who are honored by kind attentions from the
supernatural world. The brothers Grimm say:--
[Illustration: 335]
“In certain parts of the world, every person--man, woman, or child--has
his own goblin to do menial service; he carries water, cuts wood, and
fetches beer.” During all this time the master has nothing to do but to
set still and to see the work done.
This goblin is evidently the _Genius loci_ of the ancients.
Among all these goblins, however, one is by far the most famous in
Germany, and at the same time the oddest, of whom the most extraordinary
stories are told. They call him _Kobold._
During the night the Kobold sets everything to {316}rights in the
kitchen; he cleans the glasses, the plates, the pans, and wages war
against the spiders and the mice. For all these attentions he asks only
a little food, specially prepared for him, for he would never dream to
ask for a share of his master’s dinner.
Although he seems to be specially devoted to the cook’s department, the
Kobold is first of all attached to the house. If the cook is dismissed,
or if the master moves, he nevertheless remains in his old home, quite
ready to offer his services to the new comers. If the cook goes, she
says to her who takes her place:--
“Do not forget to put a little panada on the kneading trough for the
Kobold, or he might play you some ugly tricks. Be careful, for he is not
always in good humor.”
If the Kobold, or in his place the cat, eats the panada, the new cook is
sure to say:--
“Chim has been here; I see we shall be good friends.”
But if Chim has left the dainty untouched, or has merely tasted it, she
is troubled.
“Perhaps he wants it made with the yolk of an egg? Or perhaps I had not
put enough butter to it?”
Although the Kobold is almost always invisible, he is at all times
ready for a chat. {317}What are we to make of these strange beings, the
servants of our servants, who are even more faithful than the latter to
the house which they have once made their home, who do not, as we are
told is the case in some countries, insist so strongly upon certain
privileges that it becomes uncertain whether the servants are not
themselves masters and those who think themselves to be masters are in
reality servants? They generally do nothing but kindness. Nevertheless
they keep out of sight, thus shunning all public return for their
benevolent services. What are we to make of such servants? Martin Luther
answers in his “Table Talk.”
[Illustration: 337]