After Ulrich has told the story of his worldly and sentimental career,
he stops to think over the cause to which that career has been
consecrated. Has he made a mistake? Never! "When beauty and goodness
unite in woman, she is admirable; one whose goodness is clothed with a
noble spirit wears the best of garments. Even though a woman has little
beauty, if she has the raiment of goodness, men yet call her fair. Be
sure that no clothes better become a lady than goodness--it is better
than beauty, though that is excellent. By goodness a poor woman will
become truly a lady, and this the rich cannot be without it; nay,
shapely and noble though she may be, without this she is still no
womanly woman." ...
"Whoever loves the sight of pretty women," he goes on, "and will not
notice their goodness but only their bright charm, is like one who
gathers pretty flowers for their bright beauty's sake, and twines them
into a garland; then, finding that they are not fragrant, he is sorry
that he gathered them. But whoever understands plants, lets those grow
which have no sweet odor, and breaks off fragrant flowers."
For over thirty years he has served ladies, and he knows no truth so
certain as this, that nothing equals the mutual happiness of a true
woman and a loving man.
Yet sentiment can play only a minor part in life, after all. There are
four main objects of exertion, and upon these, as he ends his book, the
poet stops to reflect: The grace of God, honor, ease, and wealth. Some
strive for one, some for another, while others aim ineffectively at all,
win none, and hate themselves.
And what has this old German gallant to say of himself? In all these
revelations of his life, we catch no suggestions of selfishness or
meanness, but while fancying himself enacting high chivalric drama, he
has been wearing cap, and bells, and motley, lance in his left hand, a
bauble in his right. Then, too, he has been so self-satisfied with his
role. Well, the play is finished now, and Ulrich is sitting in the
green-room, thinking. His coat is flung aside, with one last jingle the
bells fall to the floor, he has dropped his bauble, and as he bows his
head and in his musing runs his fingers through his hair, the coxcomb
falls too. It is here in the green-room that he speaks his epilogue:
"Of this last class am I; I have lived my life trying not to
give up the three for any one. I desired and even hoped that
I might obtain all the four. This hope has still deceived me,
and I am made a fool by it. One day I will serve Him who has
given me soul, life, thought, whatever I have; the next as a
man I will strive for honor; then for wealth; on the fourth
day I am for ease. Thus inconstant, I have passed my entire
life."
Nothing accomplished--nothing even steadily aimed at. Nothing? With
characteristic buoyancy the gray-haired poet puts aside this sombre mood
of dissatisfaction with his fifty odd years. For in one point, at least,
he has been true. In this book, written only because his lady commanded,
he has spoken very many sweet words for worthy women, and throughout his
life he has been faithful to his love. "And I do believe that the very
true sweet God, through his very high goodness, will think on my
fidelity to her, and my constant service."
[Decoration]
FOOTNOTES:
[5]
"A woman is never won by what is in one's thoughts:
. . . . . . . .
Of that she can know nothing."
[6] With this extravagant but probably veracious incident, one naturally
compares the sacrifice of Guillem de Balaun's finger nail.
[7] These poet lovers seem to have been frequently laughed at. For
instance, Pierre Vidal was promised in their amusement anything by the
ladies whom he loved. Na Alazais was so indignant when he took
encouragement to steal his one kiss, that he was compelled to flee, and
go with Richard to the East.
[Decoration]
NEIDHART VON REUENTHAL, AND HIS BAVARIAN PEASANTS.
Our liveliest pictures of old German peasantry come, as we should
expect, from a singer of the knightly class. The masses had fewer and of
course less accomplished poets, and these would be most likely to please
their audiences by touching with the glamour of fashionable life such
work as they cared to make contemporary and imitative. Realistic social
transcripts usually come from culture. It may be that Neidhart von
Reuenthal had been brought up at the ducal court or in a castle, but
there is as good reason for conjecturing that his origin was among the
scenes of country life that he describes. Most of the courtly poets
belonged to the lower class of knights, and between this and the better
order of peasants there was no wide dividing line; indeed, a farmer with
a little land of his own and four free ancestors ("von allen vieren anen
ein gebure," as Neidhart says bitterly of his enemy the swaggering Ber),
by the old Saxon law stood higher than a knight not of free blood. The
agricultural class in the thirteenth century was becoming more impatient
of the costly conflicts of their military superiors and was also
suffering severely from the pillaging domestic raids of lawless knights,
who, as they grew bolder, established centres of reckless free-booting
to which they attracted wayward youth of the middle classes. Cities were
also getting larger, and the tradesmen joined with the established
gentry in thinking slightingly of the farming population. Accordingly
there was jealousy on one side and arrogance on the other, yet there was
still a meeting-place between the two classes. Depleted nobles would
marry daughters of wealthy peasants, and a gentleman whose fief lay
among well-to-do farmers might easily meet them in social relations.
A grant from the Bavarian Duke evidently isolated Neidhart from his own
companions, and he appears to have mingled freely with the peasantry,
though we cannot determine how early the contact began. He was born in
the latter part of the twelfth century, we may say about 1185, perhaps,
and with the exception of absence on Leopold VII's crusade of 1217-1219,
he apparently kept his home in his native Bavaria until about 1230, when
he lost the Duke's favor and turned as a homeless wanderer to Austria,
where he received welcome and another fief. The last date inferred from
his songs is 1236, in connection with the Emperor's coming, and he was
dead before the composition of Meier Helmbrecht, which is earlier than
1250.
So far as imitations prove popularity, he was one of the most popular of
mediaeval poets. It is easy to understand the pleasure that his verses
must have given, striking as they did into a new field, and executed
with literary skill, full of verve and humor, and appealing to strong
class prejudice. We must think of him as a gentleman fond of society, of
refined courtly habits, with an aristocratic contempt for pinchbeck
upstarts, yet not unwilling now and then to play the good-natured
acquaintance with middle-class people.
Though he ranks as a knight, his tastes were not military. He was
lively, quick-witted, and satirical; clever at musical invention;
genuinely interested in poetry. Moreover, he gave early evidence of an
independent literary taste, that dared to yawn at the methods practised
by the great minnesingers of his youth. By his singing he had obtained
sufficient favor with the Duke to receive a fief though away among the
peasantry; yet rather than relinquish a home of his own, that constant
dream of his profession, he made the merriest and the best of the time
he needed to spend on his estate.
The feeling for spring is largely an animal sensation, as the lambs in
the pasture, or dogs on the green, or little children remind us. The
comparison of loving something "as goats love the spring," goes back to
Greek literature. It has also been habitually associated with physical
sentiment, as the splendid proemium of Lucretius suggests. With this
buoyancy of spirits and emotional susceptibility, serious minds touched
with poetry have associated various deep and beautiful moods. But the
moral element that enters into such spring poems as Wordsworth's, is not
present in mediaeval literature. There we find poets feeling spring as
animals, as children, as lovers. Those were out-of-door generations;
hunting, riding, fighting, and enjoying themselves beneath the open sky,
were their chief employments. They found winter travel hard, for they
had no beaten roads; it caused a dreary interruption to their principal
engagements, and to a large extent confined them in narrow quarters, not
too comfortably warmed. In spite of all the amusements that could be
provided, the time must have dragged. If Romans could cry out as Ovid
did at the significance of spring, what must the season have meant to
the castled sons of central Europe. It is not strange then that their
nature-worship instituted in early times a festival to the genial
conqueror of frost and snow, and that this ceremony, as the old
superstitions died away, was continued in graceful traditions of village
customs. The first flowers or the earliest boughs in leaf served as the
signal for the ceremonial welcome of April or May. With widely varying
details, the youth of the parish would stream out to the fields or
woods, and come back singing spring catches, and dancing that long,
skipping forward step which they practised out-of-doors, carrying with
them trophies of the season. Sometimes they fastened the first violet to
a pole, and setting it up danced around it; sometimes they danced about
the first linden that appeared in leaf. It is the linden that the poets
are continually mentioning, whether in the centre of the courtyard or in
the field, and the tree suggests the social life of the old times as
happily as the pine under which Charlemagne sat, in the great chanson,
suggests the imperial master.
Customs related in Herrick's _Going a-Maying_, such as the decoration of
the houses of favorites with early greenery and the processions of girls
and young men to the woods and fields, were familiar in Germany long
before. Exercises to welcome spring became not only a social but
even--so far as the rude country songs went--a literary habit. The
earlier ritual dance around some altar or symbol of the summer deity
grew into an entertainment from which all sense of its original
significance had passed away. These celebrations became the main social
feature of the warm months. At one time partners appear to have been
taken for the year (a passage in _Wilhelm Meister_ reminds us of this
usage), but not in the period before us. A summons to a holiday dance
(and the large number of church festivals made holidays frequent) was
usually given by a musician playing or singing through the street. The
young men and women, and not infrequently their elders, came to the
customary field, dressed for the gaiety; as they went along, tossing and
catching bright-colored balls. This favorite ball-playing, mentioned by
more than one poet of the age as a sign of spring, and especially
entered into by girls, often formed a prelude to the dance. For one
thing it gave the girls a way of choosing their partners, for the man
who caught the ball tossed by a girl, according to some usages, could
claim the right to dance with her. An anonymous poet of the thirteenth
century gives a lively picture of one of these scenes.
"All the time the young people are passing ball on the
street. This is the earliest sport of summer, and as they
play they scream. What if the rustic lad gives me a shove?
How rude he is as he darts here and there, flying and chasing
and playing tricks with the ball. Then two by two they have a
hoppaldy dance about the fiddle, as if they wanted to fly."
As one of the fellows holds the ball,
"What pretty speeches the girls make him, how they shriek,
how wild they get. While he's hesitating to whom he'll throw,
they stretch out their hands; now you're my friend
(geveterlin),--throw it down here to me ... Jiutelin and
Elsemuot hurry after it. Whoever gets it is the best one.
Krumpolt ran, and cried, 'Throw it to me, and I'll throw it
back.' In the scrimmage some of the girls get pushed down,
and an accident happens to Eppe, the prettiest one in the
field. But she picks herself up, and tosses the ball into the
air. All scream, 'Catch it! catch it!' No girl can play
better than she does; she judges the ball so well, and is
such a sure catch."
Another way of choosing partners was by presenting garlands, and one of
the prettiest of the spring customs was the walk to the fields and woods
after flowers for wreaths, either to give away or to wear. So one of the
Latin songs describes young people going out,--
"Juvenes ut flores accipiant
Et se per odores reficiant
Virgines assumant alacriter,
Et eant in prata floribus ornata, communiter."
It certainly is a genial phase of those old times, this out-of-door
companionship of lads and lassies, gathering flowers and "dancing in the
chequered shade." The custom has in a manner survived to our own day; in
England, for example, Mr. Thomas Hardy has introduced such scenes very
pleasantly in some of his novels, but the zest and universality of it
have not descended. Even in Elizabeth's England the hobby-horse was
forgot; and back in the thirteenth century the May-time amusements were
being frowned away. For preachers and moralists saw much evil in these
summer gaieties. It is the old story: Nature is such a puritanical
stage-manager that she likes to bring on a tragedy for the after-piece
to her pleasant comedy, and she is best satisfied when we take warning
from the practice and stay away from the play.
The insane frenzies into which meadow dancing was carried on some
occasions, especially at the riotous midsummer festival, do not belong
to our subject. Neidhart assumes a flippant tone about matters of
conduct, but his treatment of the summer merrymakings is usually
innocent and agreeable. He comes as an artist, to the rude material
provided in the traditional village songs for these occasions, and
transfers to the polished verse of Germany's already highly trained
lyrical school, that fresh and gay subject-matter that is so remote from
the formal phrases of most of his courtly predecessors. His songs are
lyric in their introduction, but almost invariably epic or dramatic in
the later stanzas, scarcely ever overstepping closely drawn lines.
Whereas, Walther von der Vogelweide's work in the popular poetry retains
the lyrical mood throughout, and is far less realistic, never, I
believe, treating a peasant element as such. Those lyrical preludes
attest Neidhart's deep sentiment for nature; we feel that, in spite of
the conventionality in them. He has the rare merit of an occasional
specific note, and he touches even the hackneyed expressions about birds
and flowers with a contagious buoyancy. Look at a few of these
introductions:
"Hedges green as gold; the heath dressed in bright roses.
Come on, you fine girls: May is in the land. The linden is
well hung with rich attire; now hearken, how the nightingale
draws near."
"The time is here: for many a year I have not seen a fairer.
The cold winter is over, and many hearts rejoice that felt
its chill. The woods are in leaf. Come then with me to the
linden, dear."
"Summer, a thousand welcomes! Whatever heart was wounded by
the long winter is healed, its pain all gone. Thou comest
welcome to the world in all lands. Through thee, rich and
poor lose their sorrows, when winter has to go."
And another, which loses its effect if we neglect the long, swinging
metre:
The forest for new foliage its grey dress has forsaken;
And therefore now full many hearts to pleasure must awaken.
The birds to whom the winter brought dismay,
Have never sung so well as now the praises of the May.
The winter from the lovely heath at last has turned aside,
And there the blossoms stand, arrayed in colors gaily pied.
Above them May's sweet dews are lightly shed;
Ah, how I wish I had a wreath, dear friend, a lady said.
This stanza moves more quickly:
Forth from your houses, children fair!
Out to the street! No wind is there,
Sharp wind, cold snow.
The birds were dreary,
They're singing cheerily;
Forth to the woodland go.
After such opening stanzas comes the action of the song, almost always
an expression of a girl's longing to go to the dance, and her mother's
unwillingness. The burden of the remonstrances is that of the song in
_Much Ado_, "Men were deceivers ever"; and though some of the
conversations are amiable, often the two come to high words, and even to
blows. The girl cannot think of going without her best costume, and
this, in the prudent old domestic management, was always carefully
folded up, and kept under lock and key. "Who gave you the right to lock
up my gown?" a daughter demands. "You did not spin a thread of it.
Where's the key? now open the room for me." Finally, she obtained it by
stealth. "She took from the chest the gown that was laid in many small
folds. To the knight of Reuenthal she threw her colored ball." But
Neidhart grimly brings in her mother at the close.
Another cries: "Bring me my fine gown. The gentleman from Reuenthal has
sung us a new song. I hear him singing there to the children. I must
dance with him at the linden." Her mother warns her of what happened to
her playmate Jiute last year, "just as her mother said." But the
gentleman had sent her a lovely garland of roses, and had brought her a
pair of red stockings from over the Rhine, which she was wearing then;
and she had promised to let him teach her the dance. Another song
represents two girls talking of the same knight from Reuenthal: "All
know him, and his songs are heard everywhere. He loves me, and to please
him I will lace myself trimly, and go."
Some of the mothers do more than remonstrate: "The wood is well in leaf,
but my mother will not let me go. She has tied my feet with a rope. But
all the same, I must go with the children to the linden in the field."
Her mother overheard and threatened to punish her. "You little
grasshopper, whither wilt thou hop away from the nest? Sit and sew in
the sleeve for me." The girl is impudent, and the poem ends with a
lively contest.
Love is too strong. "He kissed me," one of them says, "and he had some
root in his mouth, so that I lost all my senses." Perhaps the high-born
poet bewitched these peasant-girls; he often assures us of it. One of
them is plighted to a farmer, and whenever he expects to find her at
home to entertain him, she joins the dancers, as toward evening "they
bend their way down the street," and throws her ball to the knightly
singer. Even the mothers themselves are sometimes caught by the desire
to dance with him, or at least with some of the men at the linden, and
in two or three of Neidhart's sprightliest songs the tables are turned,
and the daughter tries to keep her mother from the gaieties that her
years have outgrown. I have translated two of these summer dance songs
in their exact rhythms, and so literally as to make them appear almost
bald. In the first the nature opening may be omitted.
"Mother, do not deny me,--
Forth to the field I'll hie me,
And dance the merry spring;
'Tis ages since I heard the crowd
Any new carols sing."
"Nay, daughter, nay, mine own,
Thee I have all alone
Upon my bosom carried;
Now yield thee to thy mother's will,
And seek not to be married."
"If I could only show him!
Why, mother dear, you know him,
And to him I will haste;
Ah, 'tis the knight of Reuenthal,
And he shall be embraced.
"Such green the branches bending!
The leafy weight seems rending
The trees so thickly clad:
Now be assured, dear mother mine,
I'll take the worthy lad.
"Dear mother, with such burning
After my love he's yearning,
Ungrateful can I be?
He says that I'm the prettiest
From France to Germany."
Bare we saw the fields, but that is over;
Now the flowers are crowding thro' the clover;
At length the season that we love is here:
As last year,
All the heath is caught and held by roses;
To roses summer brings good cheer.
Thrushes, nightingales, we hear them singing;
With their loud music mount and dale are ringing:
For the dear summer is their jubilee:
To you and me,
It brings bright sights and pleasures without number;
The heath is a fair thing to see.
"Dewy grow the meadows," cried a maiden,
"Branches lately bare are greenly laden:
Listen! how the birds are crowning May:
Come and play,
For, Wierat, the leaves are on the linden;
Winter, I ween, has gone away.
"This year, too, we'll dance till twilight closes;
Near the wood is a great mass of roses,
I'll have a garland of them, trimly made;
Come, you jade,
Hand in hand with a fine knight you'll see me
Dance in the linden shade."
"Little daughter, heed not his advances;
If thou press among the knights at dances,
Something not befitting such as we
There will be
Trouble coming to thee, little daughter--
And the young farmer thinks of thee."
"Nay, I trust to rule a knight in armor;
How then should I listen to a farmer?
What! you think I'd be a peasant's bride!"
She replied:
"He could never woo me to my liking,
He'll never marry me," she cried.