joyousness. Mercurial childhood has capacity for sudden pleasures even
when life goes ill, and life frequently went very well even then. But
the mystery and grace of motherhood and dawning life are likely to
appeal to a calmer and more retrospective age. The seriousness that
takes pleasure in contemplating childhood is more serene and pensive
than the usual moods of an era undeveloped emotionally. So it would not
be a matter for surprise if the literary remains of those days had left
us mainly incidental references to children.
Of such plain facts we have many, such as, for instance, that the little
ones were entertained with pet dogs, birds, and squirrels (apparently
never with cats), mice harnessed to a toy wagon, clay or wooden images
of animals, and tiny vessels after kitchen models, toy men, women, and
children, tops, and marbles; that they played blind man's buff, and many
games attended with songs. As early as the interesting Latin poem called
_Waltharius et Hiltgunde_, which at least in a popular version Walther
von der Vogelweide liked, we find the hero appealing to Hagen, by the
memory of the boyish games with which they had whiled away their
childhood, and over which they never had quarrelled.
We obtain considerable information about customs of education also;
such as the attention paid to languages (a girl in a French romance is
said to have understood fourteen tongues), and Isolde knew French and
Latin as well as Irish. Boys were sent off on their travels early, going
especially to Paris. Weinhold's quotation from Hugo von Trimberg
illustrates the dangers that beset the pursuit of culture even then:
"Many boys go to Paris; they learn little and spend much. But yet no
doubt they see Paris."
When Sir Philip Sidney derided the contemporary drama's habit of
carrying a play through a large part of the hero's lifetime, instead of
restricting the action to a developed episode, he made a poor criticism,
out of tune, as are other parts of his criticism, with the genius of
Elizabethan poetry. But the passage is interesting as a reminder of the
relation to that great literature of the romances which runs back
through the middle ages to the later Greek writings. Such narrations as
the _Daphnis and Chloe_, and the _Aethiopica_, introduce their central
characters while they are still children, and whether through
transmitted influence or independently, the same course is pursued by
the most important romance poems of mediaeval France and Germany. To this
practice we owe pleasant domestic scenes of many a hero's early life,
and sometimes, indeed, a narration of early joys and sorrows of his
parents' love. The _Tristan_ of Gottfried von Strassburg, for example,
begins well before the birth of its subject, with noteworthy romantic
episodes. This brilliant poem's account of the early years of chivalry's
typical fine gentleman illustrates the admiration paid to intellectual
training at a time when polite society in general was not well educated.
Tristan spent his first seven years under the care of his foster-mother,
learning various lessons of good behavior; after that Rual li Foitenant
provided a master, and sent him off to acquire foreign languages in
their own lands, and "book-learning" as well. The luxurious temper of
his chronicler stops for a long sigh at the hardship of such training,
through the years when joyousness is at its best. So it is, he exclaims
in his studied style, with many youth; when life is in its first bloom
and freedom, away they are constrained to go from its free blossom. For
seven years this young prince was constantly kept busy with the
exercises of arms and horsemanship, in addition to his formal studies;
he also learned hunting, and all courtly arts, especially music. Then he
was called home to be prepared for his political career. The education
of children was assisted by not a few treatises on manners and morals,
such as _Babees Books_, as the old English called them. They are usually
manuals of etiquette, mediaeval prototypes of such modern works as
_Don't_. Chaucer's Prioress had evidently studied the sections on table
proprieties, and her gentility, which was so tender-hearted, might well
have been developed under the admonishments of the ethical passages
which often accompanied them. For a tender age many of these precepts
were depressing. One of the gravest and most mature of these works is
called _Der Winsbeke_, with a sequel, _Die Winsbekin_, for girls, the
advice of a twelfth-century Solomon, which moralizes certainly as well
as most of its analogues. This stanza, for instance, shows a homely
dignity:
That bright candle mark, my son,
While it burns, it wastes away;
So from thee thy life doth run,
(I say true) from day to day.
In thy memory let this dwell,
And life here so rule, that then
With thy soul it may be well.
What though wealth exalt thy name?
Only this shall follow thee--
A linen cloth to hide thy shame.
These gnomic writings, running into a developed didacticism, are
illustrated by the song of Walther von der Vogelweide on the restraint
of eye, ear, and tongue. Whether this poet was the teacher of the young
King Henry, as some have thought, or gained his experience in humbler
ways, he evidently knew the trials of the pedagogue. "Oh, you
self-willed boy," he cries, "too small to be put to work in the field
and too big to whip, have your own way and go to sleep." As for
flogging, this prince of the minnesingers took the side of the Matthew
Feildes against the Boyers: "No one can switch a child into education;
to those whom you can bring up well, a word is as good as a blow."
Apropos of the teacher's view, we also find the pupil's feeling for his
teacher recorded in that little poem of the English school-boy, who was
late in the morning, and explained to the master that his mother told
him to stop and milk the ducks. The boy recounts the details of what
follows, and afterwards, instead of taking up his interrupted studies,
he words out a day-dream in which the master is turned into a hare, his
books into hounds, and the boy goes hunting.
There is a grain of humor, too, at least for the modern reader, in a
much more sentimental child-play of the minnesinger Hadlaub. Though he
mainly echoes the love singers who wrote a hundred years before him, one
of the first songs in the collection of his poems raises a hope of
something more than the ordinary, though this only leads us on to
disappointment through the rest of his fifty-odd pieces. There is
something very natural about this picture of the lover catching sight of
his disdainful fair one playing with a little child. "She reached out
her arms and caught it close to her, she took its face between her white
hands, and pressed it to her lips and mouth and lovely cheek; ah, how
deliciously she kissed it!" What did the child do? "Just what I should
have done; threw its arms around her, and was so happy." When she let
the little one go, the lover went after it and kissed it just where her
lips had been, "and how that went to my heart!" Poor fellow! "I serve
her since we both were children," and this is the nearest apparently
that he ever came to the seals of love.
But instead of delaying over estrays, pleasant scraps like those left us
by Heinrich von Morungen, for instance, one of the few minnesingers for
whom one really cares, we may pass on to three or four more detailed
examples from the thirteenth century, of household love and sympathy
with the poetry of childhood. But first I will translate a simple sesame
for opening again the early gates. The poet is known as the Wild
Alexander, but his mood was gentle and gracious when this revery of his
boyhood came upon him:
There we children used to play,
Thro' the meadows and away,
Looking 'mid the grassy maze
For the violets; those days
Long ago
Saw them grow;
Now one sees the cattle graze.
I remember as we fared
Thro' the blossoms, we compared
Which the prettiest might be:
We were little things, you see.
On the ground
Wreaths we bound;--
So it goes, our youth and we.
Over stick and stone we went
Till the sunny day was spent;
Hunting strawberries each skirrs
From the beeches to the firs,
Till--Hello,
Children! Go
Home, they cry--the foresters.
So he goes on to tell how their childhood took as a pleasure the hurts
and stings that they received as they hunted for strawberries, and to
recall the warnings against snakes that the herdsman sometimes shouted
through the branches. Apart from its graceful manner, and the breezy
freshness of its universal childhood, the poem's specific touches are
unusual. "From the beeches to the firs," for instance, does not sound
mediaeval aside from one's surprise that a German should have omitted the
linden. We need not be as old as was Lamb in 1820, to look back with a
touch of desire on the child, that other me, there in the background.
Perhaps there is the glamour of sentiment about that familiar
association of childhood with purity and moral grace. Yet the feeling
appeals to us as true beyond mere beauty, and many may read with
responsiveness these lines, hitherto unprinted, by one on whose lips,
just parted for their song, silence laid her finger:
"Could I answer love like thine,
All earth to me were heaven anew;
But were thy heart, dear child, as mine,
What place for love between us two?
Bright things for tired eyes vainly shine:
A grief the pure heaven's simple blue.
Alas, for lips past joy of wine,
That find no blessing in God's dew!
From dawning summits crystalline
Thou lookest down; thou makest sign
Toward this bleak vale I wander through.
I cannot answer; that pure shrine
Of childhood, though my love be true,
Is hidden from my dim confine:
I must not hope for clearer view.
The sky, the earth, the wrinkled brine
Would wear to me a fresher hue,
And all once more be half-divine,
Could I answer love like thine."
The spiritual subtlety of such a mood certainly is beyond the mediaeval
poets, yet we find pleasant proofs of sensibility to the tender,
unselfish nature of a loving child. Nowhere in such detail, perhaps, as
in the most familiar of Middle High German poems, the _Poor Henry_, of
Hartmann von Aue. The story is known in Longfellow's _Golden Legend_.
This is not the place to discuss that poem, which contains some charming
passages. The poet's treatment may be far from satisfactory, yet when he
calls his original the most beautiful of mediaeval legends, he certainly
shows a more satisfactory side of extreme estimate than does Goethe, in
his curious fling at the poem (which we may notice he read in a
modernized form). He says it gave him a "physico-aesthetic pain," and
adds that the notion of a fine girl sacrificing herself for a leper,
affected him so that he felt himself poisoned by the book. This judgment
was pronounced in Goethe's later life, and is consistent with his
habitual want of sympathy with mediaeval romantic literature. It shows,
moreover, a lack of historical adjustment, for the dreadful disease was
so common in the twelfth century that its repulsiveness was blurred for
Hartmann; yet he mentions it with the greatest reserve, though a
description of its appearance could hardly be more painful than the
famous conclusion of the _De Rerum Natura_. We are reminded of Goethe's
visit to Assisi, interesting to him only as the situation of some
remains of classical architecture.[10]
Hartmann von Aue ranks below his two great companions in German
narrative poetry, for he is more of a translator than either Gottfried
or Wolfram. His distinction is in his style; he has a very agreeable way
of telling a story, and there is a quiet charm about his diction. "How
clear and pure his crystal words are and always must be," is Gottfried's
tribute. We come to feel a personal liking for him, through his
unaffected interest in his characters, his unassuming ways and the tact
by which he lightens or deepens his accentuation. We feel that he was a
gentleman, and we do not wonder at the kind regard in which all his
fellow poets held him. We like his refined moral seriousness and that
calm temperament of which he speaks in _Gregorius_. The original for the
_Arme Heinrich_ is lost, but though his introduction claims for himself
no merit beyond a careful selection out of the many books that he takes
pains to tell us he was learned enough to read for himself, we are
probably justified in feeling that he took his heart into partnership
when he made the version, receiving from it touches that he did not find
in the earlier treatment. To appreciate the poem we have to put
ourselves into harmony with the wonder-loving, credulous, and mystically
religious world of seven hundred years ago. Hartmann's simple
earnestness and unobtrusive tenderness and piety constitute an ideal
manner for the legend, and that ease of his soul which he hoped would
come through the prayers of those who read the poem after his death, is
perhaps equally well secured if he knows how some of his verses touch
the sophisticated sense of to-day. He said that he was actuated in
writing by the desire to soften hard hours in a way that would be to the
honor of God, and by which he might make himself dear to others. He has
succeeded. It is to the honor of God, and it wins the affection of
others, when a poet leads his readers to a little well of pure unselfish
love, hedged about by a child's religious faith.
The hero of the legend is a gentleman of position and feudal
possessions, whose free and generous career is cut short by an incurable
leprosy. It is in vain that he consults masters at Montpelier and
Salerno, the famous seats of medicine; and the honor and affection in
which a genial life had established him among his friends cannot save
him from becoming a social outcast. He disposes of his wealth between
the poor and the church, and retires to a fief whose tenant is willing
to receive his suzerain as a guest. Here, on a little estate, away from
all contact with the world, the gay lord resigns himself to the
companionship of the farmer and his wife, whose gratitude for his
kindness in the past distinguishes them among the multitude to whom his
amiable disposition had made him a benefactor and friend. There were
children in the family, the eldest a girl eight years old, when Henry
came. It was because their hearts were loyal that her parents were kind,
but she kept close by him because she loved to be there. She was always
to be found at his feet, and his affectionate nature liked her
companionship. He bought her a hand mirror, a riband for her hair, a
belt and finger ring, and whatever children care for. These gifts
attached her to him, yet the main secret of her love was the sweet
spirit that God had given her. After three years, as the family were
sitting together one day with their high-born guest, the farmer asked
him why it was that he had given himself up so hopelessly to his
disease, and Henry laid aside his reserve, and told for the first time
about his visit to the great physician at Salerno. The only remedy was
an impossible one. He might indeed be healed, but not unless a virgin
made a voluntary offering of her life. Alas, God was his only physician.
The little girl, who was so inseparable a companion that he jestingly
called her his bride, listened as she was holding her sick lord's feet
in her lap. She could not get it out of her head (the old German idiom
is better, "out of her heart") the rest of the day, and when at night
she lay in her usual place at her father's and mother's feet, she felt
so sorry for her dear lord that she cried, and the warm tears fell on
her parents' feet, and woke them. When they asked her what was the
matter, she said that she thought they ought to be sorry, too; for what
would happen to them all if their lord should die? Some one else would
own the farm, and no one could ever be as kind to them as he had been.
They told her that was all true, but it could do no good to lament.
"Dear child, do not grieve. We feel as badly as you do, but alas, we
cannot help him." So they hushed her, but all the night and the next day
she continued to be unhappy, and whatever else she was doing, she kept
thinking of this. When she went to bed, she cried again, till finally
she resolved to herself that if she lived till morning she would surely
give her life for her lord. Straightway from that thought, she became
light-hearted and happy, and felt free of all her cares, until it
occurred to her that perhaps Henry and her parents would not permit her
to make the sacrifice; whereupon the poor little girl burst out crying
again, and wakened her parents, as she had done the night before. It was
only with difficulty that they drew from her this simple speech: "My
lord might get well in the way that he told us, and if you will only let
me, I am what he needs for being cured. I am a maid, and rather than see
him pass away, I will die for him." A long dialogue follows, in which
the parents remonstrate with the daughter, who replies in a strain of
spiritual elation. She appeals not only to her parents' worldly
dependence on their master's goodness, but also to their desire for her
own highest welfare. How much better for her to pass to eternal life in
unstained childhood, only anticipating the death that must come some
time, no less unwelcome late than soon. Her parents ceased to
remonstrate, for they felt that the Holy Ghost was speaking through her,
as they listened to the visionary cry. Instead of taking, two or three
years hence, some neighbor for her husband, she will choose
"the Franklin, who is wooing me to a home where the plough
runs easily, where there is all abundance, where horses and
cattle never are lost, where no wailing children suffer,
where it is neither too warm nor too cold, where the old will
grow young, where is nor frost nor hunger, no kind of pain,
but all joy without toil; thither will I haste me, and
forsake a farm whose tillage, fire, hail, and flood destroy,
so that one half-day ruins the labor of a year. Then let me
go to our Lord Jesus Christ, whose grace is sure, and who
loves me, poor as I am, like a queen."
Unlike our modern analysts of character, Hartmann does not stop to
comment on the art of his delineation, and it is possible to miss the
tact with which he keeps his heroine's renunciation consistent with a
child's nature. Hartmann is not treating this character inartistically,
as a mere instrument for religious culture. Earnest speech of a
thoughtful parish priest; or phrases caught from the conversation of her
lord touched by his sorrows, with the age's feeling _de contemptu
mundi_, might have supplied her with some sentiments that seem beyond a
child's invention, and children's emotions are sometimes precocious,
especially in what seems a morbid religious development.
Those are the years of faith, credulous belief that burns with the white
light of knowledge; a child's faith is a man's superstition. The peasant
maid's imagination sees heaven and salvation a fact so infinitely
desirable, that all dread of death was eliminated from the path of her
love. The joyousness of her sacrifice, too, instead of being a romantic
exaggeration, is far truer to life than a willingness touched with pain
and hesitation could have been. In a noble dread, austerely controlled,
lies Calvary's dignity and pathos. But her gratitude and impetuous love
for what seems to her simple mind a superior and infinitely deserving
object, reached that finest pitch of selfishness, where self-sacrifice
becomes the demand of impulsive egotism. To an enthusiastic temperament
love's passionate altruism may be consummate self-will. As the little
maid came away from her deliverance, though she was happy in her lord's
restoration, she was less happy than as she went.
For she did not have to die. In the tyranny of undeniable love, she
broke down the opposition of her parents, and although Henry indeed
hesitated, she pleaded so anxiously and drew such an eloquent sketch of
the advantage and gladness death would be to her, and the value of his
life compared with hers, that at last, genial and affectionate as he
was, the temptation to live by the sacrifice of a mere child's life (and
the feudal sense of possession ought not to be overlooked) was too
strong to be resisted. Compare the scene with the one in _Philaster_,
where Bellario wishes to offer herself for the man whom she loves with a
hopeless earthly sentiment:
"'Tis not a life,
'Tis but a piece of childhood thrown away."
For her, continuance of life is only "a game that must be lost." But for
the nameless German girl there is no pathos in living, beyond the
thought of her master's death, and her sentiment was as childlike as
when it began, while she was only eight years old. Her love is a flame
that burns impatiently away from the taper that feeds it; for her
generous passion is after all a beautiful devoted wilfulness. When her
parents wept to lose her, and her lord wept at his own weak hesitation,
she wept above them all and her tears won the day. She rode with Henry
to Salerno, and was unhappy only because the journey was so long. The
great physician took her hand, and led her alone into a barred and
bolted room. Then he tried to frighten her and induce her to retract
her consent, but she only laughed until she became afraid that he would
not do his part, whereupon she broke out into an indignant scorn for his
unmanly weakness. When he bade her undress, she did so without a blush;
he bound her to his table, and took up his knife. He wished to render
death easy (so he told himself), and taking a whetstone to make the
knife sharper, he slowly whetted it--only as a pretext for delaying. The
gentleman outside found himself restless. He listened, then he tried to
look in and at last through a crevice in the wall he saw that "little
bride" who had been his main companion and comfort during those three
wretched years. By a fine touch of nature, the poet makes the sight of
her perfect loveliness as she lay waiting for her celestial bridal, the
force that broke the selfish charm which had enchained his manliness. He
beat on the door, he called, and when no response came, he burst his way
in. "The child is too lovely to die. For myself, God's will be done."
It was now that her trial came, as she wailed and beat wildly at her
body, to force on him the life he was unwilling to take. She talked
bitterly and peevishly, as if she had been cheated of heaven through his
cruelty. But it was in vain, he dressed her again in the rich garments
which he had procured for the sacrificial journey, and they set out on
their return to their distant home, the sobbing girl and the leper. But
as they rode along, the divine might that seemed so near to mediaeval
faith was their companion, and touching the incurable disease, fulfilled
love's miracle. Henry took their daughter back to the peasants, and gave
her rich gifts, while he presented them with the land which they had
farmed, and all its serfs and chattels. Then he went back to his
estates, and to the welcome that the world was waiting to give him. By
and by, when his people insisted that he should marry, he called an
old-time conference about whom he should choose. There were numerous
suggestions, but the advisers did not agree. He listened, and then
telling them that unless they would approve his own choice, he should
never marry, he stepped to the side of "the dear little wife" who had
loved him as a leper.
The romance of _Fleur et Blanchefleur_, which goes back, though not in
its present form, to the twelfth century, enjoyed such popularity that
it was translated into almost every European tongue. Indeed, in some
languages it is found in more than one version. The story tells of a
Saracen prince, whose royal father interrupts the smooth course of his
true love for a Christian girl. She was the daughter of a captive lady
in the palace of the Queen, and the royal boy and the bond girl had been
born on the same day. From his birth, the mother of Blanchefleur became
Fleur's nurse; the pagan law required that he must be suckled by a
heathen, but in all other ways the infants were treated like twins. They
slept in one cradle, and when they could eat and drink they were given
the same food. Thus they grew up together, until they were five years
old, when the King, seeing his child as fine and promising a boy as
could be found in any land, decided that it was time for him to begin
his education. He selected a master, but Fleur, when he was bidden to
study, burst into tears and cried, "Sire, what will Blanchefleur do? Who
will teach her? I never can learn without her." The King answered that
since he loved her so, Blanchefleur should go with him to school.