THE FIERCE ROeTTMAeNNER.
"There is a fierce, savage race of men in these mountains, who are
almost fiends. Many a strange tale is told of these wild Roettmaenner."
"Let me hear them."
"They are great rough boors, and they pride themselves on the stories
related for generations back of their prodigious strength, and as they
are wealthy, they can do pretty much what they please. The father of
the Roettmann, whose wife Otto is gone to-night to visit, is reported to
have had so powerful a voice, that once when he shouted to a forester,
the man staggered back. His chief pleasure consisted in rolling up into
balls, the tin plates used at dinner at different inns. The present
Roettmann, when he went to a dance, was in the habit of stuffing into
his long pockets a dozen of the heavy iron axes, used for splitting
wood, called _Speidel_ by the country people, so that every one got out
of his way, and left him ample space to dance. His greatest delight was
to dance for twenty-four hours without stopping; this was only
amusement to him, and in the pauses between the dances, he drank quart
after quart of wine unceasingly. In order to ascertain, however, how
much he had drunk, and what he had to pay, he tore off a button each
time, first off his red waistcoat, and then off his coat, and redeemed
them at the end of the evening from the landlord. His old father, with
the stentorian voice, once forbad him to remain all day at a wedding at
Wenger, but, on the contrary, enjoined on him to mow down a grass
meadow in the valley of Otterzwang. The Roettmaenner have always enforced
the strictest discipline among themselves. The obedient son followed
his father's injunctions. Danced like mad all night, and in the
morning, the loud voiced father, coming into the meadow, heard music,
'What is that? a man mowing, and he looks so strange?' The father comes
nearer, sees his son mowing busily according to his orders, but
carrying a basket on his back, and in the basket a fiddler, playing
indefatigably, till the meadow was mown from end to end, and then he
danced back to the Wenger wedding with the fiddler on his back. There
is a proverb, that anything may be stolen, except a mill-stone
and a bar of red-hot iron; but Speidel-Roettmann did once steal
a mill-stone, or at least displace it. Wishing to play a trick to the
forest-miller, he rolled the mill-stone one night half-way up the hill.
Speidel-Roettmann had two sons, Vincent and Adam; the eldest, Vincent,
was not particularly strong, but as sharp and spiteful as a lynx; a
quality he inherited from his mother, for the Roettmanns, though untamed
and fierce, are not malicious. It seems that Vincent tormented the
wood-cutters like a slave-driver. One day he was killed by the falling
of a tree. It was said, and the former clergyman always declared it was
so, that the wood-cutters had killed him on purpose. Since that day the
mother, who never, was of a kindly nature, has become a perfect dragon,
and would gladly poison every one. She is the only person who cordially
hates my husband, for she wished him to question closely every dying
peasant to whom he might be summoned, whether he had anything to
confess with regard to Vincent's murder. The tree that caused Vincent's
death lay long untouched in the wood, but one day the Roettmaennin gave
orders that its branches should be lopped off. She hid herself,
unperceived by the wood cutters, in order to watch them, and to listen
to all they said, but she got no information. Speidel-Roettmann, as the
trunk was the finest tree in the forest, wished to send it floating
down the Rhine, for he said,--'a tree is a tree, and money is money;
why should the tree be left to rot on the ground, because it chanced to
cause Vincent's death?' His wife, however, was of a different opinion.
She collected the branches into a great heap, to which she set fire,
and burned the clothes of the dead man in it, shouting out, 'May those
who murdered my Vincent, burn hereafter like these clothes in this
bonfire!' Six horses and ten oxen tried to drag the tree into the
courtyard of the house, but they could only move it a little way, for
the roads are not good enough to admit of so huge a tree being dragged
up hill. It was, therefore, sawn into three pieces, and these three
monstrous logs are still lying in the court, close to the door. The
Roettmaennin always declares that the tree is waiting till a gallows and
a funeral pile are required, to hang and to burn the murderer of her
Vincent. She often sits at the window, muttering to the logs of wood,
as if telling them some secret; and when she sees any stranger tumble
over them, she laughs with delight. She also caused a group of figures
to be erected, in memory of the murdered man, close to the footpath
which leads down from Hohlzobel to the forest mill, though this is a
custom peculiar to Catholics alone in our neighbourhood. Yonder, deep
in the centre of the wood, Vincent met his death. The only son left is
Adam, and she uses him worse than a step-child; it is said, that she
beats him as if he were still a child, and he makes no resistance,
though he has already proved that he is a genuine Roettmann, and won a
singular title, for he is known in the whole country as _The Horse_. He
went once to get his horse shod by the smith, whom he found bargaining
with a Briesgau peasant about the exchange of a horse: the horse was
harnessed to a large two-wheeled waggon, laden with sacks of peas. The
Briesgau peasant said: 'There is not such a horse in the world, he is
drawing a load that would require three common horses to draw.'
"'Oh! ho!' exclaimed Adam, who was standing by, in so loud and gruff a
voice that the Briesgauer tumbled right over his load, but luckily fell
against his horse. 'Oh! ho! I will make you a bet that I carry the
waggon and the peas in three loads to the Crown inn yonder. Will you
conclude the bargain, if I succeed in doing this?'
"'I will--done!' said the peasant.
"The horse was taken out of the waggon, Adam filled a large counterpane
with the peas and carried them to the inn, and then, seizing the
framework of the cart, he carried it in the same way to its
destination; and, finally, took the two great wheels on his shoulders,
and deposited them in the inn-yard: 'Which is the strongest, your horse
or I?' asked he of the peasant; and this is why he is called _The
Horse_.
"The manner in which Speidel-Roettmann made known his son's
extraordinary feat of strength shows his vainglorious, boasting
disposition: he is far from being a bad man, only a swaggerer of the
first class. The day after Adam's bet there was a fair in the town, and
the smith from our village met Speidel-Roettmann at an inn, and related
the circumstances I have told you. Speidel-Roettmann said, 'I will give
you a bottle of the best wine in this cellar, if you will go down to
the street, and shout to me up at the window the story you have just
told me;' and so he did. Speidel-Roettmann leant at his ease on the
window-cushion, and all the people listened in amazement to the story
the smith was shouting out. Speidel-Roettmann is very fond of his son,
and very proud of him, but he dare not venture to show this before his
wife, more especially for the last seven years.
"Yonder, above the ford--we can see the cottage from our window--lives
a Schilder, or wood-turner, nicknamed Schilder-David. He is a worthy
man, though one of the poorest in the village, but he would rather
starve than accept of assistance from any one. Moreover, he is a great
searcher of Holy Writ. Light is seen later in his cottage than in any
other house in the village, and that is very significant for so poor a
man. He has a Bible, that he has read through sixteen times, from the
first syllable to the last, both of the Old and the New Testament. I
saw the Bible once, and the leaves looked very much crumpled and worn,
for David always reads with four fingers on the page. On the first leaf
of the Bible he regularly marks down the date when he begins to read it
afresh, and the day when he has read it through. The longest period is
rather more than two years; three times, however, he read it from
beginning to end within the year; that was when his three daughters
emigrated; another time, when his hand was so severely injured, that it
was thought it must be amputated; and, last of all, the year in which
his grandson Joseph was born. In his youth, he is said to have been
very jovial and merry, and he knew every kind of song, and once, by his
singing, he got a stock of firewood. On one occasion, he came to the
father of Speidel-Roettmann to buy wood: Old Roettmann, being in good
humour, said, 'David, for every song you sing me I will give you a
Klaft or bundle of wood, and I will send it to your house for you--so,
that's a bargain.' David sung so many songs, that he sung two cartloads
of wood into his house; therefore, he is called Klafter-David--but he
does not like to be reminded of that name now-a-days.
"The wife of Schilder-David is one of those persons whose nature it is
to sleep away the greater part of their lives; who walk about and
regularly finish their work, but not a single word is ever said about
them, either for good or evil. We have here an unusual number of such
persons. Moreover, the wife of Schilder-David has been for some years
almost stone-deaf. They had five daughters, all straight, tall girls,
and even when they were children, stout and active. Schilder-David
always said, 'they are for the sea,' which meant emigrating to America;
and, indeed, four of his daughters are gone to America, two with their
husbands, and two unmarried, but they married there soon after their
arrival; one, died lately, but the other is well to do in the world,
and yet Schilder-David is constantly longing to see his children, and
often says--'That America is a new species of dragon that robs us of
our children.' The best thing he could do, would be to emigrate
himself, for his lot here is hard enough, but formerly he could not
make up his mind, and now it is impossible for him to go.
"His youngest daughter, Martina, was the especial pride of her father,
for she was always at the head of the school. You have no idea what a
character that gives a child in a village; a girl, especially, acquires
a certain degree of pride in consequence, and is respected by others,
and looked up to, even when her school years are over. She was a good,
clever child. When she came here to be prepared for her confirmation,
she always rubbed her shoes carefully on the mat, and persuaded the
other children to do the same, in order not to soil the stairs or the
rooms, and she and her companions insisted on sweeping out the church
themselves, before the day of Confirmation. When she stood before the
altar, she looked much older than her years; I never saw a prettier
creature, and piety encircled her head like a halo. She often came to
the parsonage to see us. My husband was particularly fond of the child,
and he told me that on the day after the confirmation he met Martina in
the fields, and she said that she felt now as if she had left her home;
and indeed, shortly afterwards she was sent away from her parents'
house. She was just sixteen when she entered into the service of the
Roettmanns. They give good wages, and must do so, because no one can
stay more than a year with that ill-tempered, fierce woman. Martina,
however, remained with them for two years,----"
The pastor's wife was interrupted in her narrative by a strange echo of
tinkling of bells in the village.
"What is that?" asked Edward.
"It is the troop of donkeys from the forest mill. The public road to
the mill is very broad, but the donkeys are conveying corn and flour
along the narrow footpaths, up and down the hills. I should like to
have sent a message to Tony by the miller's man, but now it is too
late."
Not till after repeated entreaties on the part of her brother, did his
sister recommence her story.