Frau Gaubenslosher was strongly suspected of witchcraft. I don't think
she was a witch, but would not like to swear she was not, in a court
of law, unless a good deal depended upon my testimony, and I had been
properly suborned beforehand. A great many persons accused of
witchcraft have themselves stoutly disbelieved the charge, until, when
subjected to shooting with a silver bullet or boiling in oil, they
have found themselves unable to endure the test. And it must be
confessed appearances were against the Frau. In the first place, she
lived quite alone in a forest, and had no visiting list. This was
suspicious. Secondly--and it was thus, mainly, that she had acquired
her evil repute--all the barn-yard fowls in the vicinity seemed to
bear her the most uncompromising ill-will. Whenever she passed a flock
of hens, or ducks, or turkeys, or geese, one of them, with dropped
wings, extended neck, and open bill, would start in hot pursuit.
Sometimes the whole flock would join in for a few moments with shrill
clamour; but there would always be one fleeter and more determined
than the rest, and that one would keep up the chase with unflagging
zeal clean out of sight.
Upon these occasions the dame's fright was painful to behold. She
would not scream--her organs of screech seemed to have lost their
power--nor, as a rule, would she curse; she would just address herself
to silent prayerful speed, with every symptom of abject terror!
The Frau's explanation of this unnatural persecution was singularly
weak. Upon a certain night long ago, said she, a poor bedraggled and
attenuated gander had applied at her door for relief. He stated in
piteous accents that he had eaten nothing for months but tin-tacks and
an occasional beer-bottle; and he had not roosted under cover for so
long a time he did not know what it was like. Would she give him a
place on her fender, and fetch out six or eight cold pies to amuse him
while she was preparing his supper? To this plea she turned a deaf
ear, and he went away. He came again the next night, however, bringing
a written certificate from a clergyman that his case was a deserving
one. She would not aid him, and he departed. The night after he
presented himself again, with a paper signed by the relieving officer
of the parish, stating that the necessity for help was most urgent.
By this time the Frau's good-nature was quite exhausted: she slew him,
dressed him, put him in a pot, and boiled him. She kept him boiling
for three or four days, but she did not eat him because her teeth were
just like anybody's teeth--no weaker, perhaps, but certainly no
stronger nor sharper. So she fed him to a threshing machine of her
acquaintance, which managed to masticate some of the more modern
portions, but was hopelessly wrecked upon the neck. From that time the
poor beldame had lived under the ban of a great curse. Hens took
after her as naturally as after the soaring beetle; geese pursued her
as if she were a fleeting tadpole; ducks, turkeys, and guinea fowl
camped upon her trail with tireless pertinacity.
Now there was a leaven of improbability in this tale, and it leavened
the whole lump. Ganders do not roost; there is not one in a hundred of
them that could sit on a fender long enough to say Jack Robinson. So,
as the Frau lived a thousand years before the birth of common
sense--say about a half century ago--when everything uncommon had a
smell of the supernatural, there was nothing for it but to consider
her a witch. Had she been very feeble and withered, the people would
have burned her, out of hand; but they did not like to proceed to
extremes without perfectly legal evidence. They were cautious, for
they had made several mistakes recently. They had sentenced two or
three females to the stake, and upon being stripped the limbs and
bodies of these had not redeemed the hideous promise of their
shrivelled faces and hands. Justice was ashamed of having toasted
comparatively plump and presumably innocent women; and the punishment
of this one was wisely postponed until the proof should be all in.
But in the meantime a graceless youth, named Hans Blisselwartle, made
the startling discovery that none of the fowls that pursued the Frau
ever came back to boast of it. A brief martial career seemed to have
weaned them from the arts of peace and the love of their kindred. Full
of unutterable suspicion, Hans one day followed in the rear of an
exciting race between the timorous dame and an avenging pullet. They
were too rapid for him; but bursting suddenly in at the lady's door
some fifteen minutes afterward, he found her in the act of placing
the plucked and eviscerated Nemesis upon her cooking range. The Frau
betrayed considerable confusion; and although the accusing
Blisselwartle could not but recognize in her act a certain poetic
justice, he could not conceal from himself that there was something
grossly selfish and sordid in it. He thought it was a good deal like
bottling an annoying ghost and selling him for clarified moonlight; or
like haltering a nightmare and putting her to the cart.
When it transpired that the Frau ate her feathered persecutors, the
patience of the villagers refused to honour the new demand upon it:
she was at once arrested, and charged with prostituting a noble
superstition to a base selfish end. We will pass over the trial;
suffice it she was convicted. But even then they had not the heart to
burn a middle-aged woman, with full rounded outlines, as a witch, so
they broke her upon the wheel as a thief.
[Illustration]
The reckless antipathy of the domestic fowls to this inoffensive lady
remains to be explained. Having rejected her theory, I am bound in
honour to set up one of my own. Happily an inventory of her effects,
now before me, furnishes a tolerably safe basis. Amongst the articles
of personal property I note "One long, thin, silken fishing line, and
hook." Now if I were a barn-yard fowl--say a goose--and a lady not a
friend of mine were to pass me, munching sweetmeats, and were to drop
a nice fat worm, passing on apparently unconscious of her loss, I
think I should try to get away with that worm. And if after swallowing
it I felt drawn towards that lady by a strong personal attachment, I
suppose that I should yield if I could not help it. And then if the
lady chose to run and I chose to follow, making a good deal of noise,
I suppose it would look as if I were engaged in a very reprehensible
pursuit, would it not? With the light I have, that is the way in
which the case presents itself to my intelligence; though, of course,
I may be wrong.
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