THE BLESSED FRIEDMUND’S WAKE
MIDSUMMER-DAY arrived, and the village of Adlerstein presented a most
unusual spectacle. The wake was the occasion of a grand fair for all the
mountain-side, and it was an understood thing that the Barons, instead of
molesting the pedlars, merchants, and others who attended it, contented
themselves with demanding a toll from every one who passed the Kohler’s
hut on the one side, or the Gemsbock’s Pass on the other; and this toll,
being the only coin by which they came honestly in the course of the
year, was regarded as a certainty and highly valued. Moreover, it was
the only time that any purchases could be made, and the flotsam of the
ford did not always include all even of the few requirements of the
inmates of the castle; it was the only holiday, sacred or secular, that
ever gladdened the Eagle’s Rock.
So all the inmates of the castle prepared to enjoy themselves, except the
heads of the house. The Freiherr had never been at one of these wakes
since the first after he was excommunicated, when he had stalked round to
show his indifference to the sentence; and the Freiherrinn snarled out
such sentences of disdain towards the concourse, that it might be
supposed that she hated the sight of her kind; but Ursel had all the
household purchases to make, and the kitchen underlings were to take
turns to go and come, as indeed were the men-at-arms, who were set to
watch the toll-bars.
Christina had packed up a small bundle, for the chance of being unable to
return to the castle without missing her escort, though she hoped that
the fair might last two days, and that she should thus be enabled to
return and bring away the rest of her property. She was more and more
resolved on going, but her heart was less and less inclined to departure.
And bitter had been her weeping through all the early light hours of the
long morning—weeping that she tried to think was all for Ermentrude; and
all, amid prayers she could scarce trust herself to offer, that the
generous, kindly nature might yet work free of these evil surroundings,
and fulfil the sister’s dying wish, she should never see it; but, when
she should hear that the Debateable Ford was the Friendly Ford, then
would she know that it was the doing of the Good Baron Ebbo. Could she
venture on telling him so? Or were it not better that there were no
farewell? And she wept again that he should think her ungrateful. She
could not persuade herself to release the doves, but committed the charge
to Ursel to let them go in case she should not return.
So tear-stained was her face, that, ashamed that it should be seen, she
wrapped it closely in her hood and veil when she came down and joined her
father. The whole scene swam in tears before her eyes when she saw the
whole green slope from the chapel covered with tents and booths, and
swarming with pedlars and mountaineers in their picturesque dresses.
Women and girls were exchanging the yarn of their winter’s spinning for
bright handkerchiefs; men drove sheep, goats, or pigs to barter for
knives, spades, or weapons; others were gazing at simple shows—a dancing
bear or ape—or clustering round a Minnesinger; many even then
congregating in booths for the sale of beer. Further up, on the flat
space of sward above the chapel, were some lay brothers, arranging for
the representation of a mystery—a kind of entertainment which Germany
owed to the English who came to the Council of Constance, and which the
monks of St. Ruprecht’s hoped might infuse some religious notions into
the wild, ignorant mountaineers.
First however Christina gladly entered the church. Crowded though it
were, it was calmer than the busy scene without. Faded old tapestry was
decking its walls, representing apparently some subject entirely alien to
St. John or the blessed hermit; Christina rather thought it was Mars and
Venus, but that was all the same to every one else. And there was a
terrible figure of St. John, painted life-like, with a real hair-cloth
round his loins, just opposite to her, on the step of the Altar; also
poor Friedmund’s bones, dressed up in a new serge amice and hood; the
stone from Nicæa was in a gilded box, ready in due time to be kissed; and
a preaching friar (not one of the monks of St. Ruprecht’s) was in the
midst of a sermon, telling how St. John presided at the Council of Nicæa
till the Emperor Maximius cut off his head at the instance of
Herodius—full justice being done to the dancing—and that the blood was
sprinkled on this very stone, whereupon our Holy Father the Pope decreed
that whoever would kiss the said stone, and repeat the Credo five times
afterwards, should be capable of receiving an indulgence for 500 years:
which indulgence must however be purchased at the rate of six groschen,
to be bestowed in alms at Rome. And this inestimable benefit he, poor
Friar Peter, had come from his brotherhood of St. Francis at Offingen
solely to dispense to the poor mountaineers.
It was disappointing to find this profane mummery going on instead of the
holy services to which Christina had looked forward for strength and
comfort; she was far too well instructed not to be scandalized at the
profane deception which was ripening fast for Luther, only thirty years
later; and, when the stone was held up by the friar in one hand, the
printed briefs of indulgence in the other, she shrunk back. Her father
however said, “Wilt have one, child? Five hundred years is no bad
bargain.”
“My uncle has small trust in indulgences,” she whispered.
“All lies, of course,” quoth Hugh; “yet they’ve the Pope’s seal, and I
have more than half a mind to get one. Five hundred years is no joke,
and I am sure of purgatory, since I bought this medal at the Holy House
of Loretto.”
And he went forward, and invested six groschen in one of the papers, the
most religious action poor Christina had ever seen him perform. Other
purchasers came forward—several, of the castle _knappen_, and a few
peasant women who offered yarn or cheeses as equivalents for money, but
were told with some insolence to go and sell their goods, and bring the
coin.
After a time, the friar, finding his traffic slack, thought fit to
remove, with his two lay assistants, outside the chapel, and try the
effects of an out-of-door sermon. Hugh Sorel, who had been hitherto
rather diverted by the man’s gestures and persuasions, now decided on
going out into the fair in quest of an escort for his daughter, but as
she saw Father Norbert and another monk ascending from the stairs leading
to the hermit’s cell, she begged to be allowed to remain in the church,
where she was sure to be safe, instead of wandering about with him in the
fair.
He was glad to be unencumbered, though he thought her taste unnatural;
and, promising to return for her when he had found an escort, he left
her.
Father Norbert had come for the very purpose of hearing confessions, and
Christina’s next hour was the most comfortable she had spent since
Ermentrude’s death.
After this however the priests were called away, and long, long did
Christina first kneel and then sit in the little lonely church, hearing
the various sounds without, and imagining that her father had forgotten
her, and that he and all the rest were drinking, and then what would
become of her? Why had she quitted old Ursel’s protection?
Hours of waiting and nameless alarm must have passed, for the sun was
waxing low, when at length she heard steps coming up the hermit’s cell,
and a head rose above the pavement which she recognized with a wild throb
of joy, but, repressing her sense of gladness, she only exclaimed, “Oh,
where is my father!”
“I have sent him to the toll at the Gemsbock’s Pass,” replied Sir
Eberhard, who had by this time come up the stairs, followed by Brother
Peter and the two lay assistants. Then, as Christina turned on him her
startled, terrified eyes in dismay and reproach for such thoughtlessness,
he came towards her, and, bending his head and opening his hand, he
showed on his palm two gold rings. “There, little one,” he said; “now
shalt thou never again shut me out.”
Her senses grew dizzy. “Sir,” she faintly said, “this is no place to
delude a poor maiden.”
“I delude thee not. The brother here waits to wed us.”
“Impossible! A burgher maid is not for such as you.”
“None but a burgher maid will I wed,” returned Sir Eberhard, with all the
settled resolution of habits of command. “See, Christina, thou art
sweeter and better than any lady in the land; thou canst make me what
she—the blessed one who lies there—would have me. I love thee as never
knight loved lady. I love thee so that I have not spoken a word to
offend thee when my heart was bursting; and”—as he saw her irrepressible
tears—“I think thou lovest me a little.”
“Ah!” she gasped with a sob, “let me go.”
“Thou canst not go home; there is none here fit to take charge of thee.
Or if there were, I would slay him rather than let thee go. No, not so,”
he said, as he saw how little those words served his cause; “but without
thee I were a mad and desperate man. Christina, I will not answer for
myself if thou dost not leave this place my wedded wife.”
“Oh!” implored Christina, “if you would only betroth me, and woo me like
an honourable maiden from my home at Ulm!”
“Betroth thee, ay, and wed thee at once,” replied Eberhard, who, all
along, even while his words were most pleading, had worn a look and
manner of determined authority and strength, good-natured indeed, but
resolved. “I am not going to miss my opportunity, or baulk the friar.”
The friar, who had meantime been making a few needful arrangements for
the ceremony, advanced towards them. He was a good-humoured, easy-going
man, who came prepared to do any office that came in his way on such
festival days at the villages round; and peasant marriages at such times
were not uncommon. But something now staggered him, and he said
anxiously—
“This maiden looks convent-bred! Herr Reiter, pardon me; but if this be
the breaking of a cloister, I can have none of it.”
“No such thing,” said Eberhard; “she is town-bred, that is all.”
“You would swear to it, on the holy mass yonder, both of you?” said the
friar, still suspiciously.
“Yea,” replied Eberhard, “and so dost thou, Christina.”
This was the time if ever to struggle against her destiny. The friar
would probably have listened to her if she had made any vehement
opposition to a forced marriage, and if not, a few shrieks would have
brought perhaps Father Norbert, and certainly the whole population; but
the horror and shame of being found in such a situation, even more than
the probability that she might meet with vengeance rather than
protection, withheld her. Even the friar could hardly have removed her,
and this was her only chance of safety from the Baroness’s fury. Had she
hated and loathed Sir Eberhard, perhaps she had striven harder, but his
whole demeanour constrained and quelled her, and the chief effort she
made against yielding was the reply, “I am no cloister maid, holy father,
but—”
The “but” was lost in the friar’s jovial speech. “Oh, then, all is well!
Take thy place, pretty one, there, by the door, thou know’st it should be
in the porch, but—ach, I understand!” as Eberhard quietly drew the bolt
within. “No, no, little one, I have no time for bride scruples and
coyness; I have to train three dull-headed louts to be Shem, Ham, and
Japhet before dark. Hast confessed of late?”
“This morning, but—” said Christina, and “This morning,” to her great
joy, said Eberhard, and, in her satisfaction thereat, her second “but”
was not followed up.
The friar asked their names, and both gave the Christian name alone; then
the brief and simple rite was solemnized in its shortest form. Christina
had, by very force of surprise and dismay, gone through all without signs
of agitation, except the quivering of her whole frame, and the icy
coldness of the hand, where Eberhard had to place the ring on each finger
in turn.
But each mutual vow was a strange relief to her long-tossed and divided
mind, and it was rest indeed to let her affection have its will, and own
him indeed as a protector to be loved instead of shunned. When all was
over, and he gathered the two little cold hands into his large one, his
arm supporting her trembling form, she felt for the moment, poor little
thing, as if she could never be frightened again.
Parish registers were not, even had this been a parish church, but
Brother Peter asked, when he had concluded, “Well, my son, which of his
flock am I to report to your Pfarrer as linked together?”
“The less your tongue wags on that matter till I call on you, the
better,” was the stern reply. “Look you, no ill shall befall you if you
are wise, but remember, against the day I call you to bear witness, that
you have this day wedded Baron Eberhard von Adlerstein the younger, to
Christina, the daughter of Hugh Sorel, the Esquire of Ulm.”
“Thou hast played me a trick, Sir Baron!” said the friar, somewhat
dismayed, but more amused, looking up at Eberhard, who, as Christina now
saw, had divested himself of his gilt spurs, gold chain, silvered belt
and horn, and eagle’s plume, so as to have passed for a simple
lanzknecht. “I would have had no such gear as this!”
“So I supposed,” said Eberhard coolly.
“Young folks! young folks!” laughed the friar, changing his tone, and
holding up his finger slyly; “the little bird so cunningly nestled in the
church to fly out my Lady Baroness! Well, so thou hast a pretty, timid
lambkin there, Sir Baron. Take care you use her mildly.”
Eberhard looked into Christina’s face with a smile, that to her, at
least, was answer enough; and he held out half a dozen links of his gold
chain to the friar, and tossed a coin to each of the lay brethren.
“Not for the poor friar himself,” explained Brother Peter, on receiving
this marriage fee; “it all goes to the weal of the brotherhood.”
“As you please,” said Eberhard. “Silence, that is all! And thy
friary—?”
“The poor house of St. Francis at Offingen for the present, noble sir,”
said the priest. “There will you hear of me, if you find me not. And
now, fare thee well, my gracious lady. I hope one day thou wilt have
more words to thank the poor brother who has made thee a noble Baroness.”
“Ah, good father, pardon my fright and confusion,” Christina tried to
murmur, but at that moment a sudden glow and glare of light broke out on
the eastern rock, illuminating the fast darkening little church with a
flickering glare, that made her start in terror as if the fires of heaven
were threatening this stolen marriage; but the friar and Eberhard both
exclaimed, “The Needfire alight already!” And she recollected how often
she had seen these bonfires on Midsummer night shining red on every hill
around Ulm. Loud shouts were greeting the uprising flame, and the people
gathering thicker and thicker on the slope. The friar undid the door to
hasten out into the throng, and Eberhard said he had left his spurs and
belt in the hermit’s cell, and must return thither, after which he would
walk home with his bride, moving at the same time towards the stair, and
thereby causing a sudden scuffle and fall. “So, master hermit,” quoth
Eberhard, as the old man picked himself up, looking horribly frightened;
“that’s your hermit’s abstraction, is it? No whining, old man, I am not
going to hurt thee, so thou canst hold thy tongue. Otherwise I will
smoke thee out of thy hole like a wild cat! What, thou aiding me with my
belt, my lovely one? Thanks; the snap goes too hard for thy little
hands. Now, then, the fire will light us gaily down the mountain side.”
But it soon appeared that to depart was impossible, unless by forcing a
way through the busy throng in the full red glare of the firelight, and
they were forced to pause at the opening of the hermit’s cave, Christina
leaning on her husband’s arm, and a fold of his mantle drawn round her to
guard her from the night-breeze of the mountain, as they waited for a
quiet space in which to depart unnoticed. It was a strange, wild scene!
The fire was on a bare, flat rock, which probably had been yearly so
employed ever since the Kelts had brought from the East the rite that
they had handed on to the Swabians—the Beltane fire, whose like was
blazing everywhere in the Alps, in the Hartz, nay, even in England,
Scotland, and on the granite points of Ireland. Heaped up for many
previous days with faggots from the forest, then apparently
inexhaustible, the fire roared and crackled, and rose high, red and
smoky, into the air, paling the moon, and obscuring the stars. Round it,
completely hiding the bonfire itself, were hosts of dark figures swarming
to approach it—all with a purpose. All held old shoes or superannuated
garments in their hands to feed the flame; for it was esteemed needful
that every villager should contribute something from his house—once, no
doubt, as an offering to Bel, but now as a mere unmeaning observance.
And shrieks of merriment followed the contribution of each too well-known
article of rubbish that had been in reserve for the Needfire! Girls and
boys had nuts to throw in, in pairs, to judge by their bounces of future
chances of matrimony. Then came a shouting, tittering, and falling back,
as an old boor came forward like a priest with something heavy and
ghastly in his arms, which was thrown on with a tremendous shout,
darkened the glow for a moment, then hissed, cracked, and emitted a
horrible odour.
It was a horse’s head, the right owner of which had been carefully kept
for the occasion, though long past work. Christina shuddered, and felt
as if she had fallen upon a Pagan ceremony; as indeed was true enough,
only that the Adlersteiners attached no meaning to the performance,
except a vague notion of securing good luck.
With the same idea the faggots were pulled down, and arranged so as to
form a sort of lane of fire. Young men rushed along it, and then bounded
over the diminished pile, amid loud shouts of laughter and either
admiration or derision; and, in the meantime, a variety of odd, recusant
noises, grunts, squeaks, and lowings proceeding from the darkness were
explained to the startled little bride by her husband to come from all
the cattle of the mountain farms around, who were to have their weal
secured by being driven through the Needfire.
It may well be imagined that the animals were less convinced of the
necessity of this performance than their masters. Wonderful was the
clatter and confusion, horrible the uproar raised behind to make the poor
things proceed at all, desperate the shout when some half-frantic
creature kicked or attempted a charge wild the glee when a persecuted
goat or sheep took heart of grace, and flashed for one moment between the
crackling, flaring, smoking walls. When one cow or sheep off a farm
went, all the others were pretty sure to follow it, and the owner had
then only to be on the watch at the other end to turn them back, with
their flame-dazzled eyes, from going unawares down the precipice, a fate
from which the passing through the fire was evidently not supposed to
ensure them. The swine, those special German delights, were of course
the most refractory of all. Some, by dint of being pulled away from the
lane of fire, were induced to rush through it; but about half-way they
generally made a bolt, either sidelong through the flaming fence or
backwards among the legs of their persecutors, who were upset amid loud
imprecations. One huge, old, lean, high-backed sow, with a large family,
truly feminine in her want of presence of mind, actually charged into the
midst of the bonfire itself, scattering it to the right and left with her
snout, and emitting so horrible a smell of singed bacon, that it might
almost be feared that some of her progeny were anticipating the invention
of Chinese roasting-pigs. However, their proprietor, Jobst, counted them
out all safe on the other side, and there only resulted some sighs and
lamentations among the seniors, such as Hatto and Ursel, that it boded
ill to have the Needfire trodden out by an old sow.
All the castle live-stock were undergoing the same ceremony. Eberhard
concerned himself little about the vagaries of the sheep and pigs, and
only laughed a little as the great black goat, who had seen several
Midsummer nights, and stood on his guard, made a sudden short run and
butted down old Hatto, then skipped off like a chamois into the darkness,
unheeding, the old rogue, the whispers that connected his unlucky hue
with the doings of the Walpurgisnacht. But when it came to the horses,
Eberhard could not well endure the sight of the endeavours to force them,
snorting, rearing, and struggling, through anything so abhorrent to them
as the hedge of fire.
The Schneiderlein, with all the force of his powerful arm, had hold of
Eberhard’s own young white mare, who, with ears turned back, nostrils
dilated, and wild eyes, her fore-feet firmly planted wide apart, was
using her whole strength for resistance; and, when a heavy blow fell on
her, only plunged backwards, and kicked without advancing. It was more
than Eberhard could endure, and Christina’s impulse was to murmur, “O do
not let him do it;” but this he scarcely heard, as he exclaimed, “Wait
for me here!” and, as he stepped forward, sent his voice before him,
forbidding all blows to the mare.
The creature’s extreme terror ceased at once upon hearing his voice, and
there was an instant relaxation of all violence of resistance as he came
up to her, took her halter from the Schneiderlein, patted her glossy
neck, and spoke to her. But the tumult of warning voices around him
assured him that it would be a fatal thing to spare the steed the passage
through the fire, and he strove by encouragements and caresses with voice
and hand to get her forward, leading her himself; but the poor beast
trembled so violently, and, though making a few steps forward, stopped
again in such exceeding horror of the flame, that Eberhard had not the
heart to compel her, turned her head away, and assured her that she
should not be further tormented.
“The gracious lordship is wrong,” said public opinion, by the voice of
old Bauer Ulrich, the sacrificer of the horse’s head. “Heaven forfend
that evil befall him and that mare in the course of the year.”
And the buzz of voices concurred in telling of the recusant pigs who had
never developed into sausages, the sheep who had only escaped to be eaten
by wolves, the mule whose bones had been found at the bottom of an abyss.
Old Ursel was seriously concerned, and would have laid hold on her young
master to remonstrate, but a fresh notion had arisen—Would the gracious
Freiherr set a-rolling the wheel, which was already being lighted in the
fire, and was to conclude the festivities by being propelled down the
hill—figuring, only that no one present knew it, the sun’s declension
from his solstitial height? Eberhard made no objection; and Christina,
in her shelter by the cave, felt no little dismay at being left alone
there, and moreover had a strange, weird feeling at the wild, uncanny
ceremony he was engaged in, not knowing indeed that it was sun-worship,
but afraid that it could be no other than unholy sorcery.
The wheel, flaring or reddening in all its spokes, was raised from the
bonfire, and was driven down the smoothest piece of green sward, which
formed an inclined plane towards the stream. If its course was smooth,
and it only became extinguished by leaping into the water, the village
would flourish; and prosperity above all was expected if it should spring
over the narrow channel, and attempt to run up the other side. Such
things had happened in the days of the good Freiherren Ebbo and Friedel,
though the wheel had never gone right since the present baron had been
excommunicated; but his heir having been twice seen at mass in this last
month great hopes were founded upon him.
There was a shout to clear the slope. Eberhard, in great earnest and
some anxiety, accepted the gauntlet that he was offered to protect his
hand, steadied the wheel therewith, and, with a vigorous impulse from
hand and foot, sent it bounding down the slope, among loud cries and a
general scattering of the idlers who had crowded full into the very path
of the fiery circle, which flamed up brilliantly for the moment as it met
the current of air. But either there was an obstacle in the way, or the
young Baron’s push had not been quite straight: the wheel suddenly
swerved aside, its course swerved to the right, maugre all the
objurgations addressed to it as if it had been a living thing, and the
next moment it had disappeared, all but a smoky, smouldering spot of red,
that told where it lay, charring and smoking on its side, without having
fulfilled a quarter of its course.
People drew off gravely and silently, and Eberhard himself was strangely
discomfited when he came back to the hermitage, and, wrapping Christina
in his cloak, prepared to return, so soon as the glare of the fire should
have faded from his eyesight enough to make it safe to tread so
precipitous a path. He had indeed this day made a dangerous venture, and
both he and Christina could not but feel disheartened by the issue of all
the omens of the year, the more because she had a vague sense of wrong in
consulting or trusting them. It seemed to her all one frightened,
uncomprehended dream ever since her father had left her in the chapel;
and, though conscious of her inability to have prevented her marriage,
yet she blamed herself, felt despairing as she thought of the future,
and, above all, dreaded the Baron and the Baroness and their anger.
Eberhard, after his first few words, was silent, and seemed solely
absorbed in leading her safely along the rocky path, sometimes lifting
her when he thought her in danger of stumbling. It was one of the
lightest, shortest nights of the year, and a young moon added to the
brightness in open places, while in others it made the rocks and stones
cast strange elvish shadows. The distance was not entirely lost; other
Beltane fires could be seen, like beacons, on every hill, and the few
lights in the castle shone out like red fiery eyes in its heavy dark pile
of building.
Before entering, Eberhard paused, pulled off his own wedding-ring, and
put it into his bosom, and taking his bride’s hand in his, did the same
for her, and bade her keep the ring till they could wear them openly.
“Alas! then,” said Christina, “you would have this secret?”
“Unless I would have to seek thee down the oubliette, my little one,”
said Eberhard “or, what might even be worse, see thee burnt on the
hillside for bewitching me with thine arts! No, indeed, my darling.
Were it only my father, I could make him love thee; but my mother—I could
not trust her where she thought the honour of our house concerned. It
shall not be for long. Thou know’st we are to make peace with the
Kaiser, and then will I get me employment among Kürfurst Albrecht’s
companies of troops, and then shalt thou prank it as my Lady Freiherrinn,
and teach me the ways of cities.”
“Alas! I fear me it has been a great sin!” sighed the poor little wife.
“For thee—thou couldst not help it,” said Eberhard; “for me—who knows how
many deadly ones it may hinder? Cheer up, little one; no one can harm
thee while the secret is kept.”
Poor Christina had no choice but submission; but it was a sorry bridal
evening, to enter her husband’s home in shrinking terror; with the threat
of the oubliette before her, and with a sense of shame and deception
hanging upon her, making the wonted scowl of the old baroness cut her
both with remorse and dread.
She did indeed sit beside her bridegroom at the supper, but how little
like a bride! even though he pushed the salt-cellar, as if by accident,
below her place. She thought of her myrtle, tended in vain at home by
Barbara Schmidt; she thought of Ulm courtships, and how all ought to have
been; the solemn embassage to her uncle, the stately negotiations; the
troth plight before the circle of ceremonious kindred and merry maidens,
of whom she had often been one—the subsequent attentions of the betrothed
on all festival days, the piles of linen and all plenishings accumulated
since babyhood, and all reviewed and laid out for general admiration (Ah!
poor Aunt Johanna still spinning away to add to the many webs in her
walnut presses!)—then the grand procession to fetch home the bride, the
splendid festival with the musicians, dishes, and guest-tables to the
utmost limit that was allowed by the city laws, and the bride’s hair so
joyously covered by her matron’s curch amid the merriment of her
companion maidens.
Poor child! After she had crept away to her own room, glad that her
father was not yet returned, she wept bitterly over the wrong that she
felt she had done to the kind uncle and aunt, who must now look in vain
for their little Christina, and would think her lost to them, and to all
else that was good. At least she had had the Church’s blessing—but that,
strange to say, was regarded, in burgher life before the Reformation, as
rather the ornament of a noble marriage than as essential to the civil
contract; and a marriage by a priest was regarded by the citizens rather
as a means of eluding the need of obtaining the parent’s consent, than as
a more regular and devout manner of wedding. However, Christina felt
this the one drop of peace. The blessings and prayers were warm at her
heart, and gave her hope. And as to drops of joy, of them there was no
lack, for had not she now a right to love Eberhard with all her heart and
conscience, and was not it a wonderful love on his part that had made him
stoop to the little white-faced burgher maid, despised even by her own
father? O better far to wear the maiden’s uncovered head for him than
the myrtle wreath for any one else!