The Roumanians call death "the betrothed of the world:" that which
awaits. The Neapolitans give it the name of _la vedova_: that
which survives. It would be easy to go on multiplying the stock of
contrasting epithets. Inevitable yet a surprise, of daily incidence
yet a mystery, unvarying yet most various, a common fact yet incapable
of becoming common-place, death may be looked at from innumerable
points of view; but, look at it how we will, it moves and excites
our spiritual consciousness as nothing else can do. The first poet of
human things was perhaps one who stood in the presence of death.
In the twilight that went before civilization the loves of men were
prosaic, and intellectual unrest was remote, but there was already
Rachel weeping for her children and would not be comforted because
they are not. Death, high priest of the ideal, led man in his infancy
through a crisis of awe passing into transcendent exaltation, kindred
with the state which De Quincey describes when recalling the feelings
wrought in his childish brain by the loss of his sister. It set the
child-man asking why? first sign of a dawning intelligence; it told
him in familiar language that we lie on the borders of the unknown; it
opened before him the infinite spaces of hope and fear; it shattered
to pieces the dull round of the food-seeking present, and built up out
of the ruins the perception of a past and a future. It was the symbol
of a human oneness with the coming and going of day and night, summer
and winter, the rising and receding tide. It caused even the rudest
of men to speak lower, to tread more softly, revealing to him unawares
the angel Reverence. And above all, it wounded the heart of man. M.
Renan says with great truth, "Le grand agent de la marche du monde,
c'est la douleur." What poetry owes to the bread of sorrow has never
been better told than by the Greek folk-singer, who condenses it into
one brief sentence: "Songs are the words spoken by those who suffer."
The influence of death on the popular imagination is shown in those
ballads of the supernatural of which folk-poetry offers so great an
abundance as to make choice difficult. One of the most powerful as
well as the most widely diffused of the people's ghost stories is that
which treats of the persecuted child whose mother comes out of her
grave to succour him. There are two or three variants of this among
the Czech songs. A child aged eighteen months loses his mother. As
soon as he is old enough to understand about such things, he asks his
father what he has done with her? "Thy mother sleeps a heavy sleep, no
one will wake her; she lies in the graveyard hard by the gate." When
the child hears that, he runs to the graveyard. He loosens the earth
with a big pin and pushes it aside with his little finger. Then he
cries mournfully, "Ah! mother, little mother, say one little word to
me!" "My child, I cannot," the mother replies, "my head is weighed
down with clay; on my heart is a stone which burns like fire; go home
little one, there you have another mother." "Ah!" rejoins he, "she is
not good like you were. When she gives me bread she turns it thrice;
when you gave it me you spread it with butter. When she combs my hair
she makes my head bleed; when you combed my hair, mother, you fondled
it. When she bathes my feet she bruises them against the side of the
basin; when you bathed them you kissed them. When she washes my shirt
she loads me with curses; you used to sing whilst you washed." The
mother answers: "Go back to the house, my child, to-morrow I will come
for you." The child goes back to the house and lies down in his bed.
"Ah! father, my little father, make ready my winding-sheet, my
soul now belongs to God, my body to the grave, to the grave near my
mother--how glad her heart will be!" One day he was ill, the second he
died, the third day they buried him. The effect is heightened by the
interval placed between the mother's death and the child's awakening
to his own forlorn condition. When the mother died he was too young to
think or to grieve. He did not know that she was gone until he missed
her. Only by degrees, after years of harsh treatment, borne with the
patience of a child or a dumb animal, he began to feel intuitively
rather than to remember that it had not been always so--that he had
once been loved. Then, going straight to the point with the terrible
accusative power that lies in children, he said to the father, "What
have you done with my mother?" He had been able to live and to suffer
until he was old enough to think; when he thought, he died. Here
we have an instance, one of the many that exist, of a motive which,
having recurred again and again in folk-poetry, gets handled at last
by a master-poet, who gives it enduring shape and immortality. Victor
Hugo may or may not have known the popular legend. It is most likely
that he did not know it. Yet, stripped of the marvellous, and modified
in certain secondary points of construction, the story is the story
of "Petit Paul," little Paul, the child of modern France, who takes
company with Dante's Anselmuccio and Shakespeare's Arthur, and who
with them will live in the pity of all time. The Ruthenes affirm
that it was Christ who bade the child seek his mother's grave. The
Provencal folk-poet begins his tale: "You shall hear the complaint of
three very little children." The mother of these children was dead,
the father had married again. The new wife brought a hard time for the
children, and the day came when they were like to starve. The littlest
begged for a bit of bread, and he got a kick which threw him to the
ground. Then the biggest of the brothers said, "Get up and let us go
to our mother in the graveyard; she will give us bread." They set out
at once; on their way they met Jesus Christ.
Et ount anetz, mes angis,
Mes angis tant petits?
"Where are you going, my angels, my so very small angels?" "We go to
the graveyard to find our mother." Jesus Christ tells the mother to
come forth and give her children food. "How would you have me come
forth, when there is no strength left in me?" He answers that her
strength shall come back to her for seven years. Now, as the end of
the seven years drew near, she was always sobbing and sighing, and the
children asked why it was. "I weep, my children, because I have to go
away from you." "Weep no more, mother, we will all go together; one
shall carry the hyssop, another will take the taper, the last will
hold the book. We will go home singing." The Provencal poet does not
tell us what happened when the resuscitated wife came back to her
former abode; we have to go to Scandinavia for an account of that.
Dyring the Dane went to an island and wed a fair maiden. For seven
years they dwelt together and were blessed with children; but while
the youngest born was still a helpless babe, Death stalked through the
land and carried off the young wife in his clutches. Dyring went to
another island and married a girl who was bad and spiteful. He brought
her home to his house, and when she reached the door the six little
children were there crying. She thrust them aside with her foot, she
gave them no ale and no bread; she said, "You shall suffer thirst and
hunger." She took from them their blue cushions, and said, "You shall
sleep on straw." She took from them their wax candles, and said,
"You shall stay in the dark." In the evening, very late, the children
cried, and their mother heard them under the ground. She listened as
she lay in her shroud, and thought to herself, "I must go to my little
children." She begged our Lord so hard to let her go, that her prayer
was granted. "Only you must be back when the cock crows." She lifted
her weary limbs, the grave gaped, she passed through the village, the
dogs howled as she passed, throwing up their noses in the air. When
she got to the house, she saw her eldest daughter on the threshold.
"Why are you standing there, my dear daughter? Where are your brothers
and sisters?" The daughter knew her not. She said her mother was
fair and blithe, her face was white and pink. "How can I be fair and
blithe? I am dead, my face is pale. How can I be white and pink, when
I have been all this time in my winding-sheet?" Answering thus, the
mother hastened to her little children's chamber. She found them with
tears running down their cheeks. She brushed the clothes of one, she
tidied the hair of the second, she lifted the third from the floor,
she comforted the fourth, the fifth she set on her knee as though
she were fain to suckle it. To the eldest girl she said, "Go and tell
Dyring to come here." And when he came she cried in wrath, "I left you
ale and bread, and my little ones hunger; I left you blue cushions,
and my little ones lie on straw; I left you waxen candles, and my
little ones are in the dark. Woe betide you, if there be cause
I should return again! Behold the red cock crows, the dead fly
underground. Behold the black cock crows, heaven's doors are thrown
wide. Behold the white cock crows, I must begone." So saying she went,
and was seen no more. Ever after that night each time Dyring and his
wife heard the dogs bark they gave the children ale and bread; each
time they heard the dogs bay they were seized with dread of the dead
woman; each time they heard the dogs howl they trembled lest she
should come back. Two universal beliefs are introduced into this
variant: the disappearance of the dead at cock crow, and the
connection of the howling of dogs with death or the dead. The last
is a superstition which still obtains a wide acceptance even among
educated people. I was speaking of it lately to an English officer,
who stated that he had twice heard the death howl, once while on duty
in Ireland, and once, if I remember right, in India. It was, he said,
totally unlike any other noise produced by a dog. I observed that
all noises sound singular when the nerves are strained by painful
expectancy; but he answered that in his own case his feelings were not
involved, as the death which occurred, in one instance at least, was
that of a perfect stranger.
The interpretation of dreams as a direct intercourse with the
spiritual world is not usual in folk-lore; the people hardly see the
need of placing the veil of sleep between mortal eyes and ghostly
appearances. In a Bulgarian song, however, a sleeping girl speaks with
her dead mother. Militza goes down into the little garden where
the white and red roses are in bloom. She is weary, and she is soon
asleep. A small fine rain begins to fall, the wind rustles in the
leaves; Militza sighs, and having sighed, she awakes. Then she
upbraids the rain and the wind: "Whistle no more, O wind; thou, O
rain, descend no more; for in my dreams I found my mother. Rain, may
thy fount be dried; mayst thou be for ever silent, O wind: ye have
taken me from the counsel my mother gave me." The few lines thus
baldly summarized make up, as it seems to me, a little masterpiece of
delicate conception and light workmanship: one which would surprise us
from the lips of a letterless poet, were there not proof that no touch
is so light and so sure as that of the artificer untaught in our own
sense--the man or the woman who produces the intricate filigree, the
highly wrought silver, the wood carving, the embroidery, the lace, the
knitted wool rivalling the spider's web, the shawl with whose weft and
woof a human life is interwoven.
I have only once come upon the case of a father who returns to take
care of his offspring. Mr Chu, a worthy Chinese gentleman, revisited
this earth as a disembodied spirit to guard and teach his little boy
Wei. When Wei reached the age of twenty-two, and took his doctor's
degree, his father, Mr Chu, finally vanished. As a general rule, the
Chinese consider the sight of his former surroundings to be the worst
penalty that can befall a soul. Mr Herbert Giles, in his fascinating
work on the Liao-Chai of P'u Sing-Ling, gives a full account of the
terrible See-one's-home terrace as represented in the fifth court of
Purgatory in the Taoist Temples. Good souls, or even those who have
done partly good and partly evil, will never stand thereon. The souls
of the wicked only see their homes as if they were near them: they see
their last wishes disregarded, everything upside down, their substance
squandered, the husband prepares to take a new wife, strangers possess
the old estate, in their misery the dead man's family curse him, his
children become corrupt, lands are gone, the house is burnt, the wife
sees her husband tortured, the husband sees his wife stricken down
with mortal disease; friends forget: "some perhaps for the sake of
bygone times may stroke the coffin and let fall a tear, departing with
a cold smile." In the West, this gloomy creed is perhaps hinted at in
the French proverb, "Les morts sont bien mort." But Western thought at
its best, at its highest, imagines differently. It imagines that the
most gracious privilege of immortal spirits is that of beholding those
beloved of them in mortal life--
I am still near,
Watching the smiles I prized on earth,
Your converse mild, your blameless mirth.
Happy and serene optimism!
The ghosts of folk-lore return not only to succour the innocent, they
come back also to convict the guilty. The avenging ghost shows himself
in all kinds of strange and uncanny ways rather than in his habit as
he lived. He comes in animal or vegetable shape; or perhaps he uses
the agency of some inanimate object. In the Faroe Isles there is a
story of a girl whose sister pushed her into the sea out of jealousy.
The blue waves cast ashore her body, which was found by two pilgrims,
who made the arms into a harp, and the flaxen locks into strings. Then
they went and played the harp at the wedding feast of the murderess
and the dead girl's betrothed. The first string said, "The bride is
my sister." The second string said, "The bride caused my death." The
third string said, "The bridegroom is my betrothed." The harp's notes
swelled louder and louder, and the guilty bride fell sick unto death;
before the pilgrims had done playing, her heart broke. This is much
the same story as the "Twa Sisters of Binnorie." A Slovack legend
describes two musicians who, as they were travelling together, noticed
a fine plane tree; and one said to the other, "Let us cut it down,
it is just the thing to make a violin of; the violin will be equally
yours and mine; we will play on it by turn." At the first blow the
tree sighed; at the second blow blood spurted out; at the third blow
the tree began to talk. It said: "Musicians, fair youths, do not cut
me down; I am not a tree, I am made of flesh and blood; I am a lovely
girl of the neighbouring town; my mother cursed me while I drew
water--while I drew water and chatted with my friend. 'Mayst thou
change into a plane tree with broad leaves,' said she. Go ye,
musicians, and play before my mother." So they betook themselves
to the mother's door and played a dirge over her child. "Play not,
musicians, fair youths," she entreated. "Rend not my heart by your
playing. I have enough of woe in having lost my daughter. Hapless the
mother who curses her children!" The well-known German tale of the
juniper tree belongs to the same class. A beautiful little boy is
killed by his step-mother, who serves him up as a dish of meat to his
father. The father eats in ignorance, and throws away the bones, which
are gathered up by the little half-sister, who puts them into her best
silk handkerchief and buries them under a juniper tree. Presently a
bird of gay plumage perches on the tree, and whistles as it flits from
branch to branch--
Min moder de mi slach't,
Min fader de mi att,
Min swester de Marleenken
Soecht alle mine Beeniken,
Und bindt sie in een syden Dook
Legst unner den Machandelboom;
Ky witt! ky witt! Ach watt en schoen vagel bin ich!
--a rhyme which Goethe puts into the mouth of Gretchen in prison. In
the German story the step-mother's brains are knocked out by the fall
of a mill-stone, and the bird-boy is restored to human form; but in
a Scotch variant the last event does not take place. It may have been
thrown in by some narrator who had a weakness for a plot which ends
well. All these wonder-tales had probably an original connection
with a belief in the transmigration of souls. In truth, the people's
_Maerchen_ are rooted nearly always on some article of ancient faith:
that is why they have so long a life. Faith vitalizes poetry or legend
or art; and what once lived takes a great time to die. Now that the
beliefs which fostered them have gone into the lumber-room of disused
religions, the old wonder-tales still have a freshness and a horror
which cannot be found even in the best of brand-new "made-up" stories.
Another reason why the dead come back is to fulfil a promise. The
Greek mother of the Kleft song has nine sons and one only daughter.
She bathes her in the darkness, her hair she combs in the light, she
dresses her beneath the shining of the moon. A stranger from Bagdad
has asked her in marriage, and Constantine, one of the sons, counsels
his mother to give her to the stranger. "Thou art wont to be prudent,
but in this thou art senseless," says the mother. "Who will bring her
back to me if there be joy or sorrow?" Constantine gives her God as
surety, and all the saints and martyrs, that if there be sorrow or joy
he will bring her back. In two years all the nine sons die, and when
it is Constantine's turn, the mother leans over his body and tears
her hair. Fain would she have back her daughter Arete, and behold
Constantine lies dead. At midnight Constantine gets up and goes to
where his sister dwells, and bids Arete to follow him. She asks what
has happened, but he tells her nothing. While they journey along the
birds sing: "See you that lovely girl riding with the dead?" Then
Arete asks her brother if he heard what the birds said. "They are only
birds," he answers; "never mind them." She says her brother has such
an odour of incense that it fills her with fear, "It is only," he
says, "because we passed the evening in the chapel of St John." When
they reach their home, the mother opens the portal and sees the dead
and the living come in together, and her soul leaves her body. The
motive of a ride with the dead, made familiar by the "Erl Koenig"
and Burgher's "Lenore," can be traced through endless variations in
folk-poesy.
In the Swedish ballad of "Little Christina," a lover rises from his
grave, not to carry off his beloved, but simply to console her. One
night Christina hears light fingers tapping at her door; she opens it,
and her dead betrothed comes in. She washes his feet with pure wine,
and for a long while they speak together. Then the cocks begin to
crow, and the dead get them underground. The young girl puts on her
shoes and follows her betrothed through the wide forest. When
they reach the graveyard, the fair hair of the young man begins to
disappear. "See, maiden," he says, "how the moon has reddened all at
once; even so, in a moment, thy beloved will vanish." She sits down on
the tomb and says: "I shall remain here till the Lord calls me." Then
she hears the voice of her betrothed saying to her: "Little Christina,
go back to thy dwelling-place. Every time a tear falls from thine eyes
my shroud is full of blood. Every time thy heart is gay, my shroud is
full of rose leaves."
If the display of excessive grief is thus shown to be only grievous to
the dead, yet they are held to be keenly sensible of a lack of due and
decorous respect. Such respect they generally get from rough or savage
natures, unless it be denied out of intentional scorn or enmity. There
is a factory in England where common men are employed to manipulate
large importations of bones for agricultural uses. Each cargo contains
a certain quantity of bones which are very obviously human. These the
workmen sort out, and when they have got a heap they bury it, and ask
the manager to read over it some passages from the Burial Service.
They do it of their own free will and initiative; were they hindered,
they would very likely leave the works. Shall it be called foolish or
sublime? Another curious instance of respect to the dead comes to my
mind. On board ship two cannon balls are ordinarily sewed up with a
body to sink it. Once a negro died at sea, and his fellows, negroes
also, took him in a boat and rowed a long way to a place where they
were to commit him to the deep. After a while the boat returned to
the ship, still with its burden. The explanation was soon made. The
negroes discovered that they had only one cannon ball, they had rowed
back for the other. One would have been quite enough to answer all
purposes; but it seemed to them disrespectful to their comrade to
cheat him out of half his due.
The dead particularly object to people treading carelessly on their
graves. So we learn from one of the songs of Greek outlawry.
All Saturday we held carouse, and far through Sunday night,
And on the Monday morn we found our wine expended quite.
To seek for more without delay the captain made me go;
I ne'er had seen nor known the way, nor had a guide to show.
And so through solitary roads and secret paths I sped,
Which to a little ivied church long time deserted led.
This church was full of tombs, and all by gallant men possest;
One sepulchre stood all alone, apart from all the rest.
I did not see it, and I trod above the dead man's bones,
And as from out the nether world came up a sound of groans.
What ails thee, sepulchre? why thus so deeply groan and sigh?
Doth the earth press, or the black stone weigh on thee heavily?
"Neither the earth doth press me down, nor black stone do me scath,
But I with bitter grief am wrung, and full of shame and wrath,
That thou dost trample on my head, and I am scorned in death.
Perhaps I was not also young, nor brave and stout in fight,
Nor wont as thou, beneath the moon, to wander through the night."
Egil Skallagrimson, after his son was drowned, resolved to let himself
die of hunger. Thorgerd, his daughter, came to him and prayed hard of
him that he would sing. Touched by her affection, he made an effort,
gathered up his ideas, dressed them in images, expressed them in song;
and as he sang, his regrets softened, and in the end his soul became
so calm that he was satisfied to live. In this beautiful saga lies the
secret of folk-elegies. The people find comfort in singing. A Czech
maiden asks of the dark woods how they can be as green in winter as in
summer; as for her, she cannot help vexing her heart. "But who would
not weep in my place? Where is my father, my beloved father? The sandy
plain is his winding-sheet. Where is my mother, my good mother? The
grass grows over her. I have no brother and no sister, and they have
taken away my friend." Of a certainty when she had sung, her vexed
heart was lighter. "Seul a un synonym: mort." Yes, but he who sings
is scarcely alone, even though there be only the waving pine woods to
answer with a sigh. The most passionate laments of the Sclavonic race
are for father and mother. If a Little Russian loses both his parents
his despair is such that it often drives him forth a wanderer on the
face of the earth. One so bereft cries out, "Dear mother, why didst
thou suffer me to see the day? Why didst thou bring me into the world
without obtaining for me by thy prayers a portion of its blessings?
My father and my mother are dead, and with them my country. Why was I
left a wretched orphan? Oh, could I find a being miserable as myself
that we might sympathize one with the other!" The birth-ties of
kindred are reckoned the only strong ones. Some Russian lines,
translated by Mr Ralston, indicate the degrees of mourning:
There weeps his mother--as a river runs;
There weeps his sister--as a streamlet flows;
There weeps his youthful wife--as falls the dew;
The sun will rise and gather up the dew.
A Servian _pesma_ illustrates the same idea. Young Toevo has the
misfortune to break his arm. A doctor is fetched--no other than a Vila
of the mountain. The wily sprite demands in guerdon for the cure the
right hand of the mother, the sister's long hair, with the ribbons
that bind it, the pearl necklace of the wife. Quickly the mother
sacrifices her right hand, quickly the sister cuts off her much-prized
braid, but the wife says, "Give up my white pearls that my father gave
me? Not I!" The Vila waxes angry and poisons Toevo's blood. When he is
dead three women fall "a-kookooing"--one groans without ceasing; one
sobs at dawn and dusk; one weeps just now and then when it comes into
her head so to do. As the cuckoo is supposed to be a sister mourning
for her brother, kookooing has come to mean lamenting. The Servian
girl who has lately lost her brother cannot hear the cuckoo's note
without weeping. In popular poetry the love of sister for brother
takes precedence even of the love of mother for child. Not only does
Gudrun in the Elder Edda esteem the murder of her first lord, the
god-like Sigurd, to be of less importance than that of her brothers,
but also to avenge their deaths, she has no scruple in slaying both
her second husband and her own sons. A Bulgarian ballad shows in still
more striking light the relative value set on the lives of child
and brother. There was a certain man named Negul, whose head was in
danger. The folk-poet is careful to express no sort of censure upon
his hero, but the boasts he is made to utter are sufficient guides to
his character. Great numbers of Turks has he put to flight, and yet
more women has he killed of those who would not follow him meekly as
his wives. "And now," he adds plaintively, "a misfortune has befallen
me which I have done nothing at all to deserve." His sister Milenka
hears him bemoaning his fate, and at once she says to him, "Brother
Negul, Negul, my brother, do not disturb yourself, do not distress
yourself; I have nine sons, nine sons and one daughter; the youngest
of all is Lalo; him will I sacrifice to save you; I will sacrifice him
so that you may remain to me." This was the promise of Milenka. Then
she hastened to her own home and prepared hot meats and set flasks of
golden wine wherewith to feast her sons. "Eat and drink together,"
she said, "and kiss one another's hands, for Lalo is going away to be
groomsman to his Uncle Negul. Let your mother see you all assembled,
and serve you each in turn with ruddy wine and with smoking viands."
For the others she did not wholly fill the glass, but Lalo's glass
she filled to the brim. Meanwhile Elka, Lalo's sister, made ready his
clothes for the journey; and as she busied about it, the little girl
cried because Lalo was going to be groomsman, and they had not asked
her to be bridesmaid. Lalo said to Elka, "Elka, my little only sister,
do not cry so, sister; do not be so vexed; we are nine brothers, and
one of these days you will surely act as bridesmaid." The words were
hardly spoken when the headsmen reached the door. They took Lalo,
the groomsman, and they chopped off his head in place of his Uncle
Negul's.
A new and different world is entered when we follow the folk-poet
upon the wrestling-ground of Death and Love. If I have judged rightly,
there were songs of death before there were any other love songs than
those of the nightingale; but the folk-poet was still young when he
learnt to sing of love, and the love poet found out early that his
lyre was incomplete without the string of death. In all folk-poetry
can be plainly heard that music of love and death which may be
said almost to have been the dominant note that sounded through the
literature of the ages of romance. Sometimes the victory is given to
death, sometimes to love; in one song love, while yielding, conquers.
Folk-poetry has not anything more instinct with the quality of
intensity than is this "Last Request" of a Greek robber-lover--
When thou shalt hear that I am ill,
O my well-beloved! he said,
O come to me, and quickly come,
Or thou wilt find me dead.
And when that thou hast reached the house,
And the great gates passed through,
Then, O my well-beloved, the braids
Of thy bright hair undo.
And to my mother say straightway,
Tell me, where is your son?
My son is lying on his bed
In his chamber all alone.
Then mount the stairs, O my well-beloved,
And come your lover anigh,
And smooth my pillow that I may
Raise me a little high,
And hold my head up in thy hands
Till flies away my soul.
And when thou seest the priest arrive,
And dress him in his stole,
Then place, my well-beloved, a kiss
On my lips pale and cold;
And when four youths shall lift me up,
And on their shoulders hold,
Then shalt thou, O my well-beloved,
Cast at them many a stone.
And when they reach thy neighbourhood
And by thy house pass on,
Then, O my well-beloved, thy hair,
Thy golden tresses cut;
And when they reach the church's gate,
And there my coffin put,
Then as the hen her feathers plucks,
So pluck thy hair for me.
And when my dirges all are done,
And lights extinguished be,
Then shall my heart, O well-beloved,
Still be possessed of thee.
We hardly notice the adventitious part of it--the ancient custom of
tearing off the hair, the strange stone-casting at the youths who
represent Charon; our attention is absorbed by what is the essence
of the song: passion which has burned itself into pure fire. Greek
folk-poetry shows a blending together of southern emotions with an
imaginative fervour, a prophetic power that is rather of the East than
of the South. No Tuscan ploughman, for instance, could seize the idea
of the Greek folk-poet of possessing his living love in death. If the
Tuscan thinks of a union in the grave, it can only be attained by the
one who remains joining the one who is gone--
O friendly soil,
Soil that doth hold my love in thine embrace,
Soon as for me shall end life's war and toil
Beneath thy sod I too would have a place;
Where my love is, there do I long to be,
Where now my heart is buried far from me--
Yes, where my love is gone I long to go,
Robbed of my heart I bear too deep a woe.
This stringer of pretty conceits fails to convince us that he is
very much in earnest in his wish to die. Speaking in the sincerity of
prose, the Tuscan says, "Ogni cosa e meglio che la morte." He does
not believe in the nothingness of life. In his worst troubles he still
feels that all his faculties, all his senses, are made for pleasure.
Death is to him the affair of a not cheerful religious ceremony--a
cross borne before a black draped bier, and bells tolling dolefully.
I hear Death's step, I see him at my side,
I feel his bony fingers clasp me round;
I see the church's door is open wide,
And for the dead I hear the knell resound.
I see the cross and the black pall outspread;
Love, thou dost lead me whither lie the dead!
I see the cross, the winding-sheet I see;
Love, to the graveyard thou art leading me!
Going further south, a stage further is reached in crude externality
of vision. People of the South are the only born realists. To them
that comes natural which in others is either affectation or the
fruits of what the French call _l'amour du laid_--a morbid love of the
hideous, such as marred the fine genius of Baudelaire. At Naples death
is a matter of corruption naked in the sunlight. When the Neapolitan
takes his mandoline amongst the tombs he unveils their sorry secrets,
not because he gloats over them, but because the habit of a reserve
of speech is entirely undeveloped in him. He dares to sing thus of his
lost love--
Her lattice ever lit no light displays.
My Nella! can it be that you are ill?
Her sister from the window looks and says:
"Your Nella in the grave lies cold and still.
Ofttimes she wept to waste her life unwed,
And now, poor child, she sleeps beside the dead."
Go to the church and lift the winding-sheet,
Gaze on my Nella's face--how changed, alas!
See 'twixt those lips whence issued flowers so sweet
Now loathsome worms (ah! piteous sight!) do pass.
Priest, let it be your care, and promise me,
That evermore her lamp shall lighted be.
The song beats with the pulses of the people's life--the life of a
people swift in gesture, in action, in living, in dying: always in a
hurry, as if one must be quick for the catastrophe is coming. They are
all here: the lover waiting in the street for some sign or word; the
girl leaning out of window to tell her piece of news; the "poor
child" who had drunk of the lava stream of love; the dead lying
uncoffined in the church to be gazed upon by who will; the priest
to whom are given those final instructions: pious, and yet how
uncomforting, how unilluminated by hope or even aspiration! Here there
is no thought of reunion. A kind-hearted German woman once tried to
console a young Neapolitan whose lover was dead, by saying that they
might meet in Paradise. "In Paradise?" she answered, opening her large
black eyes; "Ah! signora, in Paradise people do not marry."
The coming back or reappearance of a lover, in whose absence his
beloved has died, is a subject that has been made use of by the
folk-poets of every country, and nothing can be more characteristic of
the nationalities to which they belong than the divergences which
mark their treatment of it. Northern singers turn the narrative of
the event into half a fairy tale. On the banks of the Moldau we are
introduced to a joyous youth, returning with glad steps to his native
village. "My pretty girls, my doves, is my friend cutting oats with
you?" he asks of a group of girls working in the fields near his home.
"Only yesterday," they reply, "his friend was buried." He begs them
to tell him by which path they bore her away. It is a road edged with
rosemary; everybody knows it--it leads to the new cemetery. Thither
he goes, thrice he wanders round the place, the third time he hears a
voice crying, "Who is it treads on my grave and breaks the rest of
the dead?" "It is I, thy friend," he says, and he bids her rise up
and look on him. She says she cannot, she is too weak, her heart is
lifeless, her hands and feet are like stones. But the gravedigger has
left his spade hard by; with it her friend can shovel away the earth
that holds her down. He does what she tells him; when the earth is
lifted he beholds her stretched out at full length, a frozen maiden
crowned with rosemary. He asks to whom has she bequeathed his gifts.
She answers that her mother has them; he must go and beg them of her.
Then shall he throw the little scarf upon a bush, and there will be an
end to his love. And the silver ring he shall cast into the sea, and
there will be an end to his grief. On the shores of the Wener it is
Lord Malmstein who wakes before dawn from a dream that his beloved's
heart is breaking. "Up, up, my little page, saddle the grey; I must
know how it fares with my love." He mounts the horse and gallops into
the forests. Of a sudden two little maids stand in his path; one wears
a dress of blue, and hails him with the words: "God keep you, Lord
Malmstein; what bale awaits you!" The other is dight in red, and of
her Lord Malmstein asks, "Who is ill, and who is dead?" "No one is
ill, no one is dead, save only the betrothed of Malmstein." He makes
haste to reach the village; on the way he meets the bier of his
betrothed. Swiftly he leaps from the saddle; he pulls from off his
finger rings of fine gold, and throws them to the gravedigger--"Delve
a grave deep and wide, for therein we will walk together." His face
turns red and white, and he deals a mortal blow at his heart. This
Swedish Malmstein not only figures as the reappearing lover; he
is also one of that familiar pair whom death unites. In an ancient
Romansch ballad the story is simply an episode of peasant life. A
young Engadiner girl is forced by her father to marry a man of the
village of Surselva, but all the while her troth is plighted to a
youth from the village of Schams. On the road to Surselva the lover
joins the bride and bridegroom unknown to the latter. When they reach
the place the people declare that they have never seen so fair a
woman as the youthful bride. Her husband's father and mother greet
her saying, "Daughter, be thou welcome to our house!" But she answers,
"No, I have never been your daughter, nor do I hope ever to be; for
the time is near when I must die." Then her brothers and sisters greet
her saying, "O sister, be thou welcome to our house!" "No," she says,
"I have never been your sister, nor do I ever hope to be; for the time
comes when I must die. Only one kindness I ask of you, give me a room
where I may rest." They lead her to her chamber, they try to comfort
her with sweet words; but the more they would befriend her, the more
does the young bride turn her mind away from this world. Her lover is
by her side, and to him she says, "O my beloved, greet my father and
my mother; tell them that perhaps they have rejoiced their hearts, but
sure it is they have broken mine." She turns her face to the wall and
her soul returns to God. "O my beloved," cries the lover, "as thou
diest, and diest for me, for thee will I gladly die." He throws
himself upon the bed, and his soul follows hers. As the clock struck
two they carried her to the grave, as the clock struck three they came
for him; the marriage bells rang them to their rest; the chimes of
Schams answering back the chimes of Surselva. From the grave mound of
the girl grew a camomile plant, from the grave mound of the youth a
plant of musk; and for the great love they bore one another even the
flowers twined together and embraced.
Uoi, i suel toembel da quella bella
Craschiva sue uena flur da chiaminella;
Uoi, i suel toembel da que bel mat
Craschiva sue uena flur nusch muschiat;
Per tant grond bain cha queus dus as leivan,
Parfin las fluors insemmel as brancleivan.
It is a sign of a natural talent for democracy when the people like
better to tell stories about themselves than to discuss the fortunes
of prince or princess. The devoted lovers are more often to be looked
for in the immediate neighbourhood of a court. So it is in the ballad
of Count Nello of Portugal. Count Nello brings his horse to bathe;
while the horse drinks, the Count sings. It was already very dark--the
King could not recognise him. The poor Infanta knew not whether to
laugh or to cry. "Be quiet, my daughter; listen and thou wilt hear a
beautiful song. It is an angel singing, or the siren in the sea." "No,
it is no angel in heaven, nor is it the siren of the sea; it is Count
Nello, my father, he who fain would wed me." "Who speaks of Count
Nella who dare name him, the rebel vassal whom I have exiled?" "My
Lord, mine only is the fault; you should punish me alone; I cannot
live without him; it is I who have made him come." "Hold thy peace,
traitress; before day dawns thou shalt see his head cut off." "The
headsman who slays him may prepare for me too; there where you dig his
grave dig mine also." For whom are the bells tolling? Count Nello is
dead; the Infanta is like to die. The two graves are open; behold!
they lay the Count near the porch of the church and the Infanta at
the foot of the altar. On one grave grows a cypress, on the other an
orange tree; one grows, the other grows; their branches join and kiss.
The king, when he hears of it, orders them both to be cut down. From
the cypress flows noble blood, from the orange tree blood royal; from
one flies forth a dove, from the other a wood-pigeon. When the
king sits at table the birds perch before him. "Ill luck upon their
fondness," he cries, "ill luck upon their love! Neither in life nor in
death have I been able to divide them." The musk and the camomile
of Switzerland, the cypress and the orange tree of Portugal, are the
cypress and the reed of the Greek folk-song, the thorn and olive of
the Norman _chanson_, the rose and the briar of the English ballad,
the vine and the rose of the Tristram and Iseult story. Through the
world they tell their tale--
Amor condusse noi ad una morte.
The death of heroes has provided an inexhaustible theme for
folk-poets. The chief or partisan leader had his complement in the
skald or bard or roving ballad-singer; if the one acted, turned tribes
into nations, cut out history, the other sang, published his
fame, gave his exploits to the future, preserved to his people the
remembrance of his dying words. The poetry of hero-worship, beginning
on Homeric heights, descends to the "lytell gestes" of all sorts
and conditions of more or less respectable and patriotic outlaws and
_condottieri_, whose "passing" is often the most honourable point
in their career. On the principle which has been followed--that of
letting the folk-poet speak for himself, and show what are his ideas
and his impressions after his own manner and in his own language--I
will take three death scenes from amongst the less known of those
recorded in popular verse. The first is Scandinavian. What ails
Hjalmar the Icelander? Why is his face so pale? The Norse Warrior
answers: "Sixteen wounds have I, and my armour is shattered. All
things grow black in my sight; I reel in walking; the bloody sword of
Agantyr has pierced my heart. Had I five houses in the fields I could
not dwell in one of them; I must abide at Samsa, hopeless and mortally
wounded. At Upsal, in the halls of Josur, many Jarls quaff joyously
the foaming ale, many Jarls exchange hot words; but as for me, I am
here in this island, struck down by the point of the sword. The white
daughter of Hilmer accompanied my steps to Aganfik beyond the reefs;
her words are come true, for she said I should return no more. Draw
off my finger the ring of ruddy gold, bear it to my youthful Ingebrog,
it will remind her that she will see me never more. In the east
upsoars the raven; after him the mightier eagle wings his way. I will
be meat for the eagle and my heart's blood his drink." One backward
look to all that was the joy of his life--the feast, the fight, the
woman he loved--and then a calm facing of the end. This is how the
Norseman died. The Greek hero, who dies peaceably in the ripeness of
old age, meets his doom with even less trouble of spirit--
The sun sank down behind the hill,
And Dimos faintly said,
'Go, children, fetch your evening meal--
The water and the bread.
Thou, Lamprakis, my brother's son,
Come hither, by me stand,
And arm me with my weapons,
And be captain of the band.
And, children, take my dear old sword
That I no more shall sway,
And cut the green boughs from the trees
And there my body lay;
And hither bring a priestly man
To whom I may confess,
That I may tell him all my sins,
And he forgive and bless.
For thirty years a soldier,
Twenty years a kleft was I;
Now death o'ertakes and seizes me,
'Tis finished, I must die.
And be ye sure ye make my grave
Of ample height and large,
That in it I may stand upright,
Or lie my gun to charge.
And to the right a lattice make,
A passage for the day,
Where the swallow, bringing springtide,
May dart about and play,
And the nightingale, sweet singer,
Tell the happy month of May.
The slight natural touches--the eagle soaring against the sunrise, the
nightingale singing through the May nights--suggest an intuition of
the will-of-the-wisp affinity between nature and human chances which
seems for ever on the point of being seized, but which for ever eludes
the mental grasp. We think of the "brown bird" in the noble "Funeral
Song" of one who would have been a magnificent folk-poet, had he not
learnt to write and read--Walt Whitman.
My third specimen is a Piedmontese ballad composed probably about
a hundred and fifty years ago, and still very popular. Count Nigra
ascertained the existence of eight or more variants. A German soldier,
known in Italy as the Baron Lodrone, took arms under the house of
Savoy, in whose service he presently died. "In Turin," begins the
ballad, "counts and barons and noble dames mourn for the death of the
Baron Lodrone." The king went to Cuneo to visit his dying soldier;
drums and cannons greeted his approach. He spoke kind words to the
sick man: "Courage, thou wilt not die, and I will give thee the
supreme command." "There is no commander who can stand against death,"
answered the baron. Now Lodrone was a Protestant, and when the king
was convinced that he must die, he exhorted him to conversion, saying
that he himself would stand his sponsor. Lodrone replied that that
could not be. The king did not insist; he only asked him where he
would be buried, and promised him a sepulchre of gold. He answered--
Mi lasserue per testament
Ch 'a mi sotero an val d' Lueserna,
An val d' Lueserna a m sotraran
Dova l me coer s'arposa tan!
He does not care for a golden sepulchre, but he "leaves for testament"
that his body may lie in Val Luserna, "where my heart rests so well!"
The valley of Luserna was the seat of the Vaudois faith in the "alpine
mountains cold," watered with martyr blood only a little while before
Lodrone lived. To read these four simple lines after the fantasia of
wild or whimsical guesses, passionate longing, unresisted despair,
insatiable curiosity, that death has been seen to create or inspire,
is like going out of a public place with its multiform and voluble
presentment of men and things into the aisles of a small church which
would lie silent but that unseen hands pass over the organ keys.