Black Forest Village Stories

1

On May morning a magnificent tree was found before the house of Michael the wagoner. It was a tall fir; the branches had been cut off, and only the crown was left. It towered far over all the houses, and, if the church were not on a hill, it would have looked down on the steeple. There was not another May-pole in all the village; and all the girls envied Eva, the wagoner's oldest daughter, the distinction of having this one set for her.

The children came up the village, a green hut moving along in their midst. A conical roof of twisted withes, covered with leaves, was put on a boy's head, and in this curious disguise he went from house to house, stopping at every door. Two boys walked beside him, carrying a basket filled with eggs and chaff, followed by a crowd with green boughs in their hands. They sang at every house, -

Where they received no eggs they fulfilled their threat, and cast a handful of chaff on the sill, with cheers and laughter. This happened but very rarely, however, though they left not a single house unvisited except the manor-house farmer's. But the "May-man" failed on this occasion to attract the general interest, for all the world had flocked to Michael the wagoner's house to see the May-pole. It could not have been brought there without the aid of at least six men and two horses. How it could have been done so "unbeknown" was the wonder of all, for setting May-poles was rigorously forbidden and punished with three months' confinement in the Ludwigsburg penitentiary. The fear of this punishment had deterred all the boys from putting this monster nosegay before their sweethearts' windows, – all but Wendel's Mat, who went to see Eva. Who had helped him was not to be discovered: some supposed that they were boys from Dettensee, which is only a mile off and belongs to the dominions of his high mightiness the Duke of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen.

Many of the farmers, on their way to the field with their ploughs and harrows, stopped to look at the May-pole. Others, with hoes on their shoulders, did the same. Wendel's Mat was there also, and he chuckled in his sleeve continually, tipping the wink to Eva, who sat gayly at the window with her eyes shut. Those closed eyes were very significant. At every arch repetition of the question, "Who could have set the May-pole!" she answered with a roguish shrug of the shoulders.

Just as the May-man and his followers had reached Michael the wagoner's house and began their song, the beadle and the ranger made their appearance, and a solemn "Hush your noise, you-!" from the former, stopped the proceedings. Amid the sudden silence the officer of the law walked up to Mat, took him by the arm, and said, "Come along to the squire."

Mat shook off the broad hand of the functionary, and asked, "What for?"

"You'll hear in good time. Come along, now, or you'll be sorry for it."

Mat looked about him as if he did not exactly know what to do, or as if he was waiting for assistance from some quarter. The May-cabin marched straight up to the beadle and struck his face. The boy probably took it for granted that, as May-man, his person was sacred and secure; but the beadle knew no sacred personage except himself, and pulled the boy's hut to pieces at a blow. Christian, Mat's younger brother, sprang out of it; and there was an end of the Maying.

Meantime Eva had come out of the house and took Mat by the arm, as if to save him. But he shook her off almost as roughly as he had done the beadle; while the latter said to Eva, "You may as well wait till I come for you."

"Come on," said Mat, casting a look of much meaning on Eva; but she, poor thing, saw nothing now, for the tears were in her eyes. Holding her apron to her face, she went back quickly to the house.

The farmers went to their work, and Mat followed the officers to the squire's, the children bringing up the rear. When nearly out of hearing, some of the boldest cried, "Soges! Soges!" This was the beadle's nickname, and always made him furious. He had administered his office while the Black Forest yet formed a part of the possessions of the house of Austria. His devotion to his august master was such that he thought it necessary even to affect the dialect of Vienna; and, instead of pronouncing the German for "I say it," "I sag's" or "I han's g'sa't," – as a plain Black Forester would have done, – he said, "I sog'es." Soges thereby became his title.

The mysterious brown door of the squire's house removed Mat, Soges, and the ranger from the sight of the multitude. The squire welcomed the prisoner with a round rating for the crime of which he stood accused. Mat remained calm, only beating with one foot the time of a tune he sang in imagination. At last he said, "'You 'most done, squire? All that's nothing to me, for I haven't set any May-pole: go on talking, though, for I've plenty of time to listen."

The squire waxed very wroth, and would have assaulted Mat bodily had not Soges whispered some more sagacious counsels in his ear. He sank his clenched fist, and ordered Soges to take the criminal to the lock-up for twenty-four hours for a flagrant denial.

"I belong to the village; I am to be found at any time, and I'm not likely to run away about such a trumpery as this: you can't lock me up," said Mat, rightly.

"Can't?" cried the squire, reddening with anger: "we'll see if we can't, you-"

"Save your blackguarding," said Mat: "I'm going; but it's an outrage to treat the son of a citizen this way. If my cousin Buchmaier was at home it couldn't be done."

On the way to the lock-up they met Eva; but Mat did not even make an attempt to speak to her. Eva could not understand how this happened. She followed Mat with her eyes until he was no longer in sight, and then, bent with shame and trouble, she entered the squire's dwelling. His wife was Eva's godmother, and Eva would not go until Mat had been released. But her intercession was of no use this time: the president-judge of the district was shortly expected on his tour of visitation, and the squire wished to conciliate him by a specimen of unrelenting severity.

In conjunction with his faithful prime minister Soges, a report was prepared and Mat transported to Horb early next morning. It was well that Eva's house lay at the other end of the village, so that she could not see the wretched plight to which a night's imprisonment had reduced the fine, active fellow who generally appeared so neatly clad. In his anger he tore a bough from every hedge he passed, gnawed it between his teeth, and threw it away again. In the fir-wood he broke a twig and kept it in his mouth. He never spoke a word: the fir-sprig seemed to be the symbol of his silence in regard to the May-pole, – a charm with which he intended to tie his tongue. Arrived at the court-house door, he hastily took it out of his mouth and unconsciously thrust it in his pocket.

No one who has not been in the hands of a German court of justice can form any idea of the misery attending such a perfect loss of the power of self-control: it is as if one's mind had been forcibly deprived of its body. Pushed from hand to hand, the feet move with apparent freedom of will, and yet do only another's bidding. Mat felt all this keenly; for he had never been in trouble like this. He felt as if he was a great criminal, and had killed somebody at the very least: his knees seemed to sink under him as he was taken up the long flights of steps which lead to the top of the hill. He was locked up in the old tower which stands so uncomfortably on the hill, like a great stone finger pointing upward as if to say, "Beware!"

Every minute appeared to last an age. As long as he could remember, he had never been left alone for an hour without work: what could he do now? For a while he peered through the doubly-barred and grated window in the wall, which was six feet thick, but saw only a patch of sky. Lying on the bench, he played with the fir-sprig which he found in his pocket, – the only keepsake he had of the green world without. Sticking it into a crack of the floor, he amused himself with supposing it to be the great May-pole before Eva's window, – which he seemed not to have seen for a hundred years. Sighing, he started up, looked around wildly, whistled, and began to count the needles of the fir-sprig. In the midst of this occupation he stopped and regarded it more closely: he had never before seen the beauty of one of Nature's fabrics. At the stem the needles were dark-green and hard; but they grew gradually lighter and softer, and at the ends they were like the plumage of an unfledged bird. At the tip, the germ, with its neatly-folded scales, gave promise of a fir-nut. A smell sweeter than that of lavender or of rosemary oozed out of its pores. Mat passed it gently over his face and closed eyes, until he fell asleep. He dreamed of being spellbound to a swaying fir-tree, without being able to stir: he heard Eva's voice begging the spirit who held him in chains for leave to come up to him and set him free. He awoke, and really heard Eva's voice and that of his brother Christian. They had brought him his dinner, and begged the jailer to let them speak to Mat in his presence; but in vain.

It was late in the day when Mat was brought up for a hearing. The president-judge received him roughly, and scolded him in high German, just as the squire had done in the dialect of the country. Wherever judicial transactions are withheld from the public eye, as they have been in Germany for three or four centuries, any man accused of an offence will always be at the mercy of the officiating functionary. Though it will not do to torture or to beat him, there are means of ill treatment which the law cannot reach.

The judge walked up and down the room with rattling spurs, and twirled a bit of paper nervously between his fingers, as he put his questions.

"Where did you steal the tree?"

"I don't know any thing about it, your honor."

"You lie, you beggarly rascal!" cried the judge, stepping up to Mat and seizing him by the lapel of his coat.

Mat started backward, and clenched his fist involuntarily.

"I'm not a rascal," said he, at last, "and you must write what you have said in the minutes: I'd like to see what sort of a rascal I am. My cousin Buchmaier will come home after a while."

The judge turned away, biting his lips. If Mat's case had been a better one, the judge might have had reason to rue his words; but he wisely abstained from inserting what he had said in the minutes. He rang the bell, and sent for Soges.

"What proof have you that it was this fellow that put up the May-pole?"

"Every child in the village, the tiles on the roofs, know that Mat goes to see Eva: no offence, your honor, but I should think it would be the quickest way to send for Eva, and then he won't deny it: he can't qualify that it isn't so."

Mat opened his eyes wide, and his lips quivered; but he said nothing. The judge hesitated a long time, for he perfectly understood the impropriety of such a mode of proof; but the desire to set an example prevailed.

The hearing ended by drawing up the minutes, and requiring Mat, as well as Soges and the customary two "assessors," or, as they are vulgarly called, "by-sleepers," to sign them. Mat had not the courage to repeat his demand about the abusive words of the judge, but suffered himself to be led back quietly to prison.

When it grew dusk, Eva might have been seen sitting on the stile at the end of the village and looking over toward the tower, thinking that Mat must surely come before long. She sat behind a hedge, to avoid being seen and questioned by the passers-by. There she saw Soges coming up the hillside. As she walked toward the road, Soges beckoned to her; and, hoping to hear news from Mat, she ran to him in all haste.

"Not too fast, Eva," cried Soges; "I only wished to tell you that you must come to court to-morrow: you've saved me a walk."

Eva turned ashy pale, and looked almost beside herself; then she ran down the hill, and did not stop till she had come to the Neckar. She looked around in amazement, for it had seemed to her that she was to be locked up at once with no hope of escape but by running away. She went home, weeping silently.

Eva hardly closed her eyes all night for thinking of the chambers hung in black, and the skull and bones with which her imagination garnished the thought of courts and judges. If her playmate Agatha, the tailor's daughter, had not come to sleep with her, she would have died of fear. At the first dawn of morning she went to the press and took out her Sunday gear. Agatha had to dress her, for she trembled so much that she could not tie a string. She looked at herself sadly in her broken glass. It seemed as if she were forced to go to a funeral in holiday garb.

Michael the wagoner accompanied his daughter, for it would not do to let the child go alone. In the court-house he took off his hat, stroked his short hair, and drew his face into an expression of smiling humility as he stood, scraping the floor with his feet, before the unopened door. He rested his hawthorn stick against the wall, took off his three-cornered hat, pressed it to his breast with his left hand, bent his head humbly, and knocked at the door. It opened. "What do you want?" inquired a gruff voice.

"I am Michael the wagoner, and this is my daughter Eva, and she is very much afraid; so I thought I would ask whether I might come in to court with her."

"No," was the rude answer; and the door was slammed in his face so heavily that he staggered some steps backward. He had no opportunity of advancing his other argument, – that in strictness he ought to appear before court and not Eva, as the house before which the May-pole was belonged to him.

With both hands folded upon his hawthorn stick, and his chin resting upon his hands, Michael the wagoner sat beside his daughter in the entry, and looked at the stone floor, which seemed almost as void of sympathy as the face of the official. "If Buchmaier was at home," he muttered, "they would strike up another tune." Eva could not speak a word: she only coughed once or twice into her neatly-ironed handkerchief.

Summoned at last, she rose quickly. Neither spoke, but, after a mute, parting look, Eva disappeared behind the door. At the door she stood still: the judge was not there, but the clerk sat playing with his pen, while the two "assessors" whispered softly to each other. Eva shook and trembled in every limb: the silence lasted ten minutes, which, to the poor girl, seemed half an eternity. At last the clink of spurs announced the judge's arrival. Eva seemed to find favor in his eyes, for he tucked her chin, stroked her burning cheeks, and said, "Sit down." Eva obeyed, just seating herself on the very edge of the stool. After going through the customary catechism of name, station, age, and so on, the judge asked, -

"Well, who put up your May-polo?"

"How can I know, your honor?"

"Didn't you drop the rope out of the dormer-window to tie it with?"

"No, your honor."

"And don't you know who is your sweetheart?"

Eva began to weep aloud. It was dreadful to deny; and yet she could not confess it. In America such a question would have had no other result than a reprimand from the bench to the counsel putting it. But so defenceless is the condition of parties and witnesses where justice hides in corners, that the judge even went further, and said, -

"It's no use to deny it: Mat is your sweetheart, and you're going to get married very soon."

Eva remembered that four weeks later they intended to ask that same court for permission to get married, – an indispensable formula under the code of that happy country. If she denied it now, she thought they would refuse to give her the "papers" and the "acceptance," and, besides, it was against her conscience to say "No." Her heart beat quickly; a certain feeling of pride arose within her; a consciousness of superiority to all the ills that flesh is heir to pervaded her being: she forgot the papers and the judge, and only thought of Mat. The last tear dropped from her lids; her eyes brightened; she arose quickly, looked around as if in triumph, and said, "Yes: I'll never have any one but him."

"So Mat put up your May-pole?"

"It may be, but of course I couldn't be by, and that night I was-" Here the tears choked her utterance again. It was well for the poor girl that she held her hands before her eyes, and could not see the smiles of the men of justice.

"Confess, now, he put up your May-pole, and nobody else."

"How can I know?"

By all sorts of cross-questions, and the oily assurance that the punishment would be but slight, the judge at last wormed the confession from her. The minutes were now read to her in fine book-German and in connected periods: of her tears and sufferings not a word was written. Eva was astonished to find that she had said so much and such fine things; but she signed the minutes unhesitatingly, only too glad to get away at any price. As the door closed behind her and the latch fell into the socket, she stood still, with folded hands, as if chained to the ground; a heavy sigh escaped her, and she almost feared the earth would open under her feet, for she now reflected, for the first time, how much harm she might have done to her beloved. Clinging to the balusters, she came slowly down the stone steps, and looked for her father, who was keeping up his spirits with a stoup of wine at the Lamb Tavern: she took her seat by his side, but said nothing, nor brought a drop to her lips.

Mat was now called up again, and Eva's confession read to him. He stamped his foot and gnashed his teeth. These gestures were immediately recorded as the basis of a confession, and, after sufficient baiting, Mat found himself completely caught: like game in a net, his desperate efforts to disengage himself only entangled him still further.

Being asked where he had got the tree, Mat first said that he had taken it out of the Dettensee wood, – which was in the duchy of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, and therefore under another sovereignty and jurisdiction. But, when another investigation and a report to the court at Haigerloch was talked of, he at last confessed that he had taken it out of his own wood, – "by the Pond," – and that it was a tree which would have been marked for felling in two or three days by the forester.

In consideration of these extenuating circumstances, Mat was fined ten rix-dollars for having taken a tree out of his own wood before it was marked.

Up at the stile where Mat had torn off a sprig the day before, he met Eva and her father, who were coming up the hill-slope. He would have passed on without a greeting; but Eva ran up to him and cried, huskily, "Don't sulk, Mat: I'll give you my cross and my garnets if they make you pay a fine. Thank the Lord, you're not locked up any more."

After some altercation, Mat gave in: hand in hand with Eva he walked through the village, and received kind congratulations from all he met.

This is the story of the May-pole before Michael the wagoner's house: on the wedding-day it was decked with red ribbons. The heavens and the earth seemed to like it better than the good government or the vigilant police, for it unaccountably took root and sent forth new branches. To this day it graces the house of the happy couple as a living emblem of their constant love.

2

This story is connected with another, of more general interest. The prevalence at this time of the wicked custom of putting up May-poles, as well as other offences against the peace and dignity of the forests, induced the judge to issue an ordinance which had long hovered at the nib of his pen. From immemorial times it has been the custom of the peasantry of the Black Forest to carry a little axe in their left hand whenever they go abroad. Only the "men" – that is, the married men-do so; and it is a badge which distinguishes them from the "boys," or unmarried young fellows. It is said to be a remnant of the ancient time when every one bore arms.

On Whitsunday the following ordinance was found on the blackboard nailed in front of the town-house of every village in the presidency: -

"It having been found that many offences against the forest are occasioned by the improper practice of carrying axes, the public are hereby notified, -

"That from this day forth every person found upon the road or in the woods with an axe shall be held to give the gamekeeper or ranger accurate information of the purpose for which he has the axe with him; and, if he fails to do so, he shall be punished by a fine of one rix-dollar: upon a repetition of the offence he shall be fined three rix-dollars: and, upon a further repetition, with imprisonment for not less than one and not more than four weeks.