The World's Greatest Books [Volumes 1-15, 17-20]

The Forest Folk

Strange trades are carried on in this wilderness. These people literally dig their bread out of earth and stone and ant-heaps, scrape it off the trees, distill it out of uneatable fruit. There is the root-digger, whose booty of mountain ovens is said to go to far Turkey to be turned into scent. He would long have given up digging, to live entirely on poaching, but for his hope to unearth some day treasure of gold and jewels. One of these "forest-devils" has just died. He never worked at all. His profession was eating. He went from village to village and from fair to fair, eating cloth and leather, nails, glass, stones, to the amazement of his audience. He died from eating a poisonous root given him by some unknown digger--they say it was the devil himself. His funeral oration was delivered by a pale, bent, quiet man, known as the Solitary, of whose life nobody can give one any information.

Then there is the pitch-boiler. You can smell him from afar, and see him glitter through the thicket. His pitch-oil is bought by the wood-cutter for his wounds, by the charcoal-burner for his burns, by the carter for his horse, by the brandy-distiller for his casks. It is a remedy for all ailments. The most dangerous of all the forest-devils is the brandy-distiller. He is better dressed than the others, has a kind word for everybody, and plays the tempter with but too great success.

Black Matthias is dying in his miserable hut. His little boy and girl are playing around him, and his wife bids them be silent. "Let them shout," says Matthias; "but try and keep down Lazarus' temper." On his death-bed Matthias told me the story of his life--how he, a jolly, happy fellow, fell into the recruiting-officers' trap, escaped from their clutches, was betrayed by his own village people, and flogged through the line, and how they rubbed vinegar and salt into his wounded back; how he escaped from the battlefield and found refuge in this wilderness--a changed man, quarrelsome, with an uncontrollable temper, which led him into many a brawl; and how, under great provocation, he had stabbed a wood-burner at the inn, and had been beaten within an inch of his life by the wood-cutters. His life was now ebbing away fast, and he had good reason to fear that his uncontrollable temper would live in his son. Hence his exhortation to his wife. Black Matthias died a few hours after he had told me of his sad life.

And so I get to know them all, and make friends with them all, especially with the children, and with the shepherd lad Berthold and the poor milkmaid Aga. There was a wedding down at Heldenichlag, where they have a parish church, and dancing and merrymaking at the inn all night. Next morning Berthold went to the priest. He wanted to marry Aga, but the priest told him he was too young, too poor; he could come back again in ten years! The poor lad is left speechless and does not know how to explain why he wants to be united for ever with his Aga. Sadly he leaves the room, but out in the open air his spirit returns to him. On the second day of the wedding feast there was no holding him. He was the wildest and merriest of the lot. In the afternoon we all returned to Winkelsteg in the forest.

1815.

I know I must begin with a church. And at last I have obtained the baron's consent. I have designed the plan myself--it must be large enough to hold all who are in need of comfort here, and bright and cheerful, for there is darkness enough in the forest. And the steeple must be slender like a finger pointing heavenwards. Three bells there must be to announce the Trinity of God in one Person, and to sing the song of faith, hope, and love. And an organ there must be, but no pictures and gilding and show.

Autumn, 1816.

I have been taking a census. How very limited is their range of names. They have no family names, and only some half dozen Christian names! This must be altered. I must invent names for them, according to their occupation or dwelling or character: Sepp Woodcutter, Hiesel Springhutter, and so forth. They like their new names; only Berthold gets angry and refuses to take a name. "A name for me? I want no name; I am nobody. The priest won't let me marry. Call me Berthold Misery, or call me Satan!"

May, 1817.

I have been ill--the result of being snowed up on the way home from a visit to a forester who had been wounded by a poacher. The danger is over now, but my eyes continue to suffer. The forest folk have been very good to me, and much concerned about my progress. And now I am able to go out again. To-day I was watching a spider in the thicket, when I saw Aga rushing towards me. "Ah, it's you!" she cried. "You must help us. We want to live in honour and decency. The priest won't marry us. You can ask for our blessing." The next moment Berthold had joined her and they were kneeling before me. And I pronounced the words which I had no right to pronounce. I married them in the heart of the green forest.