Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 56, No. 345, July, 1844

TRADITIONS AND TALES OF UPPER LUSATIA

No. II

THE FAIRY TUTOR

Discreet Reader!

You have seen—and 'tis no longer ago than YESTERDAY!—you must well remember the picture—which showed you from the rough yet delicate—the humorous yet sympathetic and picturesque—the original yet insinuating pencil of a shrewd and hearty Lusatian mountaineer—the aerial, brilliant, sensitive, subtle, fascinating, enigmatical, outwardly—mirth-given, inwardly—sorrow-touched, congregated folk numberless—of the Fairies Proper!—showed them at the urgency of a rare and strange need—clung, in DEPENDENCY, to one fair, kind, good and happily-born Daughter of Man!—And what wonder?—The once glorious, but now forlorn spirits, leaning for one fate-burthened instant their trust upon the spirits ineffably favoured!—What wonder! that often as the revolution of ages brings on the appointed hour, the rebellious and outcast children of heaven must sue—to their keen emergency—help—oh! speak up to the height of the want, of the succour! and call it a lent ray of grace, from the rebellious and REDEEMED children of the earth!—And see, where, in the serene eyes of the soft Christian maiden, the hallowing influence shines!—Auspiciously begun, the awed though aspiring Rite, the still, the multitudinous, the mystical, prospers!—Gratefully, as for the boon inexpressibly worth—easily, as of their own transcending power—promptly, as though fearing that a benefit received could wax cold, the joyful Elves crown upon the bright hair of their graciously natured, but humanly and womanly weak benefactress—the wedded felicity of pure love!

And the imaginary curtain has dropped! Lo, where it rises again, discovering to view our stage, greatly changed, and, a little perhaps, our actors!—Once more, attaching to the HUMAN DRAMA, slight, as though it were structured of cloud, of air, the same light and radiant MACHINERY! Once more, only that They, whom you lately saw tranquil, earnest even to pathos—"now are frolic"—enough and to spare!—Once more—THE FAIRIES.

And see, too—where, centring in herself interest and action of the rapidly shifting scenery—ever again a beautiful granddaughter of Eve steps—free and fearless, and bouyant and bounding—our fancy-laid boards!—Ah! but how much unresembling the sweet maid!—Outwardly, for lofty-piled is the roof that ceils over the superb head of the modern Amazon, Swanhilda—more unlike within. Instead of the clear truth, the soul's gentle purity, the "plain and holy Innocence" of the poor fairy-beloved mountain child—SHE, in whose person and fortunes you are invited—for the next fifty minutes—to forget your own—harbours, fondly harbours, ill housemates of her virginal breast! a small, resolute, well-armed and well confederated garrison of unwomanly faults. Pride is there!—The iron-hard and the iron-cold! There Scorn—edging repulse with insult!—and envenoming insult with despair!—leaps up, in eager answer to the beseeching sighs, tears, and groans of earth-bent Adoration. And there is the indulged Insolency of a domineering—and as you will precipitately augur—an indomitable Will! And there is exuberant SELF-POWER, that, from the innermost mind, oozing up, out, distilling, circulating along nerve and vein, effects a magical metamorphosis! turns the nymph into a squire of arms; usurping even the clamorous and blood-sprinkled joy of man—the tempestuous and terrible CHASE, which, in the bosom of peace, imaging war, shows in the rougher lord of creation himself, as harsh, wild, and turbulent! Oh, how much other than yon sweet lily of the high Lusatian valleys, the shade-loving Flower, the good Maud—herself looked upon with love by the glad eyes of men, women, children, Fairies, and Angels! oh, other indeed! And yet, have you, in this thickly clustered enumeration of unamiable qualities, implicitly heard the CALL which must fasten, which has fastened, upon the gentle Maud's haughty antithesis—the serviceable regard, and—the FAVOUR, even of THE FAIRIES.

The FAVOUR!!

Hear, impatient spectator, the simple plot and its brief process. You are, after a fashion, informed with what studious, persevering, and unmerciful violation of all gentle decorum and feminine pity, the lovely marble-souled tyranness has, in the course of the last three or four years, turned back from her beetle-browed castle-gate, one by one, as they showed themselves there—a hundred, all worthily born—otherwise more and less meritorious—petitioners for that whip-and-javelin-bearing hand. You are NOW to know, that upon this very morning, an embassy from the willow-wearers all—or, to speak indeed more germanely to the matter, of the BASKET-BEARERS18, waited upon their beautiful enemy with an ultimatum and manifesto in one, importing first a requisition to surrender; then, in case of refusal to capitulate, the announcement that HYMEN having found in CUPID an inefficient ally, he was about associating with himself, in league offensive, the god MARS, with intent of carrying the Maiden-fortress by storm, and reducing the aforesaid wild occupants of the stronghold into captivity—whereunto she made answer—

——our castle's strength Will laugh a siege to scorn—

herself laughing outrageously to scorn the senders and the sent This crowning of wrong upon wrong will the Fairies, in the first place, wreak and right.

But further, later upon the same unlucky day, the Kingdom of Elves, being in full council assembled in the broad light of the sun, upon the fair greensward; ere the very numerous, but not widely sitting diet had yet well opened its proceedings—"tramp, tramp, across the land," came, flying at full speed, boar-spear in hand, our madcap huntress; and without other note of preparation sounded than their own thunder, her iron-grey's hoofs were in the thick of the sage assembly, causing an indecorous trepidation, combined with devastation dire to persons and—wearing apparel.

This wrong, in the second place, the Fairies will wreak and right.

And all transgression and injury, under one procedure, which is—summary; as, from the character of the judges and executioners, into whose hands the sinner has fallen, you would expect; sufficiently prankish too. With one sleight of their magical hand they turn the impoverished heiress of ill-possessed acres forth upon the highway, doomed to earn, with strenuous manual industry, her livelihood; until, from the winnings of her handicraft, she is moreover able to make good, as far as this was liable to pecuniary assessment, the damage sustained under foot of her fiery barb by the Fairy realm; comfort with handsome presents the rejected suitors; and until, thoroughly tame, she yields into her softened and opened bosom, now rid of its intemperate inmates, an entrance to the once debarred and contemned visitant—LOVE.

As to the way and style of the Fairy operations that carry out this drift, comparing the Two Tales, you will see, that omitting, as a matter that is related merely, not presented, that misadventure under the oak-tree—there is, in the chamber of Swanhilda, but a Fairy delegation active, whilst under the Sun's hill whole Elfdom is in presence; in that resplendent hollow, wearing their own lovely shapes; within the German castle-walls, in apt masquerade. There they were grave. Here, we have already said, that they are merry. There their office was to feel and to think. Here, if there be any trust in apparitions, they drink, and what is more critical for an Elfin lip—they eat!

Lastly, to end the comparisons for our well-bred, well-dressed, and right courtly cavalier, who transacted between the Fairy Queen and the stonemason's daughter, him you shall presently see turned into a sort of Elfin cupbearer or court butler; not without fairy grace of person and of mind assuredly; not without a due innate sense of the beautiful, as his perfumed name (SWEETFLOWER) at the outset warns you; and, as the proximity of his function to her Majesty's person—for we do not here fall in with any thing like mention of a king—would suggest, independently of the delicately responsible part borne by him in the action, the chief stress of which you will find incumbent upon his capable shoulders.

Such, in respect of the subject, is, thrice courteous and intelligent reader, the second piece of art, which we are glad to have the opportunity of placing before you, from our clever friend Ernst Willkomm's apparently right fertile easel. The second, answering to the first, LIKE and UNLIKE, you perceive, as two companion pictures should be.

But it would be worse than useless to tell you that which you have seen and that which you will see, unless, from the juxtaposition of the two fables, there followed—a moral. They have, as we apprehend, a moral—i.e. one moral, and that a grave one, in common between them.

Hitherto we have superficially compared THE FAIRIES' SABBATH and the FAIRY TUTOR. We now wish to develope a profounder analogy connecting them. We have compared them, as if ESTHETICALLY; we would now compare them MYTHOLOGICALLY—for, in our understanding, there lies at the very foundation of both tales A MYTHOLOGICAL ROOT—by whomsoever set, whether by Ernst Willkomm to-day, or by the population of the Lusatian mountains—three, six, ten centuries ago; or, in unreckoned antiquity, by the common Ancestors of the believers, who, in still unmeasured antiquity, brought the superstition of the Fairies out of central Asia to remote occidental Europe.

This ROOT we are bold to think is—"A DEEPLY SEATED ATTRACTION, ALLYING THE FAIRY MIND TO THE PURITY AND INTEGRITY OF THE MORAL WILL IN THE MIND OF MEN." And first for the Tale which presently concerns us:—THE FAIRY TUTOR.

SWEETFLOWER will beguile us into believing that the interposition of the Fairies in our Baroness's domestic arrangements, grows up, if one shall so hazardously speak, from TWO seeds, each bearing two branches—namely, from two wrongs, the one hitting, the other striking from, themselves—BOTH which wrongs they will AVENGE and AMEND. We take up a strenuous theory; and we deny—and we defy—SWEETFLOWER. Nay, more! Should our excellent friend, ERNST WILLKOMM, be found taking part, real or apparent, with SWEETFLOWER, we defy and we deny Ernst Willkomm. For in this mixed case of the Fairy wrong, we distinguish, first, INJURIES which shall be retaliated, and, as far as may be, compensated; and secondly, a SHREW, who is to be turned into a WIFE, being previously turned out of a shrew.

We dare to believe that this last-mentioned end is the thing uppermost, and undermost, and middlemost in the mind of the Fairies; is, in fact, the true and the sole final cause of all their proceedings.

Or that the moral heart of the poem—that root in the human breast and will, from which every true poem springs heavenward—is here the zeal of the spirits for morally reforming Swanhilda; is, therefore, that deep-seated attraction, which, as we have averred, essentially allies the inclination of the Fairies to the moral conscience in our own kind.

One end, therefore, grounds the whole story, although two and more are proposed by Sweetflower. It is one that satisfies the moral reason in man; for it is no less than to cleanse and heal the will, wounded with error, of a human creature. That other, which he displays, with mock emphasis, of restitution to the downtrodden fairyhood, is an exotic, fair and slight bud, grafted into the sturdier indigenous stock. For let us fix but a steady look upon the thing itself, and what is there before us? a whim, a trick of the fancy, tickling the fancy. We are amused with a quaint calamity—a panic of caps and cloaks. We laugh—we cannot help it—as the pigmy assembly flies a thousand ways at once—grave councillors and all—throwing terrified somersets—hiding under stones, roots—diving into coney-burrows—"any where—any where"—vanishing out of harm's—if not out of dismay's—reach. In a tale of the Fairies, THE FANCY rules:—and the interest of such a misfortune, definite and not infinite, is congenial to the spirit of the gay faculty which hovers over, lives upon surfaces, and which flees abysses; which thence, likewise, in the moral sphere, is equal to apprehending resentment of a personal wrong, and a judicial assessment of damages—but NOT A DISINTERESTED MORAL END.

What is our conclusion then? plainly that the dolorous overthrow of the fairy divan is no better than an invention—the device of an esthetical artist. We hold that Ernst Willkomm has gratuitously bestowed upon us the disastrous catastrophe; that he has done this, knowing the obligation which lies upon Fancy within her own chosen domain to create, because—there, Fancy listens and reads. The adroit Fairy delineator must wile over and reconcile the most sportive, capricious, and self-willed spirit of our understanding, to accept a purpose foreign to that spirit's habitual sympathies—a purpose solemn and austere—THE MORAL PURPOSE OF RESCUING A SIN-ENTANGLED HUMAN SOUL.

Or, if Ernst Willkomm shall guarantee to us, that the reminiscences of his people have furnished him with the materials of this tale; if he is, as we must needs hope, who have freely dealt with you to believe that he is—honest: honest both as to the general character, and the particular facts of his representations—if, in short, the Lusatian Highlanders do, sitting by the bench and the stove, aver and protest that the said Swanhilda did overturn both council-board and councillors—then we say, upon this occasion, that which we must all, hundreds of times, declare—namely, that The Genius of Tradition is the foremost of artists; and further, that in this instance an unwilled fiction, determined by a necessity of the human bosom, has risen up to mantle seriousness with grace, as a free woodbine enclasps with her slender-gadding twines, and bedecks with her sweet bright blossoms, a towering giant of the grove.

It will perhaps be objected, that the moral purity and goodness that are so powerful to draw to themselves the regard and care of the spiritual people, are wanting in the character of the over-bold Swanhilda. We have said that her faults are the CALL to the Fairies for help and reformation: but we may likewise guess that Virtue and Truth first won their love. It must be recollected that the faults which are extirpated from the breast of our heroine, are not such as, in our natural understanding of humanity, dishonour or sully. Taken away, the character may stand clear. It is quite possible that this gone, there shall be left behind a kind, good, affectionate, generous, noble nature.

We are free, or, more properly speaking, we are bound to believe, that thus the Fairies left Swanhilda.

As for Maud, we know—for she was told—that the Fairies loved her for herself ere they needed her aid. Hanging as it were upon that wondrous power to help which dwelt within her—her simple goodness—may we not say that the Fairies discover an ENFORCED attraction, when they afterwards approach the maiden for their own succour and salvation; as they do, a FREE attraction, when, in the person of Swanhilda, they disinterestedly attach themselves to reforming a fault for the welfare and happiness of her whom it aggrieves?

We will now proceed, as in our former communication, to adduce instances from other quarters, confirming the fairy delineations offered by our tale; or which may tend generally to bring out its mythological and literary character.

Two points would suggest themselves to us in the tale of the Fairy Tutor, as chiefly provoking comparison. The first is:—The affirmed Presidency of the Fairies over human morals, viewed as a Shape of the Interest which they take in the uprightness and purity of the human will.

The second is:— The Manner and Style of their operations: or, THE FAIRY WAYS. In which we chiefly distinguish—1, The active presence of the Sprites in a human habitation. 2, Their masquerading. 3, Their dispatch of human victuals. 4, The liability of Elfin limbs to human casualties. 5, The personality of that saucy Puck, our tiny ambassador elf.

We are at once tempted and restrained by the richness of illustration, which presents itself under all these heads. The necessity of limitation is, however, imperious. This, and a wish for simplicity, dispose us to throw all under one more comprehensive title.

Perhaps the reader has not entirely forgotten that in the remarks introductory to THE FAIRIES' SABBATH, having launched the question—what is a Fairy?—we offered him in the way of answer, eight elements of the Fairy Nature. Has he quite forgotten that for one of these—it was the third—we represented the Spirit under examination, as ONE WHICH AT ONCE SEEKS AND SHUNS MANKIND?

The cursory treatment of this Elfin criterion will now compendiously place before the reader, as much illustration of the two above-given heads as we dare impose upon him.

The popular Traditions of entire Western Europe variously attest for all the kinds of the Fairies, and for some orders of Spirits partaking of the Fairy character, the singularly composed, and almost self-contradictory traits of a seeking implicated and attempered with a shunning; of a shunning with a seeking. The inclination of our Quest will be to evidences of the seeking. The shunning will, it need not be doubted, take good care of itself.

The attraction of the Fairy Species towards our own is,

1. Recognised—in their GENERIC DESIGNATIONS.

2. Apparent—in their GOOD NEIGHBOURHOOD with us.

3. IN THEIR FREQUENTING AND ESTABLISHING THEMSELVES in the places of our habitual occupancy and resort.

4. IN THEIR CALLING OR CARRYING US into the places of their Occupancy and Resort; whether to return hither, or to remain there.

5. BY THEIR ALIGHTING UPON THE PATH, worn already with some blithe or some weary steps, OF A HUMAN DESTINY;—as friendly, or as unfriendly Genii.

We collect the proofs: and—

1. Of their GENERIC APPELLATIVES, a Word!

One is tempted to say that THE NATIONS, as if conscious of the kindly disposition inhering in the spiritual existences toward ourselves, have simultaneously agreed in conferring upon them titles of endearment and affection. The brothers Grimm write—"In Scotland they [The Fairies] are called The Good People, Good Neighbours, Men of Peace; in Wales—The Family, The Blessing of their Mothers, The Dear Ladies; in the old Norse, and to this day in the Faroe islands, Huldufolk (The Gracious People;) in Norway, Huldre;19 and, in conformity with these denominations, discover a striving to be in the proximity of men, and to keep up a good understanding with them."20

2. THIS GOOD NEIGHBOURHOOD, to which these last words point, is interestingly depicted by the Traditions

In Scotland and Germany the Fairies plant their habitation adjoining that of man—"under the threshold"—and in such attached Fairies an alliance is unfolded with us of a most extraordinary kind. "The closest connexion" (id est, of the Fairy species with our own) "is expressed," say the Brothers Grimm, "by the tradition, agreeably to which the family of the Fairies ORDERED ITSELF ENTIRELY AFTER THE HUMAN to which it belonged; and OF WHICH IT WAS AS IF A COPY. These domestic Fairies kept their marriages upon the same day as the Human Beings; their children were born upon the same day; and upon the same day they wailed for their dead."21

Two artlessly sweet breathings of Elfin Table, from the Helvetian Dales,22 lately revived to your fancy the sinless—blissful years, when gods with men set fellowing steps upon one and the same fragrant and unpolluted sward, until transgression, exiling those to their own celestial abodes, left these lonely—a nearer, dearer, BARBARIAN Golden Age—wherein the kindly Dwarf nation stand representing the great deities of Olympus.

The healthful pure air fans restoration again to us. We lay before you—

GERMAN TRADITIONS

No. CXLIX The Dwarfs' Feet

"In old times the men dwelt in the valley, and round about them, in caves and clefts of the rock, the Dwarfs, in amity and good neighbourhood with the people, for whom they performed by night many a heavy labour. When the country folk, betimes in the morning, came with wains and implements, and wondered that all was ready done, the Dwarfs were hiding in the bushes, and laughed out loud. Frequently the peasants were angry when they saw their yet hardly ripe corn lying reaped upon the field; but when presently after hail and storm came on, and they could well know that probably not a stalk should have escaped perishing, they were then heartily thankful to the provident Dwarfs. At last, however, the inhabitants, by their sin, fooled away the grace and favour of the Dwarfs. These fled, and since then has no eye ever again beheld them. The cause was this following:—A herdsman had upon the mountain an excellent cherry-tree. One summer, as the fruit grew ripe, it befell that the tree was, for three following nights, picked, and the fruit carried, and fairly spread out in the loft, in which the herdsman had use to keep his cherries. The people said in the village, that doth no one other than the honest dwarflings—they come tripping along by night, in long mantles, with covered feet, softly as birds, and perform diligently for men the work of the day. Already often have they been privily watched, but one may not interrupt them, only let them, come and go at their listing. By such speeches was the herdsman made curious, and would fain have wist wherefore the Dwarfs hid so carefully their feet, and whether these were otherwise shapen than men's feet. When, therefore, the next year, summer again came, and the season that the Dwarfs did stealthily pluck the cherries, and bear them into the garner, the herdsman took a sackful of ashes, which he strewed round about the tree. The next morning, with daybreak, he hied to the spot; the tree was regularly gotten, and he saw beneath in the ashes the print of many geese's feet. Thereat the herdsman fell a-laughing, and made game, that the mystery of the Dwarfs was bewrayed; but these presently after brake down and laid waste their houses, and fled deeper away into their mountain. They harbour ill-will toward men, and withhold from them their help. That herdsman which had betrayed the Dwarfs turned sickly and half-witted, and so continued until his dying day!"

There! Plucked amidst the lap of the Alps from its own hardily-nursed wild-brier, by the same tenderly-diligent hand23 that brought home to us those other half-disclosed twin-buds of Helvetian tradition, you behold a third, like pure, more expanded blossom. Twine the three, young poet! into one soft-hued and "odorous chaplet," ready and meet for binding the smooth clear forehead of a Swiss Maud!—or fix it amidst the silken curls of thine own dove-eyed, innocent, nature-loving—Ellen or Margaret.

These old-young things—bequests, as they look to be—from the loving, singing childhood of the earth, may lawfully make children, lovers, and songsters of us all; and will, if we are fond, and hearken to them.

In that same "hallowed and gracious time," lying YON-SIDE our chronologies,

"When the world and love were young, And truth on every shepherd's tongue,"

the men and the Dwarfs had unbroken intercourse of borrowing and lending. Many traditions touch the matter. Here is one resting upon it.

No. CLIV. The Dwarfs near Dardesheim

"Dardesheim is a little town betwixt Halberstadt and Brunswick. Close to the north-east side, a spring of the clearest water flows, which is called the Smansborn,24 and wells from a hill wherein formerly the Dwarfs dwelled. When the ancient inhabitants of the place needed a holiday dress, or any rare utensil for a marriage, they betook them to this Dwarf's Hill, knocked thrice, and with a well audible voice, told their occasion, adding—