Peter Rosegger

“ Late in the evening, when the crescent moon stood in the dark, clear sky and shed its twilight over the woods and gleaming, snow-clad meadows and over the little house in the forest on the hill-side, the snow creaked continually on the roads and people came up from farmsteads and distant cottages. Even though they had carried on loud and cheerful conversations with one another on the paths by which they had come, they became silent now that they were nearing the cottage and we heard only the crackling of their footsteps on the snow. ”

“ All's aglow in the wood and alight in the young larches; and the blooms are fragrant and the birds singing in every tree-top.
Ah, child-time is May-time!
A dull, heavy knocking roused me from my dream; I started up. Now they are laying my mother in the coffin; now they are nailing down the lid.
I rushed out of the shed and into the house. There, in the passage, stood the narrow, white, closed coffin; and the dimly-flickering oil-lamp now lit up only the empty, desolate plank on which the bier had stood. ”

“ The snow falls thicker and heavier, night draws in and Lily does not come. The children by now are crying for their milk; the father is eager to be after his game; the mother sits up in bed:
"Lily!" she calls. "Wherever are you, child, trotting about in that pitch-dark forest? Come home!"
How can the sick woman's weak voice reach the wanderer through the fierce snowstorm?
As the night grows darker and stormier, Berthold's craving to go poaching grows deeper, while his fears for his Lily-of-the-Forest rise higher and higher. She is a frail little twelve-year-old girl. ”

“ Later, when the afternoon shadows had lengthened outside, far over the glittering snow-clad meadow-land, when, in the parlour, Joseph was painting the black cross on the coffin-lid, father sat down beside it and said, softly:
"Please God, after all, she has a house of her own again."
On the first day after mother's death, no fire had been lit on the cottage-hearth. One and all had forgotten that a mortal man wants a basin of hot soup in the morning and at mid-day. ”

“ Thereupon my father came up softly to my bed, with one hand hidden behind his back.
"Look here, lad, just you tell me what you've done with your new Sunday jacket!"
That soft slinking with his hand behind his back at once struck me as suspicious; and my face fell; and, bursting into tears, I cried:
"Oh, father, I thought I was giving it to God!"
"Lord, lad, what a duffer—what an idiot you are!" cried my father. "You're much too good for this world and yet quite too silly to die! What you want is to have your soul thrashed out of your skin with a stout besom." ”

“ Through all the house there was washing and scrubbing; even into the living-room itself came the maids with their water-pails and straw wisps and brooms. I always looked forward to the cleaning, because I loved the turning topsy-turvy of everything, and because the glazed pictures in the corner where the table was, the brown clock from the Black Forest with its metal bell, and the various things which, at other times, I saw only at a distance high above me, were taken down and brought nearer to me, and I could observe them all much more closely and from all sides. ”

“ The dark and glossy hair (she had no grey hairs yet) was carefully braided and peeped out a little at the temples from under the brown kerchief, the one which she loved best to wear upon her head when she went to church on holidays. She held her hands folded over her breast, with the rosary and the wax candle between them. She lay there just as though she had fallen asleep in church on Whit Sunday, during the solemn High Mass; and thus, even in death, she comforted her child. But the rough hands clearly showed that the slumberer had led a hard and toilful life. ”

“ But Clements said:
"Forest-farmer, you shall not sell a field, nor a head of cattle from your stable; you shall have a coffin of good white ash-wood: God grant that you may not need it for a long time to come! You shall have good days yet in this world. You shall not sell the old fir-trees, but you shall sell the larch in your wood that are fit for felling. ”

“ Many a time, while a thunderstorm was raging over Altenmoos, Jacob would stand under the heavy eaves over his door, looking out quiet and resigned. Man cannot alter things, God is almighty; what is the good, then, of trembling or complaining? When it grows light, he sees his whole cornfield, now nearly ripe, beaten down. Jacob says, "Thanks and praise be to God that there was no ice in it—all the stalks lie in order and flat on the ground, not one lifts so much as a knee! The heavy rain has laid the corn low, the wind will dry it—lift it up again." ”

“ While still in the early days of his married life there came some bad years, and there in the Wilderness nothing would grow or ripen save turnips and cabbage. Rye and oats started hopefully enough in the spring, greening and gathering strength for an output of ears. Then, in the heart of summer, came rain and cold, and the mists hung about the hills for weeks. The corn grew pale and stooped, as if it would rather creep back into the sheltering soil. There followed a few weeks of sunshine after that, but before even the grain could mature the snow had fallen. ”

“ The things which, in the towns, are produced by the divided toil of thousands of heads, hands, and wheels, in other words, the necessaries of life, the peasant in the far-lying mountains must make for himself, in his narrow circle, with his small, unaided means. He is a provider of natural produce, manufacturer, middleman and consumer, all in one. The bread which he eats comes from the corn which he flung into the earth last year with his own hand; the bacon which he enjoys on its bed of cabbage is cut from the pig fattened with the turnips which he has planted in his own ground. ”

“ Every grain is armed with a sharp spear for defence or offence, but the reaper does not flinch before the fine-toothed saws that allow no hand to glide downwards, but only upwards from below,—only from lowly to lofty.
When Jacob, always first and last in the heat and burden of the day, rests in late evening beneath a corn-stook in the harvest-field, his dreaming begins again. The breath of grass and flowers makes him drowsy: he watches the antics of a jolly grasshopper, hears the chirp of a cricket—then it all fades away. ”

“ Down there in the depths must be the valley and the mill. It seemed to me as if I heard the murmur of the brook; but it was only the soughing of the wind in the forest on the farther side.
I went to right and to left, searching for a footpath that might take me down, and I found a place where I thought I should be able to lower myself by the help of the loose rocks which lay about, and of the juniper bushes. ”

“ And, when Lily-of-the-Forest had already laid her down to die and, with her simple fancy, asked the animals to stay with her faithfully in her last dying hour, suddenly the roe-deer began to snuffle very strangely, and lifted their heads, and pricked up their ears, and broke through the thicket with wild bounds, and darted away with shrill cries.
And now the men work their way through the snow and underwood and see the little maiden and hurrah for joy ”

“ The son of the peasant, who on his journey has attained the heights of humanity, is always turning back to his starting-point. Like the old giant Antæus, he draws new strength from his mother Earth. Close touch with the home soil is for him a condition of life. When Rosegger was on a lecturing tour through the great German cities, where he was enthusiastically greeted by audiences of thousands, there never left him the longing for the silent peace of the mountains; and Heimweh drove him away even from the shining Gulf of Naples. ”

“ When grace had been said out loud by everybody and all together, and the great big soup-tureens were sending up their warm, savoury clouds, about twelve young men, older men, young girls and old women sat themselves down to the one table. At the other table right in the corner the house-father took his place, a stout, comfortable, cheerful man with a smooth-shaven face and a double chin; then came his children, from the merry grown-up Sennerl right down to Simmerl, and still further down to two quite tiny babies, who had their milk-soup spooned into their little mouths by the servant-maid. ”

“ In the month of June they wander away, with bundle and sickle, to the lowlands or the Mürzthal, where the corn is ripe early; and they find plenty of work and amaze everybody by their eager and indefatigable diligence. This done, they cheerfully come home again with their reaping wages and once more apply themselves briskly to the needs of field and garden. It is very seldom that one of them, lured by love or other worldly advantages, remains away; they like home best, where they form part, so to speak, of the family of their employer, with whom maid and man alike live on fraternal terms. ”

“ Such a one is Peter Rosegger, whose life is a type of our own day and a prophecy of better. He, too, left the land for the city, and now, because all his culture and experience do but confirm his faith that Bauernthum is as necessary for the world's soul as the bread which the peasant grows for its body, he has gone back to it. When he wants new vigour for daily life, or for his mission of protecting and pleading for a vanishing folk, he touches earth and gets it. Peasant-born, in most of his books he is Peasantry grown conscious and articulate,—he gives us that life from within. ”

“ There lay Sepp stretched at full length, and his hands folded across his breast. And I went away down through the forest. How bright and fresh with dew, how full of the song of birds, full of the scent of flowers—how full of life the forest was! And in the hut, stretched on the bier, lay a dead man. ”

“ God bless you, Heath Peter! You are a good soul, and I've known you this many a long day: why, it must be nigh on five-and-thirty years. It was I pushed back your little bonnet when the priest christened you. Ah me, if the same priest were only still alive! He was a good man, indeed, and would not have discharged me like a day-labourer at the end of his day's work, no, not though I did ring ten bells for Louis the herdsman. True, I'm old now, and can't look after the school as I used to. ”

“ Huntsman Kickel lived in an old dismantled farm-house, in the only room which was still habitable. At that time he was suffering with a wound in his foot, which he had got by leaping from a rock, and for months he had been unable to go into the coverts. As Oswald on Sundays went up to his mountain-hut from the valley, his way led him past, and he spoke to his father to ask him how the sick leg was, and to bring him this thing or the other and to chat with him about his wife and his dear boy. ”

“ From the windows of the houses, the town misses looked down upon our mad doings; and we were convinced that they must all be in love with us and that, the more rudely we behaved and the more wildly the ribbons streamed from our hats, the more ardent their love must grow. We had a lurking suspicion that even a farmer's lad from the mountains, bawling with brag and arrogance and marching away as the champion of his country, may, when all is said, possess some little interest for the city dame. ”

“ We others and the inns on the road took all the greater care to keep the mad recruiting-spirit alive. By the custom of our fathers, the rosette and ribbons are worn on the hat by the recruit who goes home a soldier and by no other. But we acted differently that day: we all kept our rosettes, so as to create a greater sensation and compel respect.
"Look, look! Expect we'll be having war soon," said many a little peasant, "for they're keeping them all now, every man jack of them. It'll be true what the old folks say, that the women will fight for the chair on which a he once sat." ”

“ At last, the coffin, richly decked with flowers, swayed out of the parish church, where, in the old days, the woodman's wife had been baptised and married, on its way to the cemetery. The priests and the choir sang the loud, clear requiem, the bells tolled over the village far out into the woods and the candles flickered in the sunlight. A long train of men and women passed through the broad village street. We walked behind the coffin, carrying lighted candles in our hands and praying as we went. ”

“ The Corpus Christi Altar When the triumphant Saviour passes through the village in the shape of bread, they greet Him with palms. The palm of the alps is the birch. Even as the little fir-trees are doomed to lose their lives at Christmas-time, so do the birches at Corpus Christi. They are dragged to the village by the hundred, on great drays, and planted in rows on both sides of the streets through which the procession is intended to go. ”

“ The small living-room had a stove with glowing embers on it, a burning pine-splinter, [6] and a straw bed with a child asleep on it. Near it stood a woman, very old and bent and with a face as pallid and creased as the coarse nightgown she was wearing. As we entered, this person uttered a strange cry, a sort of crowing, began to laugh violently, and then hid herself behind the stove.
"That's Frau Drachenbinder," remarked my guide. "She'll soon come and speak to you, and meantime you sit down there on the stool near the bed and put on your shoes again." ”

“ At home it was just the other way round, everything else brown and the soup white. There was no milk-soup for breakfast here, but coffee! I had already heard about it, that the grand people ate coffee, but that an old charcoal-burner had said, "My dear people, I am certainly black. Look at me and see if I'm black or no! But I'm not so black and bad as the black broth from Morocco. The devil has invented it, and the peasant will come to an end if he eats it." ”

“ He may develop into a more or less decent fellow, or else into a lout of the first water: who can tell? None but God really; and even He leaves the choice to the lanky, pale-faced lad himself. On the day in question, I had either overslept myself in my forest home or had more trouble than usual in getting my lace-boots on; or perhaps breakfast was not ready in time. Anyhow, by the time I reached Kathrein church, everything was in full swing, with the red banners waving and the candles twinkling between the trees. ”

“ Strong and slender the stalks grow up from joint to joint. The lance-shaped, dark green leaves that lorded it at first, have nearly vanished, the stalks droop their heavy heads, which give back the sown grain thirty or forty-fold, one stalk laying its golden head on the shoulder of another. In the sun's heat by day, at night in the light of the moon and the stars and the glimmer of glow-worms, they are ripening towards harvest. ”

“ They had a wooden jar with them, wound round with straw, out of which one and the other took long draughts. The red one invited my father to try their wine. He did; and his experience was worse than that of Clements with the linseed-oil: the jar contained that hellish stuff, brandy.
The wood-cutters now feasted in our house day after day. We children lost all liking for our daily food, at the sight of luxury and abundance. We became discontented; and our household, consisting of two half-grown servant-girls and a half-blind woman, heaved many a deep sigh. But the red one knew how to amuse us. ”