Ulm

“ During the following days, Ulm resembled a large camp. Instead of the peaceable peasant, the busy citizens, passing, as in ordinary times, through the streets with sober tranquil step to their several avocations, were now to be seen strange figures, with helmets and caps of iron, carrying lances, cross bows and fire-arms. In lieu of statesmen in their plain black dresses, proud knights clad in steel, and wearing helmets adorned with waving plumes, strode about the squares and market places, accompanied by numerous bands of followers. ”

“ Next in importance to Augsburg in the early history of illustrated books in Germany, ranks the neighbouring city of Ulm, where the names of wood-engravers are found in the town registers from the early part of the century, and the printers had thus plenty of good material to call to their aid. The first illustrated book which we know with certainty to have been printed at Ulm is the De Claris Mulieribus of Boccaccio, issued by Johann Zainer, in a [Pg 46] Latin edition dated 1473, and in a German translation, with the same cuts, about the same time. ”

“ The evils of war are forgotten; we have left on the soil of our conquests the spark of life. That inert mass set in movement continues to ferment because its intelligence is commencing. When travelling nowadays, we see the nations watching, knapsack on back: ready to start, they seem to be waiting for us in order to place us at the head of the column. A Frenchman is always taken for the aide-de-camp who brings the order to march.
Ulm is a clean little town, with no particular character; its dismantled ramparts have been converted into kitchen-gardens or walks, which happens to all ramparts. ”

“ New Ulm is an important livestock market. The city is the seat of the Dr Martin Luther College (Lutheran, 1884) , a secondary school, with a normal and a collegiate department. St Michael’s Academy and St Alexander Hospital are under the charge of Roman Catholic sisters. New Ulm was settled about 1853, and was twice attacked and almost destroyed by the Indians during the Sioux uprising of 1862. There is a monument to those who lost their lives in the Sioux massacres. ”

“ You’ll never forget Ulm if you arrive there, as we did, in a canoe, when the Iller is in flood.
II We spent a week in the quaint old town of Ulm, but our adventures there have properly no part in our journey down the river. Only, in passing, I must mention the courtesy of the Danube Rowing Club. Fritz Miller (who rowed at Henley in 1900 for the Diamond Sculls) is the leading spirit in a list of members who showed us all possible kindness. ”

“ New Ulm is the centre of a rich agricultural and stock-raising section, and carries on considerable trade. Its industrial establishments comprise grain elevators and flour mills, breweries, cigar factories, brick plants, machine shops, cooperage shops, and manufactories of pipe organs, woolens, pottery, and creamery products. Under a revised charter of 1891, the government is vested in a mayor, elected biennially, and a council. There are municipal water-works and electric-light plants. Settled in 1854, New Ulm was incorporated in 1876. ”

“ Then it was that Ulm became again subject to its Magistrates who are all Lutherans. The Catholics cannot enjoy Offices, but have several Churches. This City drives a great Trade in Linnen, but few of the Gentry live here except the Patricians who are not more sociable than those of Nuremberg and Augsbourg. The Burghers and the Women in particular go dress'd like those at Augsbourg. ”

“ Saturday evening we went by rail to Salzburg (at day-dawn) ; Munich at sunrise, not stopping; on to Ulm soon after ten A.M. Bad weather kept Mrs. Gray indoors all day Sunday, though I ran about. Monday morning she had with me a good look over Ulm minster, inside and out; the upper part of the spire is rebuilding, and is to be carried up with the true taper, according to the original plan. That sight-seeing done, we came yesterday to, and across, the Lake Constance, to Zurich, for late afternoon and evening, and on to Geneva overnight. ”

“ I had settled on the frontier, where Traverse des Sioux and Mankato were the extreme border towns in southwestern Minnesota. About the year 1854 or 1855 a German settlement was commenced at New Ulm. It originated in Cincinnati, with an association which sent out parties to find a site for a town, and they selected the present site of New Ulm. ”

“ Maria Hollin had well-to-do relatives at Ulm, and the magistrate of that town, convinced of her innocence, had applied for her release. But that did her little good. The town-scribent thought it would endanger the reputation of a court to put a person on the rack for fifty-eight times and then not even to have the satisfaction of singeing her a little, not to speak of burning. But the burghers of Ulm would not be silenced. ”

“ In the larger cities, which were not the residence of princes, the position of the nobility was very different. In Hamburg, Lübeck, and Bremen, the nobles had no political weight; on the other hand, at Nüremberg, Frankfort-on-the-Maine, Augsburg, and Ulm, the old race of nobility lived in proud isolation from the rest of the citizens. ”

“ And whether by good luck or good management they reached Ulm without mishap, where Herr Liederman had friends and influence. And then a passport for the unfortunate Herr Professor from Ulm to Munich was procured which made the remainder of their journey less hazardous. ”

“ Dame Hollin took his hand, and went to the door with him, where both were received by the gratified shouts of the shuffling crowd.
The old woman kept her word. In her house Jörg became an honest, valiant man, who in the Thirty Years’ War did great service to Ulm, the town of his adoption, and his name was never spoken but in honour and gratitude. But the witch’s counsel was forced to resign office, and after those five years of terror followed a better decade, during which law and justice reigned once more in the old Reichstadt. ”

“ Ulster (1,617) , the northern province of Ireland, is divided into the nine counties of Antrim, Armagh, Cavan, Donegal, Down, Fermanagh, Londonderry, Monaghan, and Tyrone, and has an area of 8560 sq. m.; became an English settlement in 1611, and was largely colonised from Scotland; it is the most Protestant part of the island, though the Catholics predominate, and is the most enterprising and prosperous part; the land is extensively cultivated, and flax growing and spinning the chief industries. ”

“ Among chariot-chiefs and champions, among poets and learned men, among the lords and nobles of Ulster, have I been reared, and they have taught me courage and skill and manly gifts. In birth and bravery I am a match for any chariot-chief; I direct the counsels of Ulster, and at my own fort at Dun Dalgan they come to me for entertainment. Not as one of the common herd do I stand before thee here to-day, but as the favourite of the King and the darling of all the warriors of Ulster. ”

“ But all that mountainous headland is inhabited by folk who still keep the Gaelic speech alive among them, and whose remote forbears owned in far distant times the overlordship of Ireland's most famous champion, when Ulster had a pagan chivalry, the Red Branch Circle, which is to Irish legend what the story of Arthur's knighthood is to British romance, or the tale of the Nibelungs to Germany. ”

“ And at the last the King stood up and cried, “True is the message that the head has brought. Ulster lies bound before her enemies, while we rust here in sleep. By all the gods my nation loves, I swear, unless the stars of heaven shall fall upon our heads, or the strong solid earth give way beneath our feet, I and my chiefs will restore each captive woman to her child [150] and home, each cow to her own meadow, and each stolen piece of land to its own lords, so that in shame with heavy loss the foes of Ulster shall return to their own country.” ”

“ In a word, if you cannot get to the west of Lough Swilly you may be very well content with the east of it; and though much of infinite beauty and interest lies beyond, when you have seen and known Lough Swilly and its shores, and the people who live on them—that mixed race, Scot and Irish, lowland and highland, Protestant and Catholic, all neighbourly together—why, at least you will have had a very fair chance to know and love, not the Ulster that people rant about or rail at, but Ulster as it really is. ”

“ Of Ireland's luck and leave the shamrock broken
Of one green leaf, when four brought joy upon it,
As Ulster lost—from Munster, Leinster, Connacht.
But Ulster lost with each green sod still crying
For those dear dead who left us dreams undying
Of Ireland's needs, O'Neill whose heart took fire
And joined the sacred flames of Hugh Maguire.
Shall we not cry “Lamh Dearg abu” and glory
In Cromwell's fall, in reading Clonmel's story,
Or by the “Yellow Ford” who cheered most loudly
As hand from hand we passed the same flag proudly? ”

“ You preface your verses on Ulster by words from the mysterious oracles of humanity as if you had been inflamed and inspired by the prophet of God; and you go on to sing of faith in peril and patriotism betrayed and the danger of death and oppression by those who do murder by night, which things, if one truly feels, he speaks of without consideration of commerce or what it shall profit him to speak. ”

“ The turf would be nearly black, and bare as a board, and there would be coursing of hares ... November mists, and the trees red and brown.... Eh, hard Ulster, pleasant Ulster!
He should have been happy, as he made his way down the Beirut streets to go aboard, leaving the land of his adoption for the land of his birth, leaving pleasant Fenzile for the shrewd pleasantry of his own folk.... A little while of Ulster and he would be coming back again.... One's heart should lift the glory of the world, the bold line of Ulster and the lavish color of Syria ”

“ Religious feeling inspired the men of Ulster in those days of training, and remained with them in the days of war. The General commanding the 4th Division, to which the 36th was attached for instruction after its arrival in France, spoke of his astonishment at finding so many Ulstermen reading their Bibles. The writer of this book can bear witness from personal [17] observation that it was not uncommon to find a man sitting on the fire-step of a front-line trench, reading one of the small copies of the New Testament which were issued to the troops by the people at home. ”

“ Because there, on the extreme limits of the Province, a watcher who is a prime warrior of Ulster always stands, prepared to challenge any stranger, before he pass the ford, of his business in the Province: if he who comes be a bard or peaceful man, to grant him protection and entertainment; but if he be a foe, to challenge him to combat at the ford. ”

“ Mike told me that the airship was not built for Irish weather, but he afterwards remedied this defect, as we shall see.
When we reached County Fermanagh we began to realize Ireland’s agricultural possibilities. Ulster is a different world from Connaught. The landscape is rolling, covered with cultivated farms. The houses are often two-storied, slated, and neatly kept. There are large barns and every appearance of prosperity. The picture presented to us in Ulster was not so romantic as in Connemara, but it is more like living. ”

“ What ought, in fact, to be considered as Ireland proper consists, then, of the eastern province or Leinster, the southern or Munster, and the western or Connaught. Ulster is in reality, as well by the nature of its soil as by the race and habits of the majority of its inhabitants, an annex and dependency of Scotland. The three other provinces, on the contrary, form a whole, as distinct from England or Scotland by the constitution and aspect of the land, as it is different by the race, genius, the traditions and beliefs of the population. ”

“ But I do desire to assert that, in my humble opinion, it is the Scotch, or alien population of Ireland, which has been at the root of Ireland’s principal troubles throughout the past century. Ulster may be a fine kingdom, the wealthiest, most industrious, and the wisest and happiest in the country, if you like. Yet it is Ulster that bars the way in all matters that make for the real good of Ireland. ”

“ Where there is a question of Home Rule, the Ulster Hall is sacred ground, and to the Ulster mind and, indeed, to the mind of any calm outsider, there is something both impudent and impious in the proposal that this temple of Unionism should be profaned by the son of a man who assisted at its consecration. ”

“ Indeed, to those who set out to judge Irish political conditions without troubling themselves about anything more ancient than their own memory can recall, the most fundamental factor of all—the line of cleavage between Ulster and the rest of the island—- is more than unintelligible. ”

“ It is what was prophecied for us, that the nobles of Ulster would be congregated in one night in that house. There are seven chains of good iron here under the feet of this bed. Let them be firmly fastened to the seven pillar-stones that are on the green outside."
Then Crom Deroil and Faenglinni came into the house in which were Medb and Ailill of Connacht and the nobles of the province of Munster, and related to them how the Ulstermen were awaited. ”

“ There are others who say that it is the men of Ulster—and they like to saddle the whole thing upon the men of Ulster, as if there are no Protestants in any other part of Ireland— (hear, hear) —and they have invented that witty saying of Ulsteria. I think that our fellow subjects ought to be learning rapidly that it is nothing of the kind. ”