The Marvellous Adventures and Rare Conceits of Master Tyll Owlglass. Robert Henderson Mackenzie Kenneth
Mackenzie
The Marvellous Adventures and Rare Conceits of Master Tyll Owlglass / Newly collected, chronicled and set forth, in our English tongue
PREFACE
“Wit, an’t be thy will, put me into good fooling! Those wits that think they have thee do very oft prove fools; and I that am sure I lack thee, may pass for a wise man: For what says Quinapalus? Better a witty fool than a foolish wit.”
Among the folkbooks of the German nation, not one has obtained so general a circulation as that now presented in an English form. It has been deemed worthy, as by the Appendix may be perceived, of being translated into French, Dutch, Danish, Polish, nay, even Hebrew, and honoured by being reprinted on every kind of paper, good and bad. A favourite among the young for its amusing and quaint adventures, and a study among those who strive, by the diligent comparison of different eras of national literature, to arrive at a due appreciation of national character, Eulenspiegel, or Owlglass the boor (peasant), possesses a peculiar value for the old. I well remember how, as a very little child, I first made the friendship of the lithe though clumsy hero; and to the present time do not feel that I can say I have lost my interest in the humourous quips and quiddities of the strolling vagabond. I little thought, when I then read the German book, that it would be my privilege to introduce him to other readers in my own language.
The Gil Blas of German mediæval story, there is deep instruction in the pungent jests and literal ways of the man who held up his mirror for owls to look in, and each of whose tricks might form the groundwork of a moral reflection. And for the early times in which it appeared, there was not a little courage in the author of it. Strange to say, this person appears to have been a Franciscan friar, Thomas Murner, who, in other matters, made not a little stir in his own day. He visited this country, and wrote a book in defence of our good King Hal the Bluff against that famous monk, Luther; and he received some assistance in a substantial gift from that monarch. An account of him will be found in the Appendix; we have here only to deal with the significance of the book itself.
Like the deep searching work of Rabelais, the book is a satire, not upon human life only, but upon special and dangerous topics. Very early editions contain the story of how Eulenspiegel procured an old skull from a churchyard, and turned the passion for worshipping relics to profitable account;1 and the priests and would-be learned men of his time continually appear in ludicrous, undignified, or humiliating positions. Rank was not respected, nor was vice in high places passed by with (so-called) discreet silence. Yet with all the graver objects in the book, the immediate aim of amusement was never forgotten; and, letting us into the secrets of peasant life in Germany at an era when peasants had little to rejoice over, we almost imagine that we can hear the shouts of laughter with which the blunt outspoken jokes of this sly clown were received. But Mr. Hallam does justice to a higher appreciation of this kind of literature among the better classes of the time.
“They had a literary public, as we may call it,” says this distinguished writer,2 “not merely in their courts and universities, but in their respectable middle class, the burghers of the free cities, and perhaps in the artizans whom they employed. Their reading was almost always with a serious end: but no people so successfully cultivated the art of moral and satirical fable. These in many instances spread with great favour through Cisalpine Europe. Among the works of this kind, in the fifteenth century, two deserve mention; the Eulenspiegel, popular afterwards in England by the name of Howleglass, and a superior and better known production,3 the Narrenschiff, or Ship of Fools, by Sebastian Brandt of Strasburg.... It is a metrical satire on the follies of every class, and may possibly have suggested to Erasmus his Encomium Moriæ. But the idea was not absolutely new; the theatrical company established at Paris under the name of Enfans de Sans Souci, as well as the ancient office of jester or fool in our courts and castles, implied the same principle of satirising mankind with ridicule so general, that every man should feel more pleasure from the humiliation of his neighbours than pain from his own.... The influence such books of simple fiction and plain moral would possess over a people, may be judged by the delight they once gave to children, before we had learnt to vitiate the healthy appetite of ignorance by premature refinements and stimulating variety.”4
Yet with all the repute which the book must have had among the boors and country louts of what people choose, with doubtful taste or insight, to call the “dark ages,” Owlglass, if it had not contained within itself great vitality, might have lain in the obscurity which surrounds many a contemporary work. Of the three great philosophers then extant, I have somewhere read a kind of parallel, that Rabelais in his work satirised fantastically, and with peculiar reference to the more educated and scholarly readers of his time. Erasmus, on the other part, struck at the monks with vigorous hand in other fashion; while both Brandt and Murner took a more popular form in their compositions: yet, while Brandt is now scarce remembered, Eulenspiegel remains, a striking and applicable book, setting forth, indeed, in a good light, the truth everywhere, that “the letter killeth but the spirit giveth life.” In this may be found the reason of its wonderful popularity in Germany—in this is the secret of its constant reproduction in so many languages.
The fool in idle hour claims our attentive ear, charms, instructs, enchains the mind, when the sonorous voice and weighty arguments of the preacher would have no greater effect than the production of a yawn, or, at most, a fugitive repentance. The fact of the subjection of the letter to the spirit must be borne in mind throughout. Mighty times were those when, by sturdy hands and wise pates, the world was ridding itself of the rule of monks and literal interpreters of the universe and of the duties of society. Yet Murner, as has been mentioned, fought against Luther; nor, indeed, could Rabelais or Erasmus perceive, save somewhat dimly, whither their words tended. Perhaps, in secret, they saw, in fitful glimpses, the truth that history proceeds according to progressive laws of development; and when the monks, who at one time had done good service, were no longer useful to mankind, they decayed from inherent fitlessness, and so vanished, overcome by the light of such lamps as these.
A remarkable feature in the adventures of Owlglass must not be passed over without notice, viz., the very few allusions anywhere made to the occult sciences, or to similar subjects. In the story of the invisible picture there is one slight reference to alchymy; and in that where he is led forth to the gallows, the multitude regard Owlglass as a magician, who will rescue himself by the aid of demons. But so real is the character everywhere, that not even by the many editors has any tale been introduced connecting the hero with such matters. Yet the absence of such a colouring displays a greater skill and a deeper purpose in the author; from the tendency of the age in which it was written, any mention of occult science would have been excusable, nay, almost natural. If we remember that the era of its publication was rife with magicians, astrologers, and alchymists; that Cornelius Agrippa very shortly afterwards found it necessary to protest against the abuse of such subjects in his treatise “Of the Uncertainty and Vanity of the Sciences and Arts,” that Trithemius was then Abbot of the Benedictine Monastery of Spanheim: all these considerations would have caused no surprise at the introduction of scenes of enchantment, or, at least, an employment of them allusively or by implication. But no; true to its mission of a folk-book, filled with the manners and customs of its time, Owlglass is thoroughly worldly, and for us, therefore, possesses greater interest and value.
It may be interesting for a moment to set side by side the jester exhibited in the pages of Shakspere and the good Master Owlglass. Historical Owlglass there certainly was at some time of the fourteenth century, his tomb yet standing at Möllen, as will be seen; but the pranks of many excellent jesters were all centred in the book telling of Owlglass; so that he has been overlaid with jokes, not in his own power to perform. Indeed, in the present edition, from a respect I have for chronology, I have been obliged to extrude two or three which would have involved anachronisms. However, they were somewhat dull, and therefore need not be regretted.
The first English version of Owlglass (as to which see the Appendix, p. 220) having been published early in the sixteenth century, in a “little
See Adventure the 36th, p. 63.
Introduction to the Literature of Europe, vol. i. p. 235 (Library ed.); vol. i. p. 240 (Cabinet ed.).
Matter of doubt to the present writer whether it be thus superior; in any case, it would be scarcely so interesting to people now-a-days. But see the Appendix.
Bouterwek, in his “History of German Poetry and Eloquence” (