A Tramp's Wallet stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France. William Duthie
stockings, and tightly laced boots; the broad leathern embroidered band about his waist, and the steeple-crowned hat with the little coquettish feather, all help to make up a figure that you would like to see among his native mountains. And yet he is but a dignified sort of pedlar, and would be very happy to sell you a dozen or so of table napkins, Alpine handkerchiefs, or a few pieces of tape.
Well! he is gone, and before us comes a female figure, who forms a fit companion to the silver-buttoned Vierländer we have just past. Notice her dress; she is a Vierländerin. Her petticoats are shamefully short, you will say, stiff and plaited too as they are, but what a gallant pair of red stockings she wears, and what a neat, bright pair of buckled shoes! Her dress consists of a close boddice with long sleeves, all of dark purple stuff, and her neat black apron does not make a bad contrast to it. But her head-gear!—her hair is drawn from her face under a closely fitting caul, while an exaggerated black bow, or rather a pair of triangular wings, project some distance from the back of the head, and beneath them two enormous tails of hair trail down her back, each terminating in a huge red bow.
This country girl appears to have sold all her fruit, and has placed her basket upside down upon her head. No such thing; that is her peculiar head-dress; look again, and you will see that it is a small plaited straw basket, about a foot and a half in diameter, with a very deep straight edge. It is fastened on her head by a caul sewn into the inside. Well! at any rate this is a Quakeress we see coming at such a stately pace along the gravelled road? Wrong again, my friend; this is a young lady from Heligoland, the little island we passed at the mouth of the Elbe, and a very prim and neat young lady she is, though where she got her bonnet shape from I cannot say.
The way is lined with hawkers of every description: fruit, songs and sausages; toys, sticks and cigars; pipes, sweetmeats and tape; every imaginable article that was ever sold at a fair is to be found here, and every vender in a different dress, illustrating at one view the peasant costumes of every village in the vicinity. As for tobacco, the air is like a gust from some gigantic pipe. Here is the entrance to Franconi’s Circus, though not yet open for public entertainment. Blasts of obstreperous music rush upon you from every door; the shrill squealing of a flageolet being heard above everything else.
Knife-swallowers, mesmerisers, and the eternal Punch—here called Caspar—ballad-singers, tumblers, quacks, and incredible animals, are here for inspection. You would fancy it was some old English fair; for in spite of yourself there is a quaint feeling steals over you, that you had suddenly tumbled back into the middle of the last century.
And who pays for all this? for whose especial amusement is all this got up? For our old friend “Jack.” Here are English sailors, and French sailors; sailors in green velveteen jackets; sailors with their beards and whiskers curled into little shining ringlets. We meet our salt-water friend everywhere, and, by the intense delight depicted on his features, “Jack” is evidently in a high state of enjoyment.
Let us go on; we have promised not to visit the dancehouses to-day, and we will quit this clamorous crowd.
CHAPTER II.
ALTONA.
the poet’s grave.—a danish harvest home.
We tread upon elevated ground, and far away to our left, down in a hollow, flows the broad Elbe; placid indeed from this distance, for not a ripple can we see upon its surface. A few ships are lazily moving on its waters. Stand aside, and make way for this reverend gentleman; he is a prediger, a preacher of the gospel; he is habited in a black gown, black silk stockings and shoes, a small black velvet skull-cap on his head, while round his neck bristles a double plaited frill, white as a curd, and stiff as block tin. You would take him for the Dutch nobleman in an old panel painting. It may appear rather grotesque to your unaccustomed eyes, but remember there are many things very ridiculous at home.
A blackened gate, a confused mass of houses, an open square, and the pebbles again, and we are in Holstein, Denmark, in the public square and market place of Altona. Here it is that the Danish state lotteries are drawn, and we might moralise upon that subject, but that we prefer to press onwards to the real village of Altona.
Here through this beautiful avenue of trees; here where the sunshine is broken into patches by the waving foliage; far away from the din of trumpets, huxterers and showmen; here can the sweet air whisper its low song of peace and lull our fervid imaginations into tranquillity. This is no solitude, though all is quiet and in repose. Under the trees and in the road are throngs of loiterers, but there is no rude laughter, no coarse jests; a moving crowd is there, but a quiet and happy one. And now we come upon the venerable church with its low steeple, its time-eaten stone walls, and its humble, grassy, flower-spangled graves. We see a passer-by calling the attention of his friend to a stone tablet, green and worn with age, and surrounded by a slight railing. Can it be that there is a spirit hovering over that grave whose influence is peace and love? May not some mighty man lie buried there, the once frail tenement of a great mind whose noble thoughts have years ago wakened a besotted world to truths and aspirations hitherto unknown? There is veneration and respect in every countenance that gazes upon that simple stone; a solemn tread in every foot that trenches on its limits. This is the grave of a great poet. A man whose works, though little read in modern times, were once the wonder of his country; and whose very name comes upon the German people in a gush of melody, and a halo of bright thoughts. It is like an old legend breathed through the chords of a harp. This is the grave of Klopstock, the Milton of Germany. We will enter the churchyard, and look for a moment on the unimposing tablet. The inscription is scarcely legible, but the poet’s mother lies also buried here, and some others of his family. Could there be anything more humble, more unobtrusive? No; but there is something about the grave of a great poet that serves to dignify the simplest monument, and shed a lustre round the lowest mound.
We will cross the churchyard to yonder low brick wall which confines it. There are clusters of rosy, happy children, clambering about its crumbling top; little knots of men too in the road beyond—evidently expecting something. Even this is in keeping with the poet’s grave, which should not be sombre and melancholy, like other graves; and what could better embellish and enliven its aspect than young, blushing life clustering around it? We linger awhile among the boisterous children playing on the churchyard wall, and then we hear a confused sound of voices and music in the distance.
“What is this we hear, my friend?” we inquire.
“It is the harvest-home; if you wait you will see the procession.”
We turn out upon the high road, and soon come upon the first signs of this Danish festival. An open gravelled space of some extent stretches out before an imposing mansion of modern appearance; a plantation of trees on each side shapes the space into a rude semicircle. This mansion is the manor house, and in front, in the midst of a confused crowd, some dozen young men in gay sylvan costumes are standing in a circle, armed with flails, and vigorously threshing the ground. Jolly, hearty young fellows they are, and a merry chant they raise. One eager thresher in his zeal breaks his flail at the bend, and a shout from the bystanders greets the exploit.
Now they thresh their way from the great house to a hostelry where the remaining portion of the pageant is awaiting their arrival. Let us stand a little on one side and view the procession. The threshers lead the way, singing and plying their flails as they advance, thus effectually clearing the road for the rest. A merry group of other threshers, each with his lass upon his arm, and his flail swung across his shoulder, come tripping after, singing the harvest song and dancing to their own music. Now a rude wooden car comes lumbering on, and within sits a grave man in old German costume, who from a large sack before him takes handsful of grain, and liberally casts it about him. This is the sower, but the grain is in this instance only chaff. Now follow heavy instruments of husbandry—ploughs and harrows—while rakes, scythes, and reaping-hooks form a picturesque trophy behind them. A shout of laughter greets the next figure in the procession, for it is no other than the jolly god Bacchus. And a hearty, rubicund, big-bellied god he is, and very decent, too, being decorously clad