Zigzag Journeys in Northern Lands by Hezekiah Butterworth (fiction books to read .txt) 📕
Gentleman Jo took a story-telling attitude, and a number of the pupils gathered around him.
GENTLEMAN JO'S GHOST STORY.
I shall never forget the scene of excitement, when one morning Biddy, our domestic, entered the sitting-room, her head bobbing, her hair flying, and her cap perched upon the top of her head, and exclaimed: "Wurrah! I have seen a ghoust, and it's lave the hoose I must. Sich a night! I'd niver pass anither the like of it for the gift o' the hoose. Bad kick to ye, an' the hoose is haunted for sure."
"Why, Biddy, what have you seen?" asked my sister, in alarm.
"Seen? An' sure I didn't see nothin'. I jist shet me eyes and hid mesilf under the piller. But it was awful. An' the way it clanked its chain! O murther!"
This last remark was rather startling. Spirit
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Emanuel Geibel.
THE STORY AND LEGEND OF BARBAROSSA.Frederick of Germany was a very handsome man. There was a tinge of red in his beard, and for that reason he came to be called Frederick Barbarossa. He was an ambitious man, and he went to Rome to be crowned.
CHARLEMAGNE INFLICTING BAPTISM UPON THE SAXONS.
It was a time of rival popes, and Barbarossa entered into the long controversy, which would make a history of itself. He captured Milan, and levelled the city. The sacred relics in the churches were sent to enrich the churches of Germany. Among these were the reputed bodies of the three Wise Men of the East; these were sent to Cologne, and are still exhibited there amid heaps of jewels.
Barbarossa was constantly at war with popes and kings: he gained victories and suffered reverses; but his career was theatrical and popular in those rude times, and he was regarded as a very good monarch as kings went.
THE GERMANS ON AN EXPEDITION.
He once held a great peace festival at Mentz, to which came forty thousand knights. A camp of tents of silk and gold was set up by the Rhine, and musicians, called minnesingers, delighted the nobles and ladies with songs of heroes and knights. The songs and ballads then sung became famous, and this festival may be said to be the beginning of musical art in music-loving Germany.
Europe was now startled with the news that the Saracens under Saladin had taken Jerusalem. Barbarossa was about inaugurating a new war with the Pope; but when this news came he and the Pope became reconciled, and he resolved to go on a crusade.
He was an old man now, but he entered into the crusade with the fiery spirit of youth. His war-cry was,—
“Christ reigns! Christ conquers!”
He won a great victory at Iconium.
There was a swift, cold river near the battle-field, called Kaly Kadmus. A few days after the victory, Barbarossa went into it to bathe. He was struck by a chill and sank into the rapid current, and was drowned. He was seventy years of age. His body was found and interred at Antioch.
Of course the Germans attached to Barbarossa a legend, as they do to everything. They said that he was not dead, but had fallen a victim to enchantment. He and his knights had been put to sleep in the Kyffhauser cave in Thuringia. They sat around a stone table, waiting for release. His once red, but now white, beard was growing through the stone.
They also said that the spell that bound Barbarossa and his knights would some day be broken, and that they would come back to Germany. This would occur when the country should be in sore distress, and need a champion for its cause.
Ravens flew continually about the cave where the monarch and his knights were held enchanted. When they should cease to circle about it, the spell would be broken, and the grand old monarch would return to the Rhine.
They looked for him in days of calamity; but centuries passed, and he did not return.
The legend is thus told in song:—
By magic spell is bound,—
Old Frederick the Kaiser,
In castle underground.
He sleeps an iron sleep;
For, in the castle hidden,
He’s sunk in slumber deep.
Of empire hath he ta’en,
Wherewith, in fitting season,
He shall appear again.
Upon an ivory throne;
Of marble is the table
His head he resteth on.
Like living fire it shines,
And groweth through the table
Whereon his chin reclines.
Then wakes he, heavy-eyed,
And calls, with lifted finger,
A stripling to his side.
And tidings bring, if still
Their course the ancient ravens
Are wheeling round the hill.
Are flying still around,
A hundred years to slumber
By magic spell I’m bound.’”
Friedrich Rückert.
The seven evenings with historic places on the Rhine had proved a source of profitable entertainment to the Club. It was proposed to continue the plan, and to follow Mr. Beal’s and the boys’ journey to the North.
“Let us add to these entertainments,” said Charlie Leland,—
“(1) A Night in Northern Germany. We will call it a Hamburg Night.
“(2) A Night in Denmark.
“(3) A Night in Sweden and Norway.”
The proposal was adopted, and Master Beal was asked to continue the narrative of travel, and all the members of the Club were requested to collect stories that illustrate the history, traditions, manners, and customs of these countries.
CHAPTER XII. HAMBURG.Hamburg.—Berlin.—Potsdam.—Palace of Sans-Souci.—Story of the Struggles and Triumphs of Handel.—Story of Peter the Wild Boy.
HAMBURG, the fine old city of the Elbe, is almost as large as was Boston before the annexation; it is familiar by name to American ears, for it is from Hamburg, as a port, that the yearly army of German emigrants come.
“I looked sadly upon Hamburg as I thought how many eyes filled with tears had turned back upon her spires and towers, her receding harbor, and seen the Germany of their ancestors, and the old city of Charlemagne, with its historic associations of a thousand years, fade forever from view. Down the Elbe go the steamers, and the emigrants with their eyes fixed on the shores! Then westward, ho, for the prairie territories of the great empire of the New World!
“More than six thousand vessels enter the harbor of Hamburg in a year. The flags of all nations float there, but the British red is everywhere seen.
“We visited the church of St. Michael, and ascended the steeple, which is four hundred and thirty-two feet high, or one hundred feet higher than the spire of St. Paul’s in London. We looked down on the city, the harbor, the canals. Our eye followed the Elbe on its way to the sea. On the north was Holstein; on the south, Hanover.
CANAL IN HAMBURG.
“From Hamburg we made a zigzag to Berlin and Potsdam. The railroad between the great German port and the brilliant capital is across a level country, the distance being about one hundred and seventy-five miles, or seven hours’ ride.
“Berlin, capital of Prussia and of the German Empire, the residence of the German Emperor, is situated in the midst of a vast plain; ‘an oasis of stone and brick in a Sahara of sand.’ It is about the size of New York, and it greatly resembles an American city, for the reason that everything there seems new.
“It has been called a city of palaces, and so it is, for many of the private residences would be fitting abodes for kings. The architecture is everywhere beautiful; all the elegances of Greek art meet the eye wherever it may turn. Ruins there are none; old quarters, none; quaint Gothic or mediæval buildings, none. The streets are so regular, the public squares so artistic, and the buildings such models of art, that the whole becomes monotonous.
“‘This is America over again,’ said an American traveller, who had joined our party. ‘Let us return.’
“Many of the buildings might remind one of the hanging gardens of old, so full are the balconies of flowers. The fronts of some of the private residences are flower gardens from the ground to the roofs.
“The emperor’s palace is the crowning architectural glory of the city. It is four hundred feet long.
“We visited the Zoölogical Gardens and the National Gallery of Pictures, the entrance to which makes a beautiful picture.
“We rode to Potsdam, a distance of some twenty miles. Potsdam is the Versailles of Germany. The road to Potsdam is a continuous avenue of trees, like the roads near Boston.
“Of course our object in visiting the town was to see the palace and gardens of Sans-Souci, the favorite residence of Frederick the Great.
THE PALACE IN BERLIN.
“Frederick loved everything that was French in art. The French expression is seen on everything at Sans-Souci. The approach to the palace is by an avenue through gardens laid out in the Louis Quatorze style, with alleys, hedges, statues, and fountains.
“The famous palace stands on the top flight of a series of broad terraces, fronted with glass. Beneath these terraces grow vines, olives, and orange-trees. In the rear of the palace is a colonnade. There Frederick used to pace to and fro in the sunshine, when failing health and old age admonished him that death was near. As his religious hopes were few, his reflections must have been rather lonely when death’s winter came stealing on.
GROTTO.
“The room where Frederick studied, and the adjoining apartment where he died, are shown. The former contains a library consisting wholly of books in French.
“We returned to Hamburg.
“We were in old Danish territory already. We stopped but one night at Hamburg on our return; then we made our way to the steamer which was to take us to the Denmark of to-day, Copenhagen.”
Among the stories on the Hamburg Night was one by a music-loving student of Yule, which he called
THE CITY OF HANDEL’S YOUTH.The composer of the “Messiah,” George Frederick Handel, was born at Halle, Germany, Feb. 23, 1685. He sang before he could talk plainly. His father, a physician, was alarmed, for he had a poor opinion of music and musicians. As the child grew, nature asserted that he would be a musician; the father declared he should be a lawyer.
Little George was kept from the public school, because the gamut was there taught. He might go to no place where music would be heard, and no musical instrument was permitted in the house.
But nature, aided by the wiser mother, triumphed. In those days musical nuns played upon a dumb spinet, that they might not disturb the quiet of their convents. It was a sort of piano, and the strings were muffled with cloth. One of these spinets was smuggled into the garret of Dr. Handel’s house. At night, George would steal up to the attic and practise upon it. But not a tinkle could the watchful father hear. Before the child was seven years of age he had taught himself to play upon the dumb instrument.
One day Dr. Handel started to visit a son in the service of a German duke. George begged to go, as he wished to hear the organ in the duke’s chapel. But not until he ran after the coach did the father consent.
They arrived at the palace as a chapel service was going on. The boy stole away to the organ-loft, and, after service, began playing. The duke, recognizing that it was not his organist’s style, sent a servant to learn who was playing. The man returned with the trembling boy.
Dr. Handel was both amazed and enraged. But the duke, patting the child on the head, drew out his story. “You are stifling a genius,” he said to the angry father; “this boy must not be snubbed.” The doctor, more subservient to a prince than to nature, consented that his son should study music.
SANS-SOUCI.
During three years the boy studied with Zachau, the organist of the Halle Cathedral. They were years of hard
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