Chapter II: The Tyrol (1)

Every traveller in the Tyrol must have remarked, that, wherever the way is difficult of access, or dangerous to traverse, some little shrine or statue is always to be seen, reminding him that a higher Power than his own watches over his safety, and suggesting the fitness of an appeal to Him who is “A very present help in time of trouble.”

Sometimes a rude painting upon a little board, nailed on a tree, communicates the escape and gratitude of a traveller; sometimes a still ruder fresco, on the very rock, tells where a wintry torrent had swept away a whole family, and calling on all pious Christians who pass that way to offer a prayer for the departed. There is an endless variety in these little “Votive Tablets,” which are never more touching than when their very rude poverty attests the simplest faith of a simple people. The Tyrolers are indeed such. Perhaps alone, of all the accessible parts of Europe, the Tyrol has preserved its primitive habits and tastes for centuries unchanged. Here and there, throughout the continent, to be sure, you will find some little “Dorf,” or village, whose old-world customs stand out in contrast to its neighbours; and where in their houses, dress, and bearing, the inhabitants seem unlike all else around them. Look more closely, however, and you will see that, although the grandmother is clothed in homespun, and wears her leathern pocket at her girdle, all studded with copper nails, that her grandaughter affects a printed cotton or a Swiss calico; and instead of the broad-brimmed and looped felt of the old “Bauer,” the new generation sport broad-cloth and beaver.

Such hamlets are, therefore, only like the passengers left behind by their own coach, and waiting for the next conveyance that passes to carry them on their journey.

In the Tyrol, however, such evidences of progress--as it is the fashion to call it--are rare. The peasantry seem content to live as their fathers have done, and truly he must be sanguine who could hope to better a condition, which, with so few prorations, comprises so many of life’s best and dearest blessings. If the mountain peaks be snow-clad, even in midsummer, the valleys (at least all in South Tyrol) are rich in vineyards and olive groves; and although wheat is seldom seen, the maize grows every where; the rivers swarm with trout; and he must be a poor marksman who cannot have venison for his dinner. The villages are large and well built; the great wooden houses, with their wide projecting roofs and endless galleries, are the very types of comfort. Vast piles of fire-wood, for winter use, large granaries of forage for the cattle--the cattle themselves with great silver bells hanging to their necks--all bespeak an ease, if not an actual affluence, among the peasantry. The Tyrolers are, in a word, all that poets and tourists say the Swiss are, and of which they are exactly the reverse.

It would be difficult to find two nations so precisely alike in all external circumstances, and so perfectly dissimilar in every feature of character. Even in their religious feelings, Romanism, generally so levelling, has not been able to make them of the same measure here. The Swiss Catholic--bigotted, overbearing, and plotting--has nothing in common with the simple-minded Tyroler, whose faith enters into all the little incidents of his daily life, cheering, exalting, and sustaining, but never suggesting a thought save of charity and good will to all.

That they have interwoven, so to say, their religious belief into all their little worldly concerns, if not making their faith the rule, at least establishing it as the companion of their conduct, is easily seen. You never overtake a group, returning from fair or market, that all are not engaged in prayer, repeating together some litany of the Church; and as each new arrival joins the party, his voice chimes in, and swells the solemn hum as naturally as if prearranged or practised.

If you pass a village, or a solitary farmhouse, at sunset, the same accents meet your ears, or else you hear them singing some hymn in concert. Few “Bauer” houses, of any pretension, are without the effigy of a patron saint above the door, and even the humblest will have a verse of a psalm, or a pious sentence, carved in the oaken beam. Their names are taken from the saintly calendar, and every thing, to the minutest particular, shews that their faith is an active working principle, fashioning all their actions, and mingling with all their thoughts. Their superstitions, like all simple-minded and secluded people’s, are many; their ignorance is not to be denied; mayhap the Church has fostered the one, and done little to enlighten the other: still, if Romanism had no heavier sin to account for, no darker score to clear up, than her dealings in these mountains, there would be much to forgive in a creed that has conferred so many good gifts, and sowed the seeds of so few bad ones.

These pious emblems find their way, too, into places where one would scarce look for them--over the doors of village inns, and as signs to little wine and beer-houses: and frequently the Holy personages are associated with secular usages, strangely at variance with the saintly character. Thus I have seen, in the village beside me, a venerable St. Martin engaged in the extraordinary operation of shoeing a horse; though what veterinary tastes the saint ever evinced, or why he is so represented, I can find no one to inform me. On the summit of steep passes, where it is usual, by a police regulation, to prescribe the use of a drag to all wheel carriages, the board which sets forth the direction is commonly ornamented by a St. Michael, very busily applying the drag to a heavy waggon, while the driver thereof is on his knees hard by, worshipping the saint, in evident delight at his dexterity. In the same way many venerable and holy men are to be seen presiding over savoury hams and goblets of foaming beer, and beaming with angelic beatitude at a party of hard-drinking villagers in the distance. Our present business is, however, less with the practice in general, than a particular instance, which is to be met with in the Bavarian Tyrol, mid-way between the villages of Murnou and Steingaden, where over the door of a solitary little way-side inn hangs a representation of the Virgin, with a starling perched upon her wrist. One has only to remark the expression of unnatural intelligence in the bird’s look, to be certain that it was not a mere fancy of the artist to have placed her thus, but that some event of village tradition, or history, is interwoven with her presence.

The motto contributes nothing to the explanation. It is merely a line from the Church Litany, “Maria, Mutter Grottes, hülf uns,--Mary, Mother of God, help us!”

There is then a story connected with the painting, and we shall, with your leave, tell it; calling our tale by the name of the little inn,

“MARIA HULF!”

Has our reader ever heard, or read, of those strange gatherings, which take place at the early spring in the greater number of southern German cities and are called, “Year Markets?” The object is simply to assemble the youth of the mountain districts in Tyrol and Vorarlbreg, that they may be hired, by the farmers of the rich pasture countries, as herds. Thither they go---many a mile--some children of ten or eleven years old, and seeming even still younger, away from home and friends, little adventurers on the bleak wide ocean of life, to sojourn among strangers in far-off lands; to pass days long in lonely valleys or deep glens, without a sight or sound of human life around them; watching the bright sun and counting the weary minutes over, that night and rest may come, per* chance with dreams of that far-off home, which, in all its poverty, is still cheered by the fond familiar faces! Some, ruddy and stout-looking, seem to relish the enterprise, and actually enjoy the career so promising in its vicissitudes; others, sad and care-worn, bear with them the sorrows of their last leave-taking, and are only comforted by the thought that autumn will come at last, and then the cattle must be housed for the winter: and then they shall be free to wend their way over mountain and plain, far, far away beyond Maltz--high in the wild peaks of the Stelvio, or deep in the lovely glens below Meran.

It was in one of these “Markets” at Inspruck that a little boy was seen, not standing with the groups which usually gather together under a single leader, but alone and apart, seemingly without one that knew him. His appearance bespoke great poverty; his clothes, originally poor, were now in rags; his little cap, of squirrel skin, hung in fragments on either side of his pallid cheeks; his feet--a rare circumstance--were bare, and bloodstained from travel; want and privation were stamped in every feature: and his eyes, which at that moment were raised with eager anxiety as some Bauer drew nigh, grew wan, and filling at each new disappointment to his hopes, for this was his third day to stand in the market, and not one had even asked his name. And yet he heard that name; ever and anon it met his ears in sounds which stirred his feeble heart, and made it throb faster. “Fritzerl! ah, Fritzerl, good fellow!” were the words; and poor Fritzerl would stoop down when he heard them and peep into a little cage where a Starling was perched--a poor, emaciated little thing it was, as way-worn and poverty struck, to all seeming, as himself: but he did not think so: he deemed it the very paragon of the feathered tribe, for it had a little toppin of brown feathers on its head, and a little ring of white around its neck, and would come when he called it; and, better than all, could sing, “Good Fritzerl--nice Fritzerl!” when it was pleased, and “Potztausend!” when angry. This was all its education; his master, poor little fellow, had not much more. How could he? Fritzerl’s mother died when he was a baby; his father was killed by a fall from a cliff in the Tyrol Alps, for he was by trade a bird-catcher, and came from the Engadine, where every one loves birds, and in the pursuit of this passion met his fate.

Fritzerl was left an orphan at eleven years old, and all his worldly wealth was this little Starling; for although his father had left a little cabin in the high Alps, and a rifle, and some two or three articles of house gear, they all were sold to pay the expenses of his funeral, and feast the neighbours who were kind enough to follow him to the grave: so that poor Fritz kept open house for two days; and when he walked out the third, after the coffin, he never turned his steps back again, but wandered away--far, far away--to seek in the year-market of Inspruck some kind peasant who would take him home to herd his cattle, and be a father to him now.

Fritzerl knew not that the children, who desire to be hired out, assemble together in little groups or gangs, electing some one to bargain for them with the Bauers, setting forth in vehement language their various excellencies and good gifts, and telling where they have served before, and what zeal and fidelity they have shewn to their trust. Fritz, I say, knew not this; perhaps, if he had, it would have availed him but little; for he was so poorly clad and so weak-looking, and so ignorant of all about tending cattle besides, that he would soon have been driven from the fraternity with disgrace. It was, then, as fortunate for him that he did not know the custom of the craft, and that he took his stand alone and apart beside the fountain in the main street of Inspruck.

And a lovely object is the same fountain; and a beautiful street it stands in, with its stately houses, all rich in stuccoed arabesques, and gorgeously carved doors and gates! And bright and cheerful, too, it looks, with its Tyroler people clad in their gay colours and their gold-banded hats!

Fritz saw little of these things, or, if he saw, he marked them not. Cold, hunger, and desolation, had blunted the very faculties of his mind; and he gazed at the moving crowd with a dreamy unconsciousness that what he saw was real.

The third day of his painful watching was drawing to a close. Fritz had, several hours before, shared his last morsel of black bread with his companion; and the bird, as if sympathising with his sorrow, sat moody and silent on his perch, nor even by a note or sound broke the stillness.

“Poor Jacob!”* said Fritz, with tears in his eyes, “my hard luck should not fall on thee! If no one comes to hire me before the shadow closes across the street, I’ll open the cage and let thee go!”

* Every Starling in Germany is called Jacob.

The very thought seemed an agony, for scarcely had he uttered it when his heart felt as if it would break, and he burst into a torrent of tears.

“Potztausend!” screamed Jacob, alarmed at the unusual cries--“Potztausend!” And as Fritz sobbed louder, so were the Starling’s cries of “Potztausend!” more shrill and piercing.

There were few people passing at the moment, but such as were, stopped; some to gaze with interest on the poor little boy--more, far more, to wonder at the bird; when suddenly a venerable old man, with a wide-leaved bat, and a silken robe reaching down to his feet, crossed over towards the fountain. It was the Curate of Lenz, a pious and good man, universally respected in Inspruck.

“What art thou weeping for, my child?” said he, mildly.

Fritz raised his eyes, and the benevolent look of the old man streamed through his heart like a flood of hope* It was not, however, till the question had been repeated, that Fritz could summon presence of mind to tell his sorrow and disappointment.

“Thou shouldst not have been here alone, my child,” said the curate; “thou shouldst have been in the great market with the others. And now the time is well-nigh over: most of the Bauers have quitted the town.”

“Potztausend!” cried the bird, passionately.

“It will be better for thee to return home again to thy parents,” said the old man, as he drew his little leathern purse from between the folds of his robe--“to thy father and mother.”

“I have neither!” sobbed Fritz.

“Potztausend!” screamed the Starling--“Potztausend!”

“Poor little fellow! I would help thee more,” said the kind old priest, as he put six kreutzers into the child’s hand, “but I am not rich either.”

“Potztausend!” shrieked the bird, with a shrillness excited by Fritz’s emotion; and as he continued to sob, so did the Starling yell out his exclamation till the very street rang with it.

“Farewell, child!” said the priest, as Fritz kissed his hand for the twentieth time; “farewell, but let me not leave thee without a word of counsel: thou shouldst never have taught thy bird that idle word. He that was to be thy companion and thy friend, as it seems to me he is, should have learned something that would lead thee to better thoughts. This would bring thee better fortune, Fritz. Adieu! adieu!”

“Potztausend!” said the Starling, but in a very low, faint voice, as if he felt the rebuke; and well he might, for Fritz opened his little handkerchief and spread it over the cage--a sign of displeasure, which the bird understood well.

While Fritz was talking to the Curate, an old Bauer, poorly but cleanly clad, had drawn nigh to listen. Mayhap he was not overmuch enlightened by the Curate’s words, for he certainly took a deep interest in the Starling; and every time the creature screamed out its one expletive, he would laugh to himself, and mutter,--

“Thou art a droll beastie, sure enough!”

He watched the bird till Fritz covered it up with his handkerchief, and then was about to move away, when, for the first time, a thought of the little boy crossed his mind. He turned abruptly round, and said,--

“And thou, little fellow!--what art doing here?”

“Waiting,” sighed Fritz, heavily--“waiting!”

“Ah, to sell thy bird?” said the old man;--“come, I’ll buy him from thee. He might easily meet a richer, but he’ll not find a kinder master. What wilt have?--twelve kreutzers, isn’t it?”

“I cannot sell him,” sobbed Fritz; “I have promised him never to do that.”

“Silly child!” said the Bauer, laughing; “thy bird cares little for all thy promises: besides, he’ll have a better life with me than thee.” “That might he, easily!” said Fritz: “but I’ll not break my word.”

“And what is this wonderful promise thou’st made, my little man?--come, tell it!”

“I told him,” said Fritz, in a voice broken with agitation, “that if the shadow closed over the street down there before any one had hired me, that I would open his cage and let him free; and look! it is nearly across now--there’s only one little glimpse of sunlight remaining!”

Poor child! how many in this world live upon one single gleam of hope--ay, and even cling to it when a mere twilight, fast fading before them!

The Bauer was silent for some minutes; his look wandered from the child to the cage, and back again from the cage to the child. At last he stooped down and peeped in at the bird, which, with a sense of being in disgrace, sat with his head beneath his wing.

“Come, my little man,” said he, laying a hand on Fritz’s shoulder, “I’ll take thee home with me! ‘Tis true I have no cattle--nothing save a few goats--but thou shalt herd these. Pack up thy bird, and let us away, for we have a long journey before us, and must do part of it before we sleep.”

Fritz’s heart bounded with joy and gratitude. It would have been, in good truth, no very splendid prospect for any other to be a goatherd to a poor Bauer--so poor that he had not even one cow; but little Fritz was an orphan, without a home, a friend, or one to give him shelter for a single night. It may be believed, then, that he felt overjoyed; and it was with a light heart he trotted along beside the old Bauer, who never could hear enough about the starling--where he came from? how he was caught? who taught him to speak? what he liked best to feed upon? and a hundred other questions, which, after all, should have been far more numerous ere Fritz found it any fatigue to answer them. Not only did it give him pleasure to speak of Jacob, but now he felt actually grateful to him, since, had the old Bauer not taken a fancy to the bird, it was more than likely he had never hired its master.

The Bauer told Fritz that the journey was a long one, and true enough. It lay across the Zillerthal, where the garnets are found, and over the great mountains that separate the Austrian from the Bavarian Tyrol--many a long, weary mile--many, I say, because the Bauer had come up to Inspruck to buy hemp for spinning when the evenings of winter are long and dark, and poor people must do something to earn their bread. This load of hemp was carried on a little wheeled cart, to which the old man himself was harnessed, and in front of him his dog--a queer-looking team would it appear to English eyes, but one meets them often enough here; and as the fatigue is not great, and the peasants lighten the way by many a merry song--as the Tyrol “Jodeln”--it never suggests the painful idea of over-hard or distressing labour. Fritzerl soon took his place as a leader beside the dog, and helped to pull the load; while the Starling’s cage was fastened on the sheltered side of the little cart, and there he travelled quite safe and happy.

I never heard that Fritz was struck--as he might possibly, with reason, have been--that, as he came into Bavaria, where the wide-stretching plains teem with yellow corn and golden wheat, the peasants seemed far poorer than among the wild mountains of his own Tyrol; neither have I any recollection that he experienced that peculiar freedom of respiration, that greater expansion of the chest, travellers so frequently enumerate as among the sensations whenever they have passed over the Austrian frontier, and breathed the air of liberty, so bounteously diffused through the atmosphere of other lands. Fritz, I fear, for the sake of his perceptive quickness, neither was alive to the fact nor the fiction above quoted; nor did he take much more notice of the features of the landscape, than to mark that the mountains were further off and not so high as those among which he lived--two circumstances which weighed heavily on his heart, for a Dutchman loves not water as well as a Tyroler loves a mountain.

The impression he first received did not improve as he drew near the Dorf where the old Bauer lived, The country was open and cultivated; but there were few trees: and while one could not exactly call it flat, the surface was merely a waving tract that never rose to the dignity of mountain. The Bauer houses, too, unlike the great wooden edifices of the Southern Tyrol--where three, ay, sometimes four, generations may be found dwelling under one roof--were small, misshapen things, half stone, half wood. No deep shadowing eave along them to relieve the heat of a summer sun;--no trellised vines over the windows and the doorway;--no huge yellow gourds drying on the long galleries, where bright geraniums and prickly aloes stood in a row;--no Jâger either, in his green jacket and gold-tas-selled hat, was there, sharing his breakfast with his dog; the rich spoils of his day’s sport strewed around his feet--the smooth-skinned chamois, or the stag with gnarled horns, or the gorgeously-feathered wild turkey, all so plentiful in the mountain regions. No; here was a land of husbandmen, with ploughs, and harrows, and deep-wheeled carts, driven along by poor-looking, ill-clad peasants, who never sung as they went along, scarce greeted each other as they passed.

It was true, the great plains were covered with cattle, but to Fritz’s eyes the prospect had something mournful and sad. It was so still and silent. The cows had no bells beneath their necks like those in the Alpine regions; nor did the herds jodeln to each other, as the Tyrolers do, from cliff to cliff, making the valleys ring to the merry sound. No, it was as still as midnight; not even a bird was there to cheer the solitude with his song.

If the aspect without had little to enliven Fritz’s spirits, within doors it had even less. The Bauer was very poor; his hut stood on a little knoll outside the village, and on the edge of a long tract of unreclaimed land, which once had borne forest-trees, but now was covered by a low scrub, with here and there some huge trunk, too hard to split, or too rotten for firewood. The hut had two rooms; but even that was enough, for there was nobody to dwell in it but the Bauer, his wife, and a little daughter, Gretchen, or, as they called her in the Dorf, “Grettl’a.” She was a year younger than Fritz, and a good-tempered little “Mädle;” and who, but for over-hard work for one so young, might have been even handsome. Her eyes were large and full, and her hair bright-coloured, and her skin clear; yet scanty food and continual exposure to the air, herding the goats, had given her a look of being much older than she really was, and imparted to her features that expression of premature cunning which poverty so invariably stamps upon childhood. It was a happy day for Grettl’a that brought Fritz to the cottage; not only because she gained a companion and a playfellow, but that she needed no longer to herd the goats on the wild, bleak plain, rising often ere day broke, and never returning till late in the evening. Fritz would do all this now; and more, he would bring in the firewood from the little dark wood-house, where she feared to venture after nightfall; and he would draw water from the great deep well, so deep that it seemed to penetrate to the very centre of the earth. He would run errands, too, into the Dorf; and beetle the flax betimes;--in fact, there was no saying what he would not do. Fritz did not disappoint any of these sanguine expectations of his usefulness; nay, he exceeded them all, shewing himself daily more devoted to the interests of his humble protectors. It was never too early for him to rise from his bed-- never too late to sit up when any work was to be done; always willing to oblige--ever ready to render any service in his power. Even the Bauer’s wife, a hard-natured, ill-thinking creature, in whom poverty had heightened all the faults, nor taught one single lesson of kindliness to others who were poor,--even she felt herself constrained to moderate the rancour of her harshness, and would even at times vouchsafe a word or a look of good humour to the little orphan boy. The Bauer himself, without any great faults of character, had no sense of the fidelity of his little follower. He thought that there was a compact between them, which, as each fulfilled in his own way, there was no more to be said of it. Gretchen more than made up for the coldness of her parents. The little maiden, who knew by hard experience the severe lot to which Fritz was bound, she felt her whole heart filled with gratitude and wonder towards him. Wonder, indeed; for not alone did his services appear so well performed, but they were so various and so numerous. He was every where and at every thing; and it was like a proverb in the house-- “Fritz will do it.” He found time for all; he neglected--stay, I am wrong--poor little fellow, he did neglect something--something that was more than all; but it was not his fault. Fritz never entered the village church--he never said a prayer; he knew nothing of the Power that had created him, and all that he saw around him. If he thought on these things, it was with the vague indecision of a mind without guidance or direction. Why, or how, and to what end, he and others like him, lived or died, he could not, by any effort, conceive. Fritz was a bondman--as much a slave as many who are carried away in chains across the seas, and sold to strange masters. There was no bodily cruelty in his servitude; he endured no greater hardships than poverty entails on millions; his little sphere of duties was not too much for his strength; his humble wants were met, but the darkest element of slavery was there! The daily round of service over, no thought was taken of that purer part which in the Peasant claims as high a destiny as in the Prince. The Sunday saw him go forth with his flock to the mountain like any other day; and though from some distant hill he could hear the tolling bell that called the villagers to prayer, he knew not what it meant. The better dresses and holiday attire suggested some notion of a fete-day; but as he knew there were no fête-days for him, he turned his thoughts away, lest he should grow unhappy.

If Fritz’s companion, when within doors, was GrettFa, when he was away on the plain, or among the furze hills, the Starling was ever with him. Indeed he could easier have forgotten his little cap of squirrel-skin, as he went forth in the morning, than the cage, which hung by a string on his back. This be unfastened when he had led his goats into a favourable spot for pasturage, and, sitting down beside it, would talk to the bird for hours. It was a long time before he could succeed in obeying the Curate’s counsel, even in part, and teach the bird not to cry “Potztausend!” Starlings do not unlearn their bad habits much easier than men; and, despite all Fritz’s teaching, his pupil would burst out with the forbidden expression on any sudden emergency of surprise; or sometimes as it happened, when he had remained in a sulky fit for several days together without uttering a note, he would reply to Fritz’s caresses and entreaties to eat by a sharp, angry “Potztausend!” that any one less deeply interested than poor Fritz would have laughed at outright. They were no laughing matters to him. He felt that the work of civilisation was all to be done over again. But his patience was inexhaustible; and a circumstance, perhaps, not less fortunate--he had abundant time at his command. With these good aids he laboured on, now punishing, now rewarding, ever inventing some new plan of correction, and at last--as does every one who has that noble quality, perseverance--at last succeeding,--not, indeed, all at once perfectly; for Star’s principles had been laid down to last, and he struggled hard not to abandon them, and he persisted to cry “Potz------” for three months after he had surrendered the concluding two syllables; finally, however, he gave up even this; and no temptation of sudden noise, no riotous conduct of the villagers after nightfall, no boiling over of the great metal pot that held the household supper, nor any more alarming ebullition of ill-temper of the good Fran herself, would elicit from him the least approach to the forbidden phrase. While the Starling was thus accomplishing one part of his education by unlearning, little Fritz himself, under Grettl’a’s guidance, was learning to read. The labour was not all to be encountered, for he already had made some little progress in the art under his father’s tuition. But the evening hours of winter, wherein he received his lessons, were precisely those in which the poor bird-catcher, weary and tired from a day spent in the mountains, would fall fast asleep, only waking up at intervals to assist Fritz over a difficulty, or say, “Go on,” when his blunders had made him perfectly unintelligible even to himself. It may be well imagined, then, that his proficiency was not very great. Indeed, when first called upon by Grettl’a to display his knowledge, his mistakes were so many, and his miscallings of words so irresistibly droll, that the little girl laughed outright; and, to do Fritz justice, he joined in the mirth himself.

The same persistence of purpose that aided him while teaching his bird, befriended him here. He laboured late and early, sometimes repeating to himself by heart little portions of what he had read, to familiarise himself with new words; sometimes wending his way along the plain, book in hand; and then, when having mastered some fierce difficulty, he would turn to his Starling to tell him of his victory, and promise, that when once he knew how to read well, he would teach him something out of his book--“Something good;” for, as the Curate said, “that would bring luck.”

So long as the winter lasted, and the deep snow lay on the hills, Fritz always herded his goats near the village, seeking out some sheltered spot where the herbage was still green, or where the thin drift was easily scraped away. In summer, however, the best pasturages lay further away among the hills near Steingaden, a still and lonely tract, but inexpressibly dear to poor Fritz, since there the wild flowers grew in such abundance, and from thence he could see the high mountains above Reute and Paterkirchen, lofty and snow-clad like the “Jochs” in his own Tyrol land. There was another reason why he loved this spot. It was here that, in a narrow glen, where two paths crossed, a little shrine stood, with a painting of the Virgin enclosed within it--a very rude performance, it is true; but how little connexion is there between the excellence of art and the feelings excited in the humble breast of a poor peasant child! The features, to his thinking, were beautiful; never had eyes a look so full of compassion and of love. They seemed to greet him as he came, and follow him as he lingered on his way homeward. Many an hour did Fritz sit upon the little bench before the shrine, in unconscious worship of that picture. Heaven knows what fancies he may have had of its origin; it never occurred to him to think that human skill could have achieved any thing so lovely.

He had often remarked that the villagers, as they passed, would kneel down before it, and with bowed heads and crossed arms seem to do it reverence; and he himself, when they were gone, would try to imitate their gestures, some vague sentiment of worship struggling for utterance in his heart.

There was a little inscription in gilt letters beneath the picture; but these he could not read, and would gaze at their cabalistic forms for hours long, thinking how, if he could but decipher them, that the mystery might be revealed.

How he longed for the winter to be over and the spring to come, that he might lead the goats to the hills, and to the little glen of the shrine! He could read now. The letters would be no longer a secret; they would speak to him, and to his heart, like the voice of that beauteous image. How ardently did he wish to be there! and how, when the first faint sun of April sent its pale rays over the plain, and glittered with a sickly delicacy on the lake, how joyous was his spirit and how light his step upon the heather!

Many a little store of childish knowledge had Grettl’a opened to his mind in their winter evenings’ study; but somehow, he felt as if they were all as nothing compared to what the golden letters would reveal. The portrait, the lonely glen, the solemn reverence of the kneeling worshippers, had all conspired to create for him a mass of emotions indescribably pleasurable and thrilling. Who can say the secret of such imaginings, or bound their sway?

The wished-for hour came, and it was alone and unseen that he stood before the shrine and read the words, “Maria, Mutter Gottes, hulf uns.” If this mystery were unrevealed to his senses, a feeling of dependent helplessness was too familiar to his heart not to give the words a strong significance. He was poor, unfriended, and an orphan: who could need succour more than he did? Other children had lathers and mothers, who loved them and watched over them; their little wants were cared for, their wishes often gratified. His was an uncheered existence: who was there to “_help him?_”

Against the daily load of his duties he was not conscious of needing aid; his burden he was both able and willing to bear. It was against his thoughts in the long hours of solitude--against the gloomy visions of his own free-thinking spirit, he sought assistance; against the sad influence of memory, that brought up his childhood before him, when he had a father who loved him--against the dreary vista of an unloved future, he needed help. “And could _she_ befriend him?” was the question he asked his heart.

“He must ask Grettl’a this; she would know it all!” Such were the reflections with which he bent his way homeward, as eagerly as in the morning he had sought the glen. Grettl’a did know it all, and more too, for she had a prayer-book, and a catechism, and a hymn-book, though hitherto these treasures had been unknown to Fritz, whose instructions were always given in a well-thumbed little volume of fairy tales, where “Hans Däumling” and “The Nutz-cracker” figured as heroes.

I am not able to say that Grettl’a’s religious instruction was of the most enlightened nature--not any more than it was commensurate with the wishes and requirements of him who sought it; it went, indeed, little further than an explanation of the “golden letters.” Still, slight and vague as it was, it comforted the poor heart it reached, as the most straggling gleam of sunlight will cheer the dweller in some dark dungeon, whose thoughts soar out upon its rays to the gorgeous luminary it flows from. Whatever the substance of his knowledge, its immediate effect upon his mind was to diffuse a hopeful trust and happiness through him he had never known till now. His loneliness in the world was no longer the solitary isolation of one bereft of friends. Not only with his own heart could he commune now. He felt there was One above who read these thoughts, and could turn them to his will. And in this trust his daily labour was lightened, and his lot more happy.

“Now,” thought he, one day, as he wandered onward among the hills, “now, I can teach thee something good--something that will bring us luck. Thou shalt learn the lesson of the golden letters, Starling--ay, truly, it will be hard enough at first. It cost me many a weary hour to learn to read, and thou hast only one little line to get off by heart--and such a pretty line, too! Come, Jacob, let’s begin at once.” And, as he spoke, he opened the cage and took out the bird, and patted his head kindly and smoothed down his feathers. Little flatteries, that Starling well understood were preparatory to some educational requirement; and he puffed out his chest proudly, and advanced one leg with an air of importance; and drawing up his head, seemed as though he could say, “Well, what now, Master Fritz?--what new scheme is this in thy wise head?”

Fritz understood him well, or thought he did so, which in such cases comes pretty much to the same thing; and so, without more ado, he opened his explanation, which perhaps, after all, was meant equally for himself as the Starling--at least I hope so, for I suspect he comprehended it better.

He told him that for a long time his education had been grossly neglected; that having originally been begun upon a wrong principle, the great function of his teacher had been to eradicate the evil, and, so to say, to clear the soil for the new and profitable seed. The ground, to carry out the illustration, had now lain long enough in fallow--the time had arrived to attend to its better culture.

It is more than probable Fritz had never heard of the great controversy in France upon the system of what is called the “Secondary Instruction,” nor troubled his head on the no less active schism in our own country between the enemies and advocates of National Education. So that he has all the merit, if it be one, of solving a very difficult problem for himself without aid or guidance; for he resolved that a religious education should precede all other.

“Now for it,” said he, at the close of a longer exposition of his intentions than was perhaps strictly necessary, “now for it, Starling! repeat after me--‘Maria, Mutter Gottes, hülf uns!’”

The bird looked up in his face with an arch drollery that almost disconcerted the teacher. If a look could speak, that look said, as plainly as ever words could,--

“Why don’t you ask me to say the whole Litany, Fritz?”

“Ay, ay,” replied Fritz, for it was a reply, “I know that’s a great deal to learn all at once, and some of the words are hard enough, too; but with time, Star, time and patience--I had to use both one and the other before I learned to read; and many a thing that looks difficult and impossible even at first, seems quite easy afterwards. Come, then, just try it: begin with the first word--‘Maria’.”

It was in vain Fritz spoke in his most coaxing accents, in vain did he modulate the syllables in twenty different ways; all his entreaties and petting», all his blandishments and caresses, were of no avail, Star remained deaf to them all. He even turned his back at last, and seemed as if no power on earth should make a Christian of him. Fritz had had too much experience of the efficacy of perseverance in his own case to abandon the game here; so he went to work again, and with the aid of a little lump of sugar returned to the lecture.

Had Star been a Chancery lawyer he could not have received the fee more naturally, though, for the honour of the equity bar, I would hope the similitude ends there, for he paid not the slightest heed to the “instructions.”

It would, perhaps, be rash in us “featherless bipeds” to condemn Star all at once; there is no saying on what grounds he may have resisted this educational attempt. How do we know that his reasoning ran not somewhat in this strain?--

“What better off shall I be when I have learned all your hard words?--or how is it that you, my teacher, knowing them so well, should be the poor, half-fed, half-naked thing I see there before me?”

These very conjectures would seem to have crossed Fritz’s mind, for he said,--

“It is not for a mere whim that I would have thee learn this; these words will bring us luck, Star! Ay, what I say is true, though thou mayst shake thy head and think otherwise. I tell thee, ‘Good words bring luck.’”

Whether it was that Star assumed an air of more than ordinary conceit and indifference, or that Fritz had come to the end of patience, I cannot affirm; but he hastily added, and in a voice much louder and more excited than was his wont,--“It is so; and thou shalt learn the words whether thou wilt or no--that I tell thee!”

“Potztausend!” cried the bird, frightened by his excitement, and at once recurring to his long unused exclamation: “Potztausend!”

“Hush, shameless thing!” said Fritz, angrily; “there is nothing for it but punishment!” And so he replaced him in the cage, covered him close on every side with his handkerchief, and trudged sorrowfully towards home.

For several days Fritz never spoke to Starling, even one word. He brought him his food in silence; and instead of taking him, as of old, along with him into the fields, he hung his cage in a gloomy corner of the hut, whence he could see little or nothing of what went on in the house--no small privation for a bird so alive to inquisitiveness. At length, when he believed punishment had gone far enough, he took him down and hung him on his back as usual, and brought him a long, long way into the hills. The day was fine, a fresh but balmy spring breathed over the young flowers, and the little stream danced and rippled pleasantly; and the clouds moved along overhead in large soft masses, bordered with a silvery edge. Star never noticed these things; he was indignant at the neglect, as he deemed it, which had been shewn him of late. His pride and spirit--and Starlings are not deficient in either--had sustained grievous injury; and he felt that, without due reparation made to him, he could not, consistently with honour, sign a treaty of reconciliation.

Fritz mistook these indications altogether--and who can blame him? What the world calls dignity is not unfrequently mere sulk. How should poor Fritz make distinctions great Ministers and Princes are sometimes incapable of?

The end of all this was a struggle, a long and violent struggle, on each side for the ascendancy. Fritz, however, had the advantage, for he could starve out the enemy--a harsh measure, no doubt, but greater folks have adopted even more severe ones to enforce their principles. Fritz, besides, had all the stern enthusiasm of a fanatic in the cause. The dark zeal of the Holy Office itself never enforced its decrees with more inflexible purpose than did he his. “Accept this creed, or die in your sins,” was, if not exactly his dictum, certainly his full meaning. Star stood out long, so long that Fritz began at last to fear that the creature meditated martyrdom, and in this dread he relaxed somewhat of his prison discipline.

It would scarcely be instructive--not any more than amusing--to recount the painful progress of this long contest--a contest, after all, in which there is nothing new to any reader of history; for when force is on one side and weakness on the other, the result may be deferred but is never doubtful. It is enough that we say, Star made submission. True, it was the submission of coercion--no matter for that, it was submission; for after three weeks of various successes on either side, the creature greeted Fritz one morning as he arose with a feint cry of “Maria, Maria!”

This was enough, more than enough, and Fritzerl could have hugged him to his heart.

His authority recognised, his will acknowledged, he was but too happy to take his rebellious subject into full favour again. Whether Star felt the benefits of his changed conduct so very satisfactory to his comfort, or that he was really disposed to please his master, I cannot say; but, from that hour out, he laboured strenuously to learn his new profession of faith, and screamed “Maria!” from day-dawn to dusk. The two following words were, however, downright puzzles; “Mutter-Gottes” was a combination that no Starling--even a German one, bred up among strong gutturals and flat labials--could master. He worked hard, however, and so did Fritz. If life depended upon it, neither of them could have exerted themselves more zealously; but it was no use. In any other language, perhaps, Star might have been able to invoke the Virgin, but here it was out of the question. The nearest approach the poor fellow could make was something like a cry of “Mörder--Mörder” (Murder--murder); so unfortunate a change that Fritz abandoned the lesson with the best grace he could, betaking himself to the concluding words, which happily presented no such unseemly similitudes.

His success here was such as to obliterate all memory of his former defeat. Starling made the most astonishing progress, and learned the words so perfectly, with such accuracy of enunciation, that to hear him at a little distance any one would say it was some pious Catholic invoking the Virgin with all his might. The “Hülf uns” was not a mere exclamation, but a cry for actual aid, so natural as to be perfectly startling.

So long as the bird’s education was incomplete, Fritzerl carefully screened him from public observation. He had all the susceptibility of a great artist, who would not let his canvass be looked upon before the last finishing touch was laid on the picture. No sooner, however, had full success crowned his teaching, than he proudly displayed him in a new cage made for the occasion at the door of the Bauer’s hut.

It was Sunday, and the villagers were on their way to mass; and what was their astonishment to hear themselves exhorted as they passed by the fervent cry of “Maria, hülf uns! Hülf uns, Maria!” Group after group stood in mute amazement, gazing at the wonderful bird, some blessing themselves with a pious fervour, others disposed to regard the sounds as miraculous, and more than either stood in dumb astonishment at this new specimen of ghostly counsel.

All this while Fritzerl lay hid beneath the window, enjoying his triumph with a heart full almost to bursting. Never did singing-master listen to the syren notes of his pupil, while as the _prima donna_ of a great opera she electrified or entranced a crowded audience, with more enthusiastic rapture than did Fritz at his Starling’s performance. Poor little fellow! it was not merely vanity gratified by public applause--it was a higher feeling was engaged here. A sense of religious exaltation worked within him, that he had laboured in a great cause; a thrill of ecstasy trembled at his heart that another voice than his own was asking aid for him, and incessantly invoking the Virgin’s protection on his own head. Happy had it been for him that no other sentiment had intervened, and that he had not also indulged a vain pride in the accomplishment of his pupil!

It so chanced, that among those who passed the hut and stood to wonder at this astonishing creature, was a tall, ragged-looking, swarthy fellow, whose dress of untanned leather, and cap ornamented with the tail of many a wood squirrel, told that he was an “Engadiner,” one from the same land Fritz came himself. A strange wild land it is! where in dress, language, custom, and mode of life, there is no resemblance to any thing to be seen throughout Europe. A more striking representative of his strange country need not have been wished for. His jacket was hung round with various tufts of plumage and fur for making artificial birds, with whistles and birdcalls to imitate every note that ever thrilled through a leafy grove; his leathern breeches only reached to the knee, which was entirely bare, as well as the leg, to below the calf, where a rude sandal was fastened; his arms, also, copper-coloured as those of an Indian, were quite naked, two leathern bracelets enclosing each wrist, in which some metal hooks were inserted: by these he could hang on the branch of a tree, or the edge of a rock, leafing his hands at liberty. He wore his coal-black hair fer down on his back and shoulders, and his long moustache drooped deep beneath his lank jaw. If there was something wild almost to ferocity in his black and flashing eyes, the mouth, with its white and beautifully regular teeth, had a look of almost womanly delicacy and softness,--a character that was well suited to the musical sounds of his native language ~one not less pleasant to the ear than Italian itself. Such was he who stopped to listen to the bird, and who, stealing round to the end of the hut, lay down beneath some scattered branches of firewood to delight his ear to the uttermost.

It may be doubted whether a connoisseur ever listened to Orisi or Jenny Lind with more heartfelt rapture than did the Engadiner to the Starling; for while the bird, from time to time, would break forth with its newly acquired invocation, the general tenor of its song was a self-taught melody--one of those wild and delicious voluntaries in which conscious power displayed itself; now, astounding the ear by efforts the wildest and most capricious, now subduing the sense by notes plaintive almost to bring tears. In these latter it was that he mingled his cry of “Maria, hülf--hülf--hülf uns, Maria!”--words so touching and so truthful in their accents that at every time the Engadiner beard them he crossed himself twice on the forehead and the breast; which devout exercise, I am constrained to say, had in his case more of habit than true piety, as the sequel proved.