Legends from River & Mountain

by Carmen Sylva; Alma Strettell

“Nothing else?” said the little man anxiously. “Oh, Peter, nothing else?”

“Well, you might add a horse and a little cart.”

“Oh thou foolish Coal-Munk Peter!” cried the little fellow, and threw his glass pipe in a rage against a neighbouring tree, so that it broke into a hundred pieces.

“Horses, carts!” he continued. “Wisdom, I tell thee, wisdom and plain common sense, and insight—these thou shouldst have wished for, not horses and carts! Well, do not look so downcast; we will try and see that thou dost not come to harm, even so, for the second wish was not altogether foolish. A good glass-hut keeps master and man alive; only thou shouldst have wished for knowledge and sense to carry it on, then horses and carts would have followed of themselves.”

“But, Master Treasure-keeper,” said Peter, “I have still a wish left. I can wish for wisdom with that, if it is really as indispensable as you think.”

—“Nay, stop there! Thou wilt find thyself in many a scrape yet, that will make thee glad thou hast a wish still left. Now go home; and here,” continued the little spirit of the pine-wood, drawing a purse out of his pocket, “here are two thousand gulden, and let that suffice; do not come asking me for money again, or I should be obliged to hang thee from the highest fir-tree. That has been my rule since I have dwelt in this forest. Three days ago old Winkfritz died, who owned the large glass-hut in the lower forest. Go there to-morrow morning, and make a proper bid for the business. Look to thyself, be diligent, and I will pay thee a visit now and again, and give thee a helping hand, and wise counsel, since thou didst not ask for wisdom thyself. But I tell thee again, and I am in earnest, thy first wish was bad. Beware of the ale-house, Peter; it has never yet done any one good for long!”

As he spoke, the little man had drawn a new pipe of fine glass from his pocket, and stuffed it with dry pine-needles. He now put it between his little toothless gums, and producing a large burning-glass, he stepped into the sun and lit his pipe. Having done this, he shook Peter kindly by the hand, and after giving him a few more good counsels, as they went along, he began to puff and blow so rapidly at his pipe, that he ended by completely disappearing in a cloud of smoke, which smelt of real Dutch tobacco, and faded slowly away among the tops of the fir-trees.

When Peter got home, he found his mother very anxious about him, for the good woman had quite made up her mind that her son had been drawn for a soldier, and already carried off. But he was in high spirits, and told her that he had met a kind friend in the forest, who had procured him money to start a new business, instead of the charcoal-burning. And though his mother had lived for thirty years in a charcoal-burner’s hut, and had been as used to blackened faces as a miller’s wife is to floury ones, still she was foolish and proud enough to despise her former condition as soon as Peter promised her a more prosperous one, and said “that now, as the mother of a man who owned a glass-hut, she was something above the neighbours, Betty and Grete, and should take a front seat in church, among the respectable people.”

Peter soon struck a bargain with the inheritors of the glass-hut the little man had told him of; he kept on the workmen he found there, and let the glass-making go on night and day. At first the work pleased him. He went down to the workshop at his convenience, and walked about it with an important air, his hands in his pockets, looking to right and left, and making this and that remark, over which his work-people often laughed not a little. His greatest pleasure was to see the glass blown, and he would often set to work himself, and form the strangest figures out of the soft, warm mass. But after a while he tired of it, and went to the hut, first only an hour each day, then only every two days, and at last only once a week, while his workmen did as they pleased. Now his fondness for the tavern was to blame for all this. The Sunday after his return from the “Pine-thicket,” he went there as usual, and there was the “king” already bounding about upon the dancing-floor; and there sat fat Ezekiel, too, his tankard before him, rattling the dice and casting for crown thalers. Peter’s hands jumped to his pockets, that he might see if the little Glass-man had kept his word; and lo! they were bulging with silver and gold coins. His legs, too, twitched and itched, as though they were fain to jump and dance; and when the first dance was over, he stood up with his partner opposite the “dancing-king,” and when the latter sprang three feet into the air, Peter leaped four, and when his opponent cut all sorts of nimble and dainty steps, Peter twisted and turned his feet about so much more rapidly, that the beholders could hardly contain themselves for wonder and admiration. But when people heard that Peter had bought a glass-hut, and saw how he scattered sixpences among the musicians whenever he went by, there was no end to the general astonishment. Some said he had found a treasure in the forest, others that he had come into an inheritance, but one and all honoured him, and looked up to him, only because he had money. He played away as much as twenty guldens that evening, and yet the coins rattled in his pocket, as though there were at least a hundred thalers left there. When Peter saw how much he was respected, he was beside himself with pride and joy. He threw his money about with both hands, and gave generously of it to the poor. Did he not know by experience how bitter is the sting of poverty? The “dancing king” was cast quite into the shade by Peter’s superhuman talents, and Peter was now called “the dancers’ emperor.”

The most reckless of the Sunday gamblers did not make such wagers as he did, but neither did they lose so much. But, then, the more he lost, the more he won, and this happened just as he had begged the little Glass-man that it might. He had wished “always to have as much money in his pocket as fat Ezekiel,” and it was to this very man that he always lost his money; so when he lost twenty or thirty gulden at a stroke, there they were in his pocket again, the very moment Ezekiel swept them into his own. Presently he went further in betting and gambling than the most daring ne’er-do-weels in all the forest, and he was oftener called “gambling Peter” than “the dancers’ emperor,” for he played on most work-days as well as Sundays now. Hence his business began to go badly, and this was the fault of Peter’s lack of wisdom. He had as much glass made as there possibly could be, but with the business, he had not bought the secret of disposing of his wares to the best advantage. At last he did not know what to do with all his unsold glass, and got rid of it half-price, to pedlars, only that he might have enough to pay his workmen their wage.