The Dove in the Eagle's Nest

by Charlotte M. Yonge

But it soon appeared that to depart was impossible, unless by forcing a way through the busy throng in the full red glare of the firelight, and they were forced to pause at the opening of the hermit’s cave, Christina leaning on her husband’s arm, and a fold of his mantle drawn round her to guard her from the night-breeze of the mountain, as they waited for a quiet space in which to depart unnoticed. It was a strange, wild scene! The fire was on a bare, flat rock, which probably had been yearly so employed ever since the Kelts had brought from the East the rite that they had handed on to the Swabians—the Beltane fire, whose like was blazing everywhere in the Alps, in the Hartz, nay, even in England, Scotland, and on the granite points of Ireland. Heaped up for many previous days with faggots from the forest, then apparently inexhaustible, the fire roared and crackled, and rose high, red and smoky, into the air, paling the moon, and obscuring the stars. Round it, completely hiding the bonfire itself, were hosts of dark figures swarming to approach it—all with a purpose. All held old shoes or superannuated garments in their hands to feed the flame; for it was esteemed needful that every villager should contribute something from his house—once, no doubt, as an offering to Bel, but now as a mere unmeaning observance. And shrieks of merriment followed the contribution of each too well-known article of rubbish that had been in reserve for the Needfire! Girls and boys had nuts to throw in, in pairs, to judge by their bounces of future chances of matrimony. Then came a shouting, tittering, and falling back, as an old boor came forward like a priest with something heavy and ghastly in his arms, which was thrown on with a tremendous shout, darkened the glow for a moment, then hissed, cracked, and emitted a horrible odour.

It was a horse’s head, the right owner of which had been carefully kept for the occasion, though long past work. Christina shuddered, and felt as if she had fallen upon a Pagan ceremony; as indeed was true enough, only that the Adlersteiners attached no meaning to the performance, except a vague notion of securing good luck.

With the same idea the faggots were pulled down, and arranged so as to form a sort of lane of fire. Young men rushed along it, and then bounded over the diminished pile, amid loud shouts of laughter and either admiration or derision; and, in the meantime, a variety of odd, recusant noises, grunts, squeaks, and lowings proceeding from the darkness were explained to the startled little bride by her husband to come from all the cattle of the mountain farms around, who were to have their weal secured by being driven through the Needfire.

It may well be imagined that the animals were less convinced of the necessity of this performance than their masters. Wonderful was the clatter and confusion, horrible the uproar raised behind to make the poor things proceed at all, desperate the shout when some half-frantic creature kicked or attempted a charge wild the glee when a persecuted goat or sheep took heart of grace, and flashed for one moment between the crackling, flaring, smoking walls. When one cow or sheep off a farm went, all the others were pretty sure to follow it, and the owner had then only to be on the watch at the other end to turn them back, with their flame-dazzled eyes, from going unawares down the precipice, a fate from which the passing through the fire was evidently not supposed to ensure them. The swine, those special German delights, were of course the most refractory of all. Some, by dint of being pulled away from the lane of fire, were induced to rush through it; but about half-way they generally made a bolt, either sidelong through the flaming fence or backwards among the legs of their persecutors, who were upset amid loud imprecations. One huge, old, lean, high-backed sow, with a large family, truly feminine in her want of presence of mind, actually charged into the midst of the bonfire itself, scattering it to the right and left with her snout, and emitting so horrible a smell of singed bacon, that it might almost be feared that some of her progeny were anticipating the invention of Chinese roasting-pigs. However, their proprietor, Jobst, counted them out all safe on the other side, and there only resulted some sighs and lamentations among the seniors, such as Hatto and Ursel, that it boded ill to have the Needfire trodden out by an old sow.

All the castle live-stock were undergoing the same ceremony. Eberhard concerned himself little about the vagaries of the sheep and pigs, and only laughed a little as the great black goat, who had seen several Midsummer nights, and stood on his guard, made a sudden short run and butted down old Hatto, then skipped off like a chamois into the darkness, unheeding, the old rogue, the whispers that connected his unlucky hue with the doings of the Walpurgisnacht. But when it came to the horses, Eberhard could not well endure the sight of the endeavours to force them, snorting, rearing, and struggling, through anything so abhorrent to them as the hedge of fire.

The Schneiderlein, with all the force of his powerful arm, had hold of Eberhard’s own young white mare, who, with ears turned back, nostrils dilated, and wild eyes, her fore-feet firmly planted wide apart, was using her whole strength for resistance; and, when a heavy blow fell on her, only plunged backwards, and kicked without advancing. It was more than Eberhard could endure, and Christina’s impulse was to murmur, “O do not let him do it;” but this he scarcely heard, as he exclaimed, “Wait for me here!” and, as he stepped forward, sent his voice before him, forbidding all blows to the mare.

The creature’s extreme terror ceased at once upon hearing his voice, and there was an instant relaxation of all violence of resistance as he came up to her, took her halter from the Schneiderlein, patted her glossy neck, and spoke to her. But the tumult of warning voices around him assured him that it would be a fatal thing to spare the steed the passage through the fire, and he strove by encouragements and caresses with voice and hand to get her forward, leading her himself; but the poor beast trembled so violently, and, though making a few steps forward, stopped again in such exceeding horror of the flame, that Eberhard had not the heart to compel her, turned her head away, and assured her that she should not be further tormented.

“The gracious lordship is wrong,” said public opinion, by the voice of old Bauer Ulrich, the sacrificer of the horse’s head. “Heaven forfend that evil befall him and that mare in the course of the year.”

And the buzz of voices concurred in telling of the recusant pigs who had never developed into sausages, the sheep who had only escaped to be eaten by wolves, the mule whose bones had been found at the bottom of an abyss.

Old Ursel was seriously concerned, and would have laid hold on her young master to remonstrate, but a fresh notion had arisen—Would the gracious Freiherr set a-rolling the wheel, which was already being lighted in the fire, and was to conclude the festivities by being propelled down the hill—figuring, only that no one present knew it, the sun’s declension from his solstitial height? Eberhard made no objection; and Christina, in her shelter by the cave, felt no little dismay at being left alone there, and moreover had a strange, weird feeling at the wild, uncanny ceremony he was engaged in, not knowing indeed that it was sun-worship, but afraid that it could be no other than unholy sorcery.