Glimpses of Three Coasts

by Helen Hunt Jackson

As the day wore on, the crowd and the hum of it increased into a jam and a racket. By four o'clock it was a din of wheels, cracking whips, and postilions' cries. Great diligences, loaded down till they squeaked and groaned on their axles; hay-wagons of all sizes, rigged with white cloth stretched on poles for a cover, and rough planks fastened to the sides for seats, came in procession, all packed with the country people; hundreds of shabby einspanners, bringing two or three, and sometimes a fourth holding on behind with dangling feet; fine travelling-carriages of rich people, their postilions decked in blue and silver, with shining black hats, and brass horns swung over their shoulders by green and white cords and tassels,—on they came into the twist and tangle, making it worse, minute by minute.

Most remarkable among all the remarkable costumes to be seen was that of an old woman from Dachau. She was only a peasant, but she was a peasant of some estate and degree. She had come as escort and maid for four young women belonging to a Roman Catholic institution, and wearing its plain uniform. The contrast between the young ladies' conventional garb of black and white and the blazing toilet of their guide and protector was ludicrous. She wore a jacket of brocade stiff with red, green, and silver embroidery; the sleeves puffed out big at the shoulder, straight and tight below to the wrist. It came down behind only a little lower than her shoulder-blades, and it was open in front from the throat to the waist-belt, showing beneath a solid mass of gold and silver braid. Nine enormous silver buttons were sewed on each side the fronts; a scarf of soft black silk was fastened tight round her throat by a superb silver ornament, all twists and chains and disks. Her black woollen petticoat was laid in small, close flutings, straight from belt to hem, edged with scarlet, and apparently was stiff enough to stand alone. It was held out from her body, just below the belt, by a stiff rope coil underneath it, making a tight, hard, round ridge just below her waist, and nearly doubling her apparent size. All the women in Dachau must be as "thick" as that, she said; and "lovers must have long arms to reach round them!" The jacket, petticoat, and scarf, and all her ornaments, had belonged to her grandmother. What a comment on the quality of the fabrics and the perpetuity of a fashion! She was as elegant to-day as her ancestor had been nearly a century before her. On her head she wore a structure of brocaded black ribbon, built up into high projecting horns or towers, and floating in streamers behind. As she herself was nearly six feet tall, this shining brocade fortress on the top of her head moved about above the heads of the crowd like something carried aloft for show in a procession.

Another interesting sight was the peasants who had come bringing edelweiss and blue gentians to sell,—great bunches of the lovely dark blue chalices, drooping a little, but wonderfully fresh to have come two days, or even three, from home; the edelweiss blossoms were there by sheaves, and ten pfennigs a flower seemed none too much to pay to a man who had climbed among dangerous glaciers to pick it, and had walked three whole days to bring it to market.

The very poor people, who had walked, were the most interesting. They came in groups, evidently families, two women to one man; carrying their provisions in baskets, bundles, or knapsacks; worn and haggard with dust and fatigue, but wearing a noticeable look of earnestness, almost of exaltation. Many of them had walked forty or fifty miles; they had brought only black bread to eat; they would sleep the two nights on hay in some barn,—those of them who had had the great good fortune to secure such a luxury; the rest—and that meant hundreds—would sit on the ground anywhere where they could find a spot clear and a rest for their heads; and after two nights and a day of this, they trudged back again their forty miles or fifty, refreshed, glad, and satisfied for the rest of their lives. This is what the Passion Play means to the devout, ignorant Catholic peasant of Bavaria to-day, and this is what it has meant to his race for hundreds of years.

The antagonism and enlightenment of the Reformation did not reach the Bavarian peasant,—did not so much as disturb his reverence for the tangible tokens and presentations of his religion. He did not so much as know when miracle plays were cast out and forbidden in other countries. But it was sixty-one years later than this that the Oberammergau people, stricken with terror at a plague in their village, knew no better device to stay it than to vow to God the performance of a Play of the Divine Passion of Christ. It is as holy a thing to the masses of them now as it was then; and no one can do justice to the play, even as a dramatic spectacle, who does not look at it with recognition of this fact.

The early history of the Play itself is not known. The oldest text-book of it now extant bears the date 1662,—nearly a generation later than the first performance of it in Oberammergau. This manuscript is still in possession of the Lang family, and is greatly amusing in parts. The prologue gives an account of the New Testament plan of salvation, and exhorts all people to avail themselves of it with gratitude and devotion. At this juncture in rushes a demon messenger from the devil, bearing a letter, which he unfolds and reads. In this letter the devil requests all the people not to yield to the influence of this play, asks them to make all the discordant noises they can while it is going on, and promises to reward them well if they will do so. The letter is signed: "I, Lucifer, Dog of Hell, in my hellish house, where the fire pours out of the windows." The demon, having read the letter aloud, folds it up and addresses the audience, saying: "Now you have heard what my master wishes. He is a very good master, and will reward you! Hie, Devil! up and away!" with which he leaps off the stage, and the play at once begins, opening with a scene laid in Bethany,—a meeting between Christ and his disciples. These grotesque fancies, quips, and cranks were gradually banished from the Play. Every year it was more or less altered, priest after priest revising or rewriting it, down to the time of the now venerable Daisenberger, who spent his youth in the monastery of Ettal, and first saw the Passion Play acted at Oberammergau in 1830.

In 1845 the Oberammergau people, in unanimous enthusiasm, demanded to have Daisenberger appointed as their pastor. He at once identified himself warmly with the dramatic as well as the spiritual life of the community; and it is to his learning and skill that the final admirable form of the Passion Play, and the villagers' wonderful success in rendering it, are due. He has written many Biblical dramas and historical plays founded on incidents in the history of Bavaria. Chief among these are: "The Founding of the Monastery of Ettal," "Theolinda," "King Heinrich and Duke Arnold of Bavaria," "Otto Von Wittelsbach at the Veronese Hermitage," "The Bavarians in the Peasants' War," "Luitberge, Duchess of Bavaria." He has also dramatized some of the legends of the saints, and has translated the "Antigone" of Sophocles and arranged it for the Oberammergau stage. A half-century's training under the guidance of so learned and dramatic a writer, who added to his learning and fine dramatic faculty a profound spirituality and passionate adherence to the faiths and dogmas of the Church, might well create, in a simple religious community, a capacity and a fervor even greater than have been shown by the Oberammergau people. To understand the extent and the method of their attainment, it is needful to realize all this; but no amount of study of the details of the long process can fully convey or set forth the subtle influences which must have pervaded the very air of the place during these years. The acting of plays has been not only the one recreation of their life, otherwise hard-worked, sombre, and stern,—it has been their one channel for the two greatest passions of the human heart,—love of approbation and the instinct of religious worship; for the Oberammergau peasant, both these passions have centred on and in his chance to win fame, please his priest, and honor God, by playing well some worthy part in the Passion Play. The hope and the ambition for this have been the earliest emotions roused in the Oberammergau child's breast. In the tableaux of the Play even very young children take part, and it is said that it has always been the reward held up to them as soon as they could know what the words meant: "If thou art good, thou mayest possibly have the honor of being selected to play in the Passion Play when the year comes round." Not to be considered fit to take any part in the Play is held, in Oberammergau, to be disgrace; while to be regarded as worthy to render the part of the Christus is the greatest honor which a man can receive in this world. To take away from an actor a part he has once played is a shame that can hardly be borne; and it is on record that once a man to whom this had happened sank into a melancholy which became madness.

When the time approaches for the choice of the actors and the assignment of the parts, the whole village is in a turmoil. The selections and assignments are made by a committee of forty-five, presided over by the priest and by the venerable "Geistlicher Rath" Daisenberger, who, now in his eightieth year, still takes the keenest interest in all the dramatic performances of his pupils. The election day is in the last week of December of the year before the Play; and the members of the committee, before going to this meeting, attend a mass in the church. The deciding as to the players for 1880 took three days' time, and great heart-burnings were experienced in the community. In regard to the half-dozen prominent parts there is rarely much disagreement; but as there are some seven hundred actors required for the Play, there must inevitably be antagonisms and jealousies among the minor characters. However, when the result of the discussions and votes of the committee is made public, all dissension ceases. One of the older actors is appointed to take charge of the rehearsals, and from his authority there is no appeal. Each player is required to rehearse his part four times a week; and as early in the spring as the snow is out of the theatre the final rehearsals begin. Thus each Passion Play year is a year of very hard work for the Oberammergauers. Except for their constant familiarity with stage routine and unbroken habit of stage representation through the intervening years, they would never be able to endure the strain of the Passion Play summers; and as it is, they look wan and worn before the season is ended.

It is a thankless return that they have received at the hands of some travellers, who have seen in the Passion Play little more than a show of mountebanks acting for money. The truth is that the individual performers receive an incredibly small share of the profits of the Play. There is not another village in the world whose members would work so hard, and at so great personal sacrifice, for the good of their community and their Church. Every dollar of the money received goes into the hands of a committee selected by the people. After all the costs are paid, the profits are divided into four portions: one quarter is set aside to be expended for the Church, for the school, and for the poor; another for the improvement of the village, for repairs of highways, public buildings, etc.; a third is divided among the tax-paying citizens of the town who have incurred the expense of preparing for the Play, buying the costumes, etc. The remaining quarter is apportioned among the players, according to the importance of their respective parts; as there are seven hundred of them, it is easy to see that the individual gains cannot be very great.

The music of the Play, as now performed, was written in 1814, by Rochus Dedler, an Oberammergau schoolmaster. It has for many years been made a sine qua non of this position in Oberammergau that the master must be a musician, and, if possible, a composer; and Dedler is not the only composer who has been content in the humble position of schoolmaster in this village of peasants. Every day the children are drilled in chorus singing and in recitative; with masses and other church music they are early made familiar. Thus is every avenue of training made to minister to the development of material for the perfection of the Passion Play.