With the World's Great Travellers, Volume 4

by Unknown

Our situation was truly frightful; at that moment our Dusseldorf friend, in his green uniform and sword, leaped out of the carriage, dashed up the hill, applied the flat of his sword with unsparing vigor to the backs of the astounded troopers, used a goodly amount of strong language to the abashed ensign, and before we had time to begin our backward descent the “royal” forage-carts were placed close up against “the Public” in single file, and we were safely struggling to the top of the hill. It is just possible, only just possible, that had I been one of a party of “holiday burghers,” I might not have been alive in this year of grace to tell this tale.

And now we near the stone bridge which brings us over the Sauer from Prussia into Luxembourg; we are in plenty of time, but already feel the atmosphere of the procession. The country round is all excitement; groups of men and women in their holiday dresses are eagerly talking; some are kneeling and devoutly praying by the way-side, others are counting their beads and muttering their paternosters with careless tongues and wandering eyes; the instant our carriages cross the bridge we are thronged. “Oh! for the love of God,” says a girl, “give me a franc, or a ten-groschen piece, I don’t care which, and I’ll jump for all the sins you have committed since last Monday was a week.” “My lord,” says a man to one of our party, “five francs, and I’ll jump to the very cross for you without a halt, and cut you off all this year’s sins.” “Dear madam,” whined an old woman, “I’ll never reach the big crucifix, but I’ll do a little jumping for you for a franc.” I began now to realize that there is a jumping procession at Echternach.

We had been most kindly invited by the colonel commanding at Echternach to breakfast with him, and see the procession from his windows, which overlook the best part of the town, and we naturally availed ourselves of his courteous hospitality.

[The shrine of St. Willibrod, at Echternach, has for centuries been a place of pilgrimage, though the origin of the jumping mania is not definitely known. There are several traditions having to do with the cure of a pestilence by the saint. It is now believed that the penalty for sin is remitted in proportion to the height and strength of the jumping.]

Breakfast is finished, and we take our places at the windows. The procession has formed on the Prussian side of the stone bridge, a short address has been delivered to the excited people, and in the distance we hear the shrill sounds of the many-voiced instruments, and the strange measured, musical tramp of the coming thousands. Headed by the privileged Prussian parish of Warwieler, on they come, these simple pilgrims, in columns of parishes, four abreast, and hand in hand, each parish with its banners waving, and headed by its own musicians, for every man who has played for money during the year is bound to give his services on this occasion, and woe betide the man who fails to put in an appearance. The strange dance consists of two steps forward with the right foot and one step backward with the left, and is danced to a very simple melody, and not one of the many thousands is out of time. The wise ones literally step the measure, and generally accomplish the whole pilgrimage, which lasts about two hours and a half; but under superstitious excitement the wise ones are in the minority, and when the procession passed our windows, though never breaking their ranks or losing time, the majority were springing in a state of mad excitement, and, strange to say, the men were more “fast and furious” than the women. One man in particular was leaping to such a degree that at every step he sprang head and shoulders above the crowd, and as he had passed along, people rushed out of their houses and plied him with cider, which he invariably drank without losing his place or breaking time.

I do not recollect seeing one boy in the procession, though there may, of course, have been many, but there were hundreds of girls, all quiet and orderly. To watch the different moods and manners of these people as they passed on was a study well worth the journey; though the haggard faces and the drawn parched blue lips of many of these benighted jumpers were sad enough to behold. After looking at them for some time from our windows, I suggested that we adjourn to the church, and so witness the close of the procession. This suggestion was not received enthusiastically, and only one friend was willing to take compassion on my English curiosity. Off we started, but were unfortunately obliged to pass through a break in the line, which we did as decorously as possible, and were invited with outstretched hands by those who still had breath to speak to join the procession and so wipe off some of our sins; this we gratefully declined, and made rapidly for the parish church.

The church, being on an eminence, is reached by a flight of stone steps, and we took up our position at their base. On, on, they came, these strange pilgrims, with their unfaltering tramp and unflagging melody; but, oh! in what thinned numbers and with what drawn faces. In sight of the blessed goal how many of them drop! and the man I had watched so anxiously fell prostrate at the bottom of the steps, looking as if his soul had been driven by this frightful pilgrimage to seek its rest in another world. But the strong and steady ones tramp up the steps, spring round the high altar in wild ecstasy, and passing out at the opposite door, jump round the tall crucifix, fall on their knees, and all is over.

We loitered for some time about the church, listening to the very primitive remarks of the dispersing crowd, and wondering at its strange infatuation; and as we returned to our little inn we passed many a prostrate and exhausted form, some of whom could never again, alas, know a day’s strong health. After a great deal of pleasant talk, a little eager discussion, and some very indifferent refreshment, I started on an excursion through the town, having an idea that I should find it morne et silencieuse, a sort of “city of the silent,” after all the excitement of the morning. But, lo! from every Gasthof and Wirthshaus there came a sound of revelry; fiddles, flutes, cornets, laughing, dancing, everywhere. Could it be possible? Boldly I insisted upon my escort accompanying me into one of these petty inns, and going with me into an upper room, whence the gay sounds proceeded. Behold! the tearing galopade and the whirling waltz in one room, the bumping polka in another; and the “Queen of the Wirthshaus” ball, around whom the partners flocked and beseeched, was a stout young woman of about thirty, whom I had seen solemnly and deliberately footing it in the procession, without pause or hinderance from beginning to end. And all these devoted dancers of the many public-houses around and about had all been resolutely hopping away their sins from the bridge to the shrine for more than two hours.

Now let me record this wondrous fact. I went freely about through the town; I walked into small inns and public-houses, as I dared not have done in my own country; I was received politely everywhere; and in all that hilarious community, through the whole of that licensed holiday, from eight in the morning till late in the afternoon, I did not see one case of drunkenness. Yes, these people of the Eifel and the Sauer Valley and their surrounding towns may, perhaps, be debased by superstition, but at any rate they are not like some prouder communities I could name, thoroughly brutalized by drunkenness.