THE DWARF'S WELL.
We have been shown, in our two preceding pieces from Ernst Willkomm, Pathetic Fairies, and Fairies merry to rioting. Here we have, not without merriment either, Working Fairies. In the mines of the Upper Lusatian Belief, the tale of THE DWARF'S WELL strikes into a vein which our author has promised us, but of which we have not heretofore handled the ore. Here we shall see the imagination touching in some deeper sterner colours to the sketches flung forth by the fancy; and in the spirit of unreal creation, a wild self-will which rejoices to waft into the presence of the beautiful, and of unbridled laughter, cold blasts from the region of pure affright. There is in this, however, no prostration of strength—quite the reverse! Not a nervous and enfeebled sensibility, yielding itself up to a diseased taste for pain.—No child fascinated with fear, and straining its eyes to take in more horror. But here the unconquerable consciousness of strong life throws itself with an unmastered glee of battle, right into the thick of its mortal adversaries, to slay, and strip, and bind to its own triumphant chariot-wheels.
The Upper Lusatian Highlander, turned poet, dreaming at his discretion, amuses himself with converting terror and madness into merriment, and reconciles conflicting elements of invention—with an overpowering harmony?—No. But, by subjugating them all alike to one imperious lord, viz. to himself;—to his own pleasure. Hence, in the Traditions and Tales, in which he embodies his illusory creed of the Invisible, there is engendered an esthetical species, which waits, perhaps, for a name with us, and might accept that of the Ghastly, or at least, of the Ghostly-Humorous, the Gay-Horrible. The story of the PRIEST'S WELL soars boldly upon this pinion; that of the WILL-O'-THE-WISP HUSSAR has gone stark-raving in the same grimly-mirthful temper. The mind in which Burns imagined and chaunted his TAM-O'-SHANTER, is right down Upper Lusatian, in this key. Our Elves, however, are not yet witches.
The kinds of the spirits confine, upon every side, with one another, and the boundary lines vanish. Within the circumscription of the Fairy domain, an indeterminable difference appears betwixt the truest Fairies and the Dwarfs. The two sorts, or the two names, are sometimes brought into glaring opposition. Again, like factions made friends, they blend for a time indistinguishably. So, in the Persian belief, the ugly Dios, who may represent the Dwarfs of our west, are—under one aspect of the Fable—the implacable cannibal foes—under another,—the loving spouses of the beautiful Peris. Comparing the Fairies of our two former tales, and the Dwarfs of this, the reader will probably see in THOSE, the daintier, the more delicate: in THESE, a little more hardness of nature.
The great length of the story precludes all thoughts (be the opportunities what they may, and these are not deficient) of bringing its illustration from other expositors—Teutonic or otherwise-of the Fairy Lore.
THE DWARF'S WELL.
"Nicholas Stringstriker was the most popular ale-house fiddler for a good twenty miles round, and consequently quite indispensable at all christenings, marriages, and wakes. Klaus knew this as well as every body else, and, like a wise man, did the best he could to turn his popularity to account—the more so, poor fellow! because he was obliged to put up with all kinds of ridicule and teasing. Stringstriker, you must know, was a most comical little fellow, with very small thin bandy legs, that had to bear the burden of a huge square trunk, which, in its turn, supported a big head that was for ever waggling to and fro, without affording the slightest indication of a neck. The entire little man measured exactly three feet five inches and an eighth, and he was best known to his acquaintance by the name of Dwarf-fiddler or Dwarf-piper; for the little gentleman smoked away for his life, and liked nothing better.
"So misshapen a figure, it may readily be supposed, made a very good target for the shafts of mockery. Nicholas, however, troubled himself but little about them; and it was small complaint you heard from him so long as he was well paid, got his savoury morsel, and, above all, a liberal supply of his choice favourite—Tobacco. True, folks might now and then, as the saying is, draw the cord too tight and be too hard upon the scraper; and then Klaus, like most deformed creatures, had wit and venom enough at his command, and could rid himself right easily of his tormentors.
"The Dwarf—it might be to render himself thoroughly independent, or, more likely still, to surround his diminutive individuality with an air of mystery—had abandoned his birth-place, and established himself about two miles away from it, near a singularly-formed sandstone rock, situated in a small but exceedingly pretty fir-wood, and commonly known by the name of the Bear's church. Here he spent his quiet life, wholly engaged in the practice of his art. Travellers taking their road by night, and in calm weather, from Bertsdorf to Hörnitz or over the Breitenberg to Gross-schönau were arrested by the exquisite strains, now touchingly plaintive, now joyously merry, that poured from Klaus's magical instrument; and many a happy soul, allured by the enchanting melody, lingered within sound of it, until wholly subdued and rendered powerless by awe and superstitious fear. Although by day the fiddler was visible to none, yet by night he was often seen waddling out of the wood and over the fields, on his way to a clear spring, whence he drew water for his housekeeping, which—to add to the mystery that he delighted to create—he doggedly looked after himself. This spring belonged to a substantial farmer in Bertsdorf, named Michael Simon, though called by the people Twirling-stick Mike, in commemoration of his cutting down yearly in his wood a handsome quantity of young trees, which he afterwards manufactured into twirling-sticks. Simon not only was master of a good farm, but proprietor likewise of the village tavern, in which he gave a dance every Sunday, taking care to secure for the festivity the services of Stringstriker, to whose fiddle, it was well known, the lads and lasses invariably danced an hour longer than to that of any other scraper in the country.
"The visits of Stringstriker to the well were a continual vexation to the farmer. The Dwarf asked no man's permission to draw his water, but helped himself as often and as liberally as he thought proper, without the slightest regard to the wants of other people, which were often left unsatisfied by his wantonness and extravagance. It was in consequence of this audacious appropriation, that the spring by degrees acquired the name of THE DWARF'S WELL. Countless were the complaints and menaces of Mike—numberless the promised threshings, if he did not give up his thieving; but the effect of them all upon Klaus was to make him laugh outright, fill his pipe, and strike up a jolly tune upon his fiddle.