Not less wonderful was it to hear on Prussian ground a Catholic voice calling upon thousands of the faithful to pray for the Holy Father and the persecuted church. And while the priest was speaking there came from all the heights belated pilgrims hastening to the ceremony. They were seen afar off, coming down the steep paths bordered with flowering hedges; and the bells rang out full peals, and the word of God was scattered among the multitude with the song of birds.
When the sermon was ended, the clergy, in white surplices, formed in line of march and opened the procession. Behind them came the musicians, and afterwards the immense throng of those who were to join in the dance. At first there was much crowding. Leaning against the parapet of the bridge, I had to ply my elbows lustily to prevent the multitude from suffocating me, and farther on, when the train began to defile through the narrow street which leads to the Sûre, the pressure was quite frightful. There were not ushers enough to preserve order. A few firemen and policemen had to be everywhere at once, and were swallowed up in the billows of the confused crowd. The cause of the disorder was the impatience of some people, who, instead of waiting until the street should be cleared for the beginning of the dance, went forward to post themselves higher up in the procession. This choked the way in some places, and there was terrible pushing. Women screamed; several were nearly suffocated. I saw some men, who, as they awaited their turn with philosophic patience, set their backs against walls and rowed with their arms against the human flood to save themselves from wreck. A hospitality, as unexpected as it was welcome, rescued me from the tumult to become a peaceful spectator in a neighboring house instead of an actor in the scene. “It is sweet,” says Lucretius, “when the sea is swollen and tossed by rough winds, to look from the shore upon the distress of others, not finding pleasure in their troubles, but in our own exemption from them.” I felt, in selfish enjoyment, the spirit of these lines, gazing at my ease from an upper window upon the undulation of several thousand heads floating apparently upon a liquid expanse. Actually, a needle thrown from above would not have reached the ground.
Order was soon restored. The police got angry and used their fists unsparingly to force back into their places the intruders, who continued to leave the ranks and insinuate themselves in among the front rows of the procession. All this went on while the head of the cortége disappeared at the turn of the street, dancing to the traditional air played by the musicians. It was a quaint tune, rather quick in measure and old-fashioned. It was hard to say whether it expressed joyful excitement or the emotions of grief; for music, with its wonderful suppleness, may sometimes speak to us of our joys and sorrows, according to the mood in which we listen. And now this melody, centuries old, set in motion a dancing multitude. The sight was strange, striking, indescribable. To an unaccustomed spectator the first moment is of stupefied amazement. His fancy enters a new world; the movement of all these heads bending and rocking in a rhythmic measure produces a fantastic effect that no words can convey. I do not know whether I can tell exactly what I saw, or if my sketch will give even a faint idea of a scene which defies analysis and description.
Think of a stream of twelve thousand persons in a street where only eight can walk abreast; fancy all these people, in rows of four, six, or eight, advancing, held together by handkerchiefs or staves to keep order in the ranks and measure in the dance; fancy them, I say, executing a dance which consists of three steps forward and two back, and which moves the whole multitude from end to end with one unceasing action of ebb and flow. The interminable train stretched over about fifteen hundred metres from the bridge of the Sûre to the parish church. It took not less than four hours to accomplish that quarter of a league by dancing, and under the direct rays of the sun, without a moment’s rest. It is easy to imagine that order and regularity were sometimes disturbed, but what was lost in symmetry was gained in picturesque originality of detail. There were almost as many different styles of dancing as there were various groups, everybody managing his own affairs. The groups just behind the musicians succeeded best, being kept in step by the music; and in general the people of Echternach danced more harmoniously and correctly than the others. As the bands were few and stationed quite far apart, the pilgrims who could not hear them hopped about in utter confusion, while the rest had a certain harmony of movement. These eccentricities of choreographic movement were worth seeing; here they glided with light step, elegantly and smoothly; there they jumped about with heavy tread and immense exertion. Watching carefully those who seemed to have best preserved the tradition, I thought that the most pure and “classic” rhythm consisted in five steps of a dance, quite slow and without turning, three forward and two back, made by gliding rather than bounding. The whole character was grave, solemn, and suited to a religious dance. A band from Echternach opened the march and played the tune for the first pilgrims. The others danced to the strains of a few isolated instruments. Each cortége had its own musicians, and, as each parish danced separately, they had their local players. It is needless to say that variety reigned among the instruments—drums, violins, flutes, clarionets, and hautboys—all hard at work and producing combinations hardly grateful to musical ears. But the good fellows did not pretend to be artists. They worked for conscience’ sake; they piped and they blew, they beat and they scraped, with all the accumulated force of lungs, fists, and bows. St. Willibrord is not fastidious; he takes the will for the deed, and if there be here and there some cockney scandalized by this cacophony, so much the worse for him. Ill though they play the melody, it is a good work to make the attempt, and the worthy pilgrims accommodate themselves to circumstances. Formerly no fiddler was allowed to play in village fairs, if he had not paid for the privilege at the procession of Echternach that same year. This custom, with many others, is obsolete, but many musicians remain faithful to tradition.
This year, while the procession was crossing the town, there came marching through a cross-street a brilliant band of music preceded by a banner; it was a philharmonic society from Remich on the Moselle, and was received with acclamation. It joined the procession, and its fine execution came as a welcome reinforcement to the poor musicians, who were nearly exhausted.
I could not take my eyes off the wonderful scene, sometimes taking in the whole picture at a glance, sometimes pausing to examine details in all their picturesque variety. Most attractive of all was the sight of the children of Echternach, dancing at the head of the procession just behind the village band; they put such life into the affair, and felt it such a festive occasion. It was refreshing to watch the rosy-cheeked, laughing rogues, usually in their shirt-sleeves, bounding merrily “for St. Willibrord.” Then came the grown folk of Echternach, then the various parishes, each, as I said, forming a distinct group with its own musicians. The sexes were separated. Formerly the pilgrims from Prüm and Waxweiler, who came from the most distant points, had the right of opening the procession, while the inhabitants of Echternach, through courtesy, took the last place. Now there is no fixed order; the parishes take their places at hap-hazard, and many people leave the ranks to join the front rows at the risk of throwing the whole procession into confusion. I saw the good people of Prüm, with their monumental green and blue umbrellas capable of sheltering whole households. Now they were unstrung from their proprietors’ backs, and, bound two and two, served as a balustrade to be grasped by three or four persons to keep them even in the ranks and regulate their step. Here and there, amid the rhythmic movement of these thousands of heads, I descried some unhappy being afflicted with St. Vitus’ dance, shown by wild, spasmodic springs, violent excitement, and the pitiful rocking of all the limbs. They were usually women, young girls stricken with this terrible disorder. I noticed one in particular whom every one looked at with earnest sympathy. She leaped in a wild, feverish way, supported under the arms by her mother, whom I knew by the look of anxiety and sadness imprinted on her face. The kind people of the town stood ready at their doors with refreshing beverages for these poor creatures; but they hardly stopped to drink before continuing their dance under the whip of the sun, as the great Alighieri says, whose words came to my mind more than once at sight of these miseries. So drawn along by this weird dance, the pilgrims appeared and vanished, as wave follows wave, and the monotonous melody carried on ten thousand people to the sound of its fantastic cadences. Add one or two thousand pilgrims who, not joining in the dance, followed the procession, saying their beads or reciting the litany, and you have in all twelve thousand Christians of both sexes and of every age and rank, who, through four whole hours, formed St. Willibrord’s triumphal procession and visited his sacred tomb.[[174]]
All the energy of the vigorous Luxembourg sinews is required to bring to a successful close this long and fatiguing pilgrimage, whose difficulties increase as they near their end; for I forgot to say that the procession danced up the sixty-two steps which lead to the parish church. Not every one can go to Corinth, says the proverb. The same is true of Echternach, though in a different sense, thank God! But it would be a mistake to think that the famous ceremony demands anything excessive or superhuman. The calm, grave character of the dance, and the numerous pauses which are made necessary by the blocking of the way, suffice to husband the pilgrim’s strength. Their vow, though hard and laborious, is not impossible or dangerous. The proof of this is that many children in the procession dance the whole length of the way twice over. No sooner do they reach the church at the head of the procession than they scamper back to join the rear and begin the exercise over again. Pilgrims who, on arriving at Echternach, do not feel equal to executing their vow, and yet wish to contribute to the brilliancy of the festival, give a few sous to one of these children, and the indefatigable little fellows acquit themselves of their task with imperturbable seriousness and charming grace. But prodigious people are again the people of Pürm. They arrive at the town, to use a familiar expression, with twelve leagues in their heels; and at once they set to work and dance four long hours. Then, when their devotions are ended, they take barely time to eat their modest fare out doors or at an inn table, and go home singing and praying to the high table-lands and extinct volcanoes of their wild country.
One should be in the church when the procession pours in by traditional custom through the left aisle, to pass round the altar in the choir and go out through the right aisle. The dance does not cease an instant as they pass through the sanctuary; the orchestra goes on playing the quaint, archaic melody, the dancers make the old Romano-vaulted roof ring with the clang of their measured steps. The pilgrims do not think their vow fulfilled until, after making the tour of the church, they find themselves in the courtyard before an old wooden cross, where they break ranks. Nothing can be more fantastic than this irruption of dancing and music in the house of God. The spectacle in the church is beyond description; you feel as if you were dreaming, and your spirit floated in the domain of the impossible. What do the people mean? Have they come to pillage and destroy? Is this tumultuous throng the prey of a sudden delirium, of a dancing mania? Or, if it be worship, does it not revive the solemn orgies of ancient Greece, where certain deities of Oriental origin were honored by the leaps, the cries, and the races of their idolaters? No; to the first instant of amazement there succeeds a more correct and complete judgment. Beneath the external agitation, beneath the noise and movement, you see the religious calm which fills these souls, and the solemnity pervading the expression of their inner feelings. It is this contrast which gives to the singular ceremony its character of deep originality. No doubt we have lost the sense of mysterious symbolism in the sacred dance; we no longer see its true motive or significance; we only know or divine that the devout thought which first inspired it animates it at the present day.
Among various ideas suggested by this astonishing experience, there was one that I could not get rid of, and which returned to me on the festival and its eve again and again. While multitudes knelt before the altar, kissed the shrine, touched it with objects of devotion, and filled the church with their prayers, you would have said that the great man must be there, present among the faithful, speaking to them and listening to them. What glory equals that of the saints? What other son of Adam enjoys such honors? Those whom the Catholic Church has crowned with eternal palms do not reign only in heaven; the human glory which they despised is given to them abundantly, and these little ones, who passed through life obscure and despised, see themselves suddenly surrounded with an amazing glory with which Cæsar, Homer, Archimedes, and Plato do not shine. The world rings with their name, and the least and most ignorant of human beings know, love, and revere them. They are not only illustrious, they receive solemn veneration, they share in a certain way the honors of God himself. Their names are uttered with bended knee, nations flock to their tombs, and they are gloriously enthroned in Christian hearts. Beside such a destiny is it worth while to try to immortalize one’s name and to flutter, as the poet says, upon the lips of men? What is the greatest name on earth, unless it be encircled with the aureole of sanctity? Ignored by the crowd, uttered coldly by most of those who know it, respected by a few, but invoked by no one with clasped hands and heart uplifted to him who bore it. The name of the least saint prostrates in the dust all human generations through the long succession of ages, and resounds like a word of life on all lips. The church alone is the dispenser of glory, and even among secular names the noblest and most lasting are those of Catholic associations.