The Little Glass-man.
On the other side of the Forest, although of the same race, the inhabitants are, on account of the different occupations they pursue, somewhat different in their manners and customs. These people work chiefly in the Forest as wood-cutters and timber-merchants. They fell their pine-trees and then float them down the Nagold to the Neckar, down the Neckar to the Rhine, even travelling as far as Holland, the rafts of the Black Forest being known upon the sea-coast. They stop their rafts at every town they come to, so that folks may buy their timber if they have a mind to; but the broadest and tallest beams and masts are sold to the Dutch ship-builders for a good round sum of money. These men, accustomed to a rough, wandering life, are as different in character from the people living in the other part of the Forest as their costumes differ.
The men living in the neighbourhood of Baden wear black jackets, closely pleated trousers, red stockings, and peaked hats; the woodmen, however, wear jackets of dark coloured linen, broad green braces, black leather breeches, from one of the pockets of which a brass foot rule protrudes, but their chief pride is in their boots, which reach nearly to their middle, so that the raftsmen can wade through fairly deep water without wetting their feet.
At one time it was believed that two spirits inhabited the Black Forest; the one, known as “The Little Glass-man,” was a good little spirit, and but three feet and a half in height, and was always to be seen dressed in the same costume as the glass-makers or clock-makers wore; but Dutch Michael, who haunted the further side of the Forest, was a broad-shouldered giant and was dressed like a raftsman. Some of the wood-cutters who had seen him declared his boots were so big that an ordinary full-grown man could have stood upright in one of them and yet not have reached to the top of it.
A young Black Forester, named Peter Munk, is said to have had a very extraordinary adventure with these two wood-spirits. Peter lived with his mother, who was a widow, in the very heart of the Forest. His father had been a charcoal burner and after his death the mother trained her son to the same employment.
At first Peter was content to follow his father’s occupation and to sit by his sooty kiln, as black as soot himself, and now and again to drive into the towns and villages to sell his charcoal. But he had plenty of time for reflection and it gradually began to occur to him that his lot was not a very happy one. He thought how smart the glass-makers and clock-makers looked, decked out in their best clothes on Sunday. “But,” said he to himself, “if I were to put on my father’s jacket with its silver buttons, and encase my legs in bright red stockings and swagger down the street, folks would say, ‘’Tis only Peter Munk, the charcoal burner, after all.’”
The wood-cutters, raftsmen and timber-merchants were also objects of his envy. Whenever these forest giants came into the village in their splendid costumes, decked out with silver buttons and buckles and chains, and stood with their great legs wide apart, watching the dance perhaps, using strange Dutch oaths, and smoking long pipes from Cologne, he would say to himself—“Ah! what happiness to be a man like that!” Sometimes one of these fortunate beings would lunge a hand into his pocket and bring out a handful of florins and commence to gamble with them; six batzen at a time they would risk at dice, and Peter had seen one of the richest timber-merchants lose in a night more money than he or his father had ever earned in a year, and yet not seem greatly upset over the loss of the money.
At these times Peter would feel half beside himself and would steal away to his lonely hut consumed with rage and jealousy.
There were three men in particular who excited his admiration and envy. One was a tall stout man, with a very red face, who was said to be the richest man in the country. He was called “Fat Ezekiel.”