The Wine-ghosts of Bremen

by Wilhelm Hauff

Have you realised the fearful moment in Don Giovanni, when heavy steps ring nearer and nearer, and Leporello comes back screaming and the statue of the governor stalks in to supper, as he was bidden? So this figure: gigantic, with measured echoing tread, a huge sword in hand, in full armour, but unhelmeted, it stalked into the room. It was of stone, yet the stony lips moved, and said, 'Greeting, dear vine-spirits from my beloved river: greeting to you on your birthday, fair child of my neighbour; greeting, My Lady Rose, may I take a seat in your assembly?'

All looked in amazement at the figure. But Rosa clapped her hands with joy, and cried, 'Why, it's Roland! the great stone Roland that has stood in the square at Bremen for ever so many years! This will indeed be a memorable night when you do us so much honour, sir. Put your shield and sword away, and make yourself comfortable. Will you take a seat by my side? Oh, how glad I am!'

The wooden Bacchus, who had been growing fatter and fatter all this time, cast discontented looks now at Roland and now at the Lady of his heart, who had expressed her pleasure so loudly and unrestrainedly. He murmured something about 'uninvited guests being a bore,' and stamped his legs impatiently. But my Lady appeased him with sweet looks and pressed his hand under the table. Room was made for Roland on her other side, and the latter laid down his spear and shield in a comer, and sat down rather awkwardly on a chair. But, alas! the chair was made for the cushioned forms of the burghers of Bremen town, not for a stone giant, and it at once cracked and fell in pieces under him, leaving him sprawling. 'Vile race of weaklings,' he cried, as he rose, 'that puts together such furniture as this, whereon in my time a tender lady could not have sat in safety!' But Balthasar rolled a huge cask up to the table, and persuaded the knight to try it; a couple of staves cracked, but the cask held firm. It was the same with his wine. The glass that Balthasar offered him he shivered to fragments as he grasped it. 'Well,' said the latter rather angrily, 'you might have taken off your stone gauntlets.' A silver goblet of the tumbler-shape holding about a quart escaped with a few unimportant dents, and the knight tossed off its contents.

'How do you like the liquor?' said Bacchus; 'it must be dry work up there on your pillar. I suppose you haven't tasted wine for years?'

'It is good, by my sword, very good. What growth is it?'

'Red Ingelheimer, noble sir,' said Balthasar.

The stony eyes of the knight took fire and sparkled as he heard this, a soft smile beautified his stern features, and he looked with affection into the goblet.

'Ah, dear beloved Ingelheim! how sweet it sounds! the noble castle of my knightly Kaiser. So, even in these days thy name is named! and the vines still bloom which Karl first planted by his Ingelheim! Do the men who live now ever speak of Roland? or of his great master?'

'That you must ask of the mortal here,' said Jude; 'he calls himself Doctor and Master of Arts, and he must give you an account of his race.' The giant turned his eyes inquiringly on me, and I said, 'Noble Paladin, mankind has indeed grown bad and careless of all that is great and lofty: its blind gaze is fixed upon the present, and looks neither before nor after. Yet so wretched are we not yet become, as to have wholly ceased to remember the glorious figures that once trod our native land; they still cast their shadow through the ages till it touches even us. Still are there hearts that fly for refuge to the memories of the past, when the present has become too stale and mean for reflection. Still are there pulses which beat higher at the naming of mighty names, still men who wander with reverence through the ruins where sat the first German Kaiser on his throne with his Paladins and his bards around him. Karl and Oliver, Eginhard and the lovely Emma are still familiar in men's mouths. And where Karl is renowned there too is Roland unforgotten. Next to him thou stoodst in life, and next to him thou wilt stand in song and saga and history till Memory itself shall be no more. The final blast of thy warhorn still echoes in the hills of Roncesvalles, and will echo and echo on till it fades into the blare of the Latest Trumpet.' 'Not in vain, my Kaiser, not in vain have we lived! There is a posterity which does honour to our name,' cried the knight. 'True,' cried Frau Rosa, 'these men would deserve to drink the water of the Rhine instead of the vine blossom of its hills if they could forget the name of the man who first planted us in the Rheingau. My dear friends and apostles, up! a health to our glorious founder and ancestor! to Kaiser Karl, to Kaiser Karl!' The glasses rang again; but Bacchus said, 'Yes, it was a beautiful and a glorious time, and I rejoice in it as I did a thousand years ago. Where now there is one long wonderful garden from the shore of the stream to the tops of the hills, where grape climbs after grape up and down the terraces, there was nothing but wild dark forest before he came. Then he looked down from the mountains from his castle at Ingelheim, and he saw how even in March the sun greeted the hills so warmly as the snow slid down them into the stream; saw how early the trees became leafy there, and how tender and fresh the young grass looked as it burst upwards from the earth in the spring. And then there awakened in him the thought of planting vines where the wood grew. And a busy life began to move in the Rheingau beside Ingelheim; the wood vanished, and the earth was cleared to receive the vine. Then Karl sent men to Hungary and Spain, to Italy and Burgundy, to Champagne and Lothringen, and had vines brought from thence, and entrusted the cuttings to dear mother earth. And my heart rejoiced that he should extend my kingdom beside the noble stream of Germany, and when the first shoots blossomed there I came with all my train, and we camped upon the hills, and we worked in the earth, and we worked in the air, and we spread out delicate nets and caught the dews of spring lest they should fall too heavily; and we rose up and caught the rays of the sunshine, and poured them round the little swelling clusters, and we dived down and brought up water from the green Rhine for the roots, and water for the leaves. And when in autumn the first tender child of the Rheingau lay in its cradle we kept a great feast, and invited all the elements to celebrate it; and each came with some costly gift for the child. Fire laid his hand upon its eyes and said, "Thou shalt bear my sign upon thee for ever--there shall be fire in thee, albeit of such purity and transparency, that thou shalt impart noble courage beyond all other juice of the grape." And Air came in her golden garment of gossamer, and laid her hand upon the child's forehead and blessed him. "Be thy colour as bright and delicate as the golden edge of morning light upon the hills, as the golden tresses of the fair women of the Rheingau." And Water ran past him, all rustling with silver, and bent towards the child, saying, "I will be ever near thy roots, that thou mayst bloom and be green and cover the banks of the Rhine." But when Earth came she kissed his mouth tenderly, and blew with her sweet breath upon him. "The perfumes of all my most delicate herbs, the honey of all my fairest flowers," she said, "have I collected as an offering for thee. The most precious spikenard or ambergris shall be coarse beside thy scent; and thy fairest daughter shall be named after the Queen of Flowers--the ROSE!" Thus spake the elements, and we rejoiced at their promised blessings, and we adorned the child with vine leaves, and sent him to the Kaiser in his castle at Ingelheim. And the Kaiser marvelled at the beauty of the child, and from that day he esteemed the vines of the Rhine among the most splendid of his treasures.'

We sat silent for a while when Bacchus had finished, until her Ladyship requested Andrew to favour us with an old melody, which he did with great ease and grace, by singing a simple old song of the fourteenth or fifteenth century. The words have escaped my memory, but the tune I remember still. This set us all off, even Frau Rosa herself, who sang a pretty little air of 1615 with a rather trembling voice, and Roland also growled out in deep bass a Frankish war hymn, of which I could distinguish little. I was obliged to bear my part, so I began bravely,