Foreign Tales and Traditions/Volume 2/The Piper of Neisse

by Johann August Apel

For other English-language translations of this work, see Der Todtentanz.

THE

 

PIPER OF NEISSE

 

BY A. APEL.

 

In the Silesian town of Neisse, which you know is built upon a river of the same name, there once lived—if we ought to put any faith in an old chronicle—a very old Musician, who for many years practised that most harmonious of all wind-instruments, the bagpipe. He lived a very quiet decent sort of life, and at first touched his pipes merely for his own amusement; but the neighbours soon discovered his merits, and in calm nights would gather in crowds under the window of his dwelling to hear his music. On these occasions he played with so much skill and taste, that old and young were charmed with his performances; and their piper never wanted a well-stored flagon and trencher. The beau of Neisse applied to him for new scores from which to serenade their mistresses in the soft twilight,—the graver citizens invited him to their feasts and festivals,—and not a bride within the limits of the township would have thought her marriage-ceremony properly performed, unless Master Wilibald had been present and played his bridal-dance on the occasion. For this very purpose he had composed a most original melody, in which the grave and gay, the mournful and brilliant, were exquisitely mingled, so as strongly to suggest the varied aspect of matrimonial life itself. A feeble idea of this wonderful composition may be gathered from the fine old German air, called ‘the Grandfather’s Dance’ which, till within these few years, was always played at our weddings. Whenever Master Wilibald struck up this tune, the proudest spinsters in Neisse would have blushed to have sat still,—old stiff-jointed matrons footed it as deftly as their grand-daughters,—and silver-haired grand-fathers leapt up and whirled about with the youngest of their descendants. It was these rejuvenescent properties of this marvellous melody which obtained for it the name of ‘the Grandfather’s Dance.’

A young man lived with Master Wilibald, who, though a painter by profession, was generally thought to be the son or foster-son of the old bagpiper. But the musician’s art all at once lost its effect upon this youth, who remained thoughtful and melancholy even when Wilibald was playing his most lively and mirth-inspiring tunes in the same room with him. It soon became evident that there was a sound cause for this. The youth was in love. Emma, the mayor’s daughter, had captivated his heart; and the poor youth was so desperately over head and ears in this his first passion, that he could think of nothing else but his fair one. And she, to say the truth, loved him as heartily as ever bashful maid loved handsome youth; but then her father was in the way; he was a proud, consequential, overbearing man,—ever alive to the dignities of his municipal office, and as vain of his pretty daughter as a father could be.

Piper Wilibald saw and marked all this, and from time to time promised to assist the love-sick youth in his distress. But he found great difficulty in setting about the affair. At one time he thought of exhibiting to the good citizens of Neisse a new Oberon and Pappageno in the persons of himself and the mayor, and to make the consent of the latter to his daughter’s marriage with Wido the condition of his release from the musical spell which he designed to cast over him. At another, like a second Orpheus, he proposed to draw away the bride by the enchanting force of his melody from her father’s home. But Wido constantly objected to these very rational schemes, as well as every other which the good-natured musician could think of, for the silly youth could not endure the thought of creating a moment’s uneasiness to one so nearly related to his Emma, and vainly thought to win her father’s consent by dint of importunity and good conduct. “You are a fool,” said Wilibald, “if you think to make any impression on such a Nabal by honourable and open dealing on your part! When you have secured your bride, you may find him beginning to soften; but till then his heart will be as unmoved as old Pharaoh’s, and only the plagues of Egypt will drive him to yield. I have the wish to do you good; but really I take blame to myself for having foolishly pledged myself to do nothing in this matter but with your consent. However, death clears all scores, and, once in my grave, I will help you nolens volens in my own way.”

Poor Wido was not the only hapless wight whose path had been strewn with thorns and briars by the mayor of Neisse. The whole Burgherschaft entertained very little affection towards their chief, and took every opportunity to thwart or annoy him; for his demeanour was so tyrannical that he had irritated them to the very last pitch of endurance, and above all did they bear him hearty grudge on account of the exorbitant fines which he was in the habit of levying upon any one who chanced to indulge in a little gaiety or extraordinary expense. No sooner was the yearly wine fair over—which was always held in the month of January—than the poor citizens were called upon to pay their heavy mulcts for last year’s transgressions into the mayor’s treasury. At last the town rose in a body, and, breaking the last tie of obedience, assailed the house of the mayor, and threatened to set fire to it and consume its proprietor with all his ill-gotten wealth at once. At this critical juncture, Wido hastened to Master Wilibald and entreated him to use his soul-subduing music for the purpose of softening the irritated feelings of the mob, and thus saving the life of Emma’s father. “Doubtless,” added the youth, “he will in his gratitude offer you any reward you can name, and you will for my sake demand his daughter’s hand for me.” The piper laughed at the youth’s words, and only remarked, “we must humour a child’s follies to prevent him from crying.” So he took his pipes under his arm, and sauntered slowly down the market-place, where the mob, armed with pikes and hatchets, and torches and pickaxes, were commencing a furious attack upon the mayor’s mansion-house.

Here Master Wilibald coolly planted himself with his back against a pillar, and began to play ‘the Grandfather’s Dance,’ whereupon countenances which but a moment before were distorted with fury brightened up,—brows which had been knit together in wrath became smooth,—axes and torches dropt from upraised hands,—and the whole multitude stood transformed in the twinkling of an eye from an infuriated mob to a gay dancing party. The piper then took his way through the streets of the city, followed by old and young; and each burgher went dancing and skipping into his own house, with feelings as different from those which animated him, when he left it in the morning, as can well be conceived.

There was no end to the mayor’s thanks. In the excess of his gratitude he even offered to share his property with Master Wilibald, But the piper assured him with a smile that he coveted nothing of the kind, and would feel quite rewarded if his lordship would just grant a friend of his one favour, which he could easily comply with,—it was his daughter’s hand which he was solicitous to obtain for his own dear Wido.

But the suggestion displeased the mayor exceedingly. After making a number of excuses, from all of which he was successively driven by the pertinacious piper, who would not listen to any other proposal than that now advanced, his lordship at last became quite incensed, and ordered Master Wilibald to be clapt into prison as a disturber of the public peace, a line of conduct which we occasionally see higher authorities than the mayor of Neisse pursuing, under similar circumstances, in our own days. Nay, so far did he carry his resentment, that he caused Master Wilibald to be indicted for practising arts of sorcery, and finally averred that he was the identical piper of Hameln who had already done so much mischief in that ill-starred town.

Great was the commotion produced in Neisse by the approaching trial; with their natural dread of necromancy, and the fate of the young Hamellians before their eyes, the justiciary officers were at work day and night; already the chamberlain calculated the expense of the faggots,—the bell toller craved a new rope,—the carpenter erected scaffolds for the spectators,—and the gentlemen of the law began to rehearse their various parts in the approaching judicial drama; but Master Wilibald was as active as any of them; at first he laughed outright at all the bustle and preparation which he understood was going forward, and now in the most spiteful manner, after all was nearly ready for his high and solemn trial, what did he do but stretched himself out upon his straw pallet and most unhandsomely gave up the ghost!

However a short time before he fairly quitted the world, he sent for his dear Wido, and thus addressed him: “Young man, you now see that according to your way of going about things I can give you no assistance. Indeed I am quite tired of your stupid mode of thinking and acting. You have now learnt—or at least ought to have done so—that the goodness of human nature, which some people talk so much about, is a very deceitful thing, and not at all to be trusted to in any matter of the slightest moment. Indeed, for my own part, I could not rely one moment on your fulfilment of the last request I am about to make you, were I not aware that your own interest is so much mixed up with the matter that self-love will induce you to attend to it. When I am dead, be careful to see that my old bagpipe is buried with me. To keep it would do you no service; to bury it with me may be the means of doing you infinite pleasure.” Wido promised to obey the last injunction of his friend, who shortly afterwards closed his eyes in death.

The report of Master Wilibald’s death brought out old and young to ascertain whether it were true. Among others came the mayor, who was in secret very well pleased with the turn which affairs had taken, for he had always some lurking suspicion about him that the old fellow would yet laugh at them all. He now ordered the body of the old piper to be buried as quickly and quietly as possible in a piece of unconsecrated ground; and when his directions were asked as to the disposal of the bagpipe, with a shrewdness which did the first magistrate of Neisse infinite honour, and saved poor heart-broken Wido some trouble, he directed it to be buried with its wicked master. So they placed the pipes in the coffin beside poor old Wilibald’s body, and buried the whole, late in the evening, in a neglected corner of the churchyard.

But in the course of the following night very strange things happened. There was a tower in the neighbourhood of the church, upon the top of which a party of watchmen were always stationed at night, for the purpose of raising the alarm in case of a fire taking place in the neighbourhood. No fire happened that night, but something which gave the watchmen infinitely more alarm; for about midnight they beheld, by the light of the moon, Master Wilibald rising out of his grave, which was near the churchyard wall. He held his bagpipe in his arm, and as soon as he had got himself fairly up out of the earth, they saw him plant himself with the utmost steadiness against a tall tomb-stone which shone in the moon’s rays, and begin to finger his pipes just as he used to do when alive in the town of Neisse. While the watchmen were gaping alternately at so strange a sight and at one another, a great many other graves in the churchyard opened, and the anatomies within them peeped out with their white fleshless skulls and eyeless sockets turned toward the spot where the piper stood—who was now blowing away as if nothing had happened to him—and after nodding a while to the gay measure, sprung fairly out of their coffins, and began to shake their rattling fleshless limbs in some sort of measure to the tune. The whole inhabitants of the churchyard soon appeared in motion, and even the grated windows of the vaults beneath the church were quickly filled with grinning skulls, which seemed to crowd upon each other till the bolts and bars were wrenched away by their skeleton hands, and the whole fearful assemblage burst out of their places of confinement and rushed towards the dance which was already begun around the piper. But what a scene now took place when the bleached anatomies began to tilt and caper about over the graves and among the tombstones, with an energy of action which perhaps they never possessed while in the body! Here a party whirled about in the light waltz, till the eyes of the watchmen grew blind in looking upon them,—there a couple of large-boned skeletons revelled apart from all the rest,—on one side a multitudinous assemblage of shroud-infolded forms stood gazing with apparent impatience on a dance which some of their number were performing,—on another sheetless skeletons, and forms whose limbs were yet infolded in their grave-clothes, old and young, tall and short, were blended together in one undistinguishable mass, beating time to the music with their arms and feet. At last the clock tolled twelve, and all hastened at the sound to their respective tombs. The piper also put his pipes under his arm, and slipt quietly into his grave in the corner of the churchyard.

The watchmen made their fearful report of the occurrences of the night to the mayor long before day-break; and the prudent magistrate, after extracting all the information he could obtain from them, enjoined the strictest secrecy upon them, and promised to keep watch with them the following night himself. But the news were far too wonderful to be kept locked up in the heart of any one who was aware of them; and accordingly, long before night-fall, the whole town was in commotion, and every window and roof in the neighbourhood of the churchyard thronged with grave-looking citizens, who spent the interval in keen discussion regarding the possibility or impossibility of the things alleged in the watchmen’s report.

The bagpiper was true to his time, for at the first stroke of the eleventh hour his grave was seen to open, and its inmate instantly made his appearance with his pipes below his arm, and proceeded deliberately to his former station, where he began his tune. The ball-guests seemed to have been waiting the signal, for at the very first notes they came trooping forth from their graves and vaults, leaping and bounding over every thing which stood in their way with an agility many of them surely never possessed while denizens of the upper world. There were corpses and skeletons, shrouded and bare, great and small, leaping and skipping, wheeling and whirling around the piper, in time to the tunes he played, till midnight tolled, when the whole assembly instantly retired to rest. Of course, after such demonstration, the stoutest sceptic in Neisse could not gainsay the marvellous account of Master Wilibald’s freaks after death; but the mayor had no sooner quitted his station on the watch-tower, than he issued his warrant for the apprehension of the young painter, from whose examination he hoped to learn something which might enable him to put down the new and unheard-of nuisance.

Wido reminded the mayor of his breach of promise to Wilibald, and maintained with much spirit that it was solely in consequence of this conduct on his part, and his subsequent harsh treatment of the poor piper, that the latter now refused to remain quietly in his grave. This speech made a deep impression upon the assembled civic-dignities, who ordered the body of Master Wilibald to be instantly and respectfully removed to a decent part of the churchyard. But the sexton, to show his penetration on the occasion, took the bagpipe out of the coffin before he again deposited it in the earth, and carried it to his own house, where he hung it over his bed. For the sexton reasoned briefly but naturally thus: whether the musician be the enchanter, or is enchanted himself, while thus following his profession even after death, it is evident that he cannot play to others without his instrument, so that to remove the latter will be the certain means of securing decent repose to the unwilling dead, and preventing the repetition of such unseemly gambols as the two preceding nights have witnessed. The sexton went to rest that evening with something like the satisfaction one feels at having done his duty under trying circumstances. But just as the clock struck eleven, a rap was heard at the door, and on opening it he beheld the remorseless bagpiper once more making night hideous with his unearthly presence. “My bagpipes!” said the dead man with the greatest coolness; and whilst the poor sexton was hesitating what answer to return to this demand, the piper stepped into the room himself and took down the pipes, with which he proceeded to his old station in the churchyard, and began to blow a merry strain as if nothing at all had happened. However on this occasion Master Wilibald adopted new measures, for he led the whole troop of ghosts through the gate of the church-yard into the town, and paraded at their head through the streets till midnight, when the spectral train returned again to their dreary abodes.

Considerable alarm was now expressed by the astonished burghers of Neisse, that such unusual proceedings should at last terminate in a general assault upon the living inhabitants of the town by Master Wilibald’s fearful troop. There was an assurance of manner and boldness about the latter which indicated something very impertinent, if not alarming; and to avoid all risks of unpleasant collision with such personages, the more pacific citizens earnestly entreated their mayor to put a stop to these midnight frolics of the dead, by fulfilling his promise to their piper. But the mayor was deaf to all entreaty, and even threatened to burn the young painter as art and part in his friend the musician’s cantrips. But the following night the churchyard troop behaved much worse than ever they had done; for though the piper’s music was not heard, yet they were seen dancing in the streets more furiously than ever, and, horrible to relate, the figures of all the young ladies of Neisse who were known to be betrothed at that time, were seen dancing along with them! Next morning Neisse was filled with lamentation and weeping, when it was discovered that all the maidens whose forms had been seen dancing with the spectres the preceding night, had been found lying dead in their beds. The citizens were now driven to despair, and resolved to encounter the wrath of their mayor rather than that of Master Wilibald. So they went in a body to their great man and told him in as plain terms as their language allowed, that he must fulfil the promise which he had made to the piper. The mayor still hesitated, but the citizens were imperious; and an unwilling consent having been drawn from the father’s lips to the marriage of his daughter to the young painter, the wedding was celebrated that very evening.

The marriage-guests had been assembled around the supper table for a considerable time, when the first stroke of eleven sounded in their ears, and immediately afterwards the distant notes of Wilibald’s bagpipe were heard approaching. With mingled fear and curiosity, in which however the latter feeling greatly predominated, they hastened to the windows and beheld the piper approaching followed by a long train of figures all arrayed in white shrouds. The fearful train drew nigh, and horrible to think, actually entered the bridal-hall, with their piper at their head, and mingled with the guests. A scene of fearful confusion ensued, for the living and dead tumbled over each other, in the alarm of the one and the confusion of the other; and many were preparing to leap from the windows in order to escape the dreadful society of sheeted ghosts, when a shout of joy resounded through the hall, and many of both parties were seen rushing into each others’ arms, while the tear of affection rolled down their cheeks: for who did the spectres prove to be but the very maidens who had been so lately cut off in the full bloom of youth and beauty, and whom the good piper had now given back in all the brightness and glow of health to their enraptured friends. Never was there such a night of happiness in Neisse! even the stern mayor danced for joy at the turn which affairs had taken; and the wonderful old bagpiper, after having played a gay farewell, disappeared and was never again heard or seen in the town of Neisse.

 

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