Tales of terror
the whole multitude began to dance, and the square, that was lately the
scene of riot and confusion, bore now the appearance of a gay dancing
assembly. The piper, with his magic bag-pipe, led on through the
streets, all the people danced behind him, and each citizen returned
jumping to his home, which shortly before he had left with very
different feelings.
The mayor, saved from this imminent danger, knew not how to express
his gratitude; he promised to Willibald everything he might demand,
even were it half his property. But the bag-piper replied, smiling,
saying his expectations were not so lofty, and that for himself he
wanted no temporal goods whatever; but since his lordship, the mayor,
had pledged his word to grant to him everything he might demand, so he
beseeched him, with due respect, to grant fair Brunhelda’s hand for his
foster-son.
The haughty mayor was highly displeased at this proposal. He made
every possible excuse; and as Willibald repeatedly reminded him of his
promise, he did what the despots of those dark times were in the habit
of doing, and which those of our enlightened days still practise, he
declared his dignity offended, pronounced Willibald to be a disturber
of the peace, an enemy of the public security, and allowed him to
forget in a prison the promises of his lord, the mayor. Not satisfied
herewith, he accused him of witchcraft, caused him to be tried by
pretending he was the very bag-piper and rat-catcher of Hameln, who
was, at that time, and is still in so bad a repute in the German
provinces, for having carried off by his infernal art all the children
of that ill-fated town.
‘The only difference,’ said the wise mayor, between the two cases was,
that at Hameln only the children had been made to dance to his pipe,
but here young and old seemed under the same magical influence. By
such artful delusions, the mayor turned every merciful heart from the
prisoner. The dread of necromancy, and the example of the children of
Hameln, worked so strongly, that sheriffs and clerks were writing day
and night. The secretary calculated already the expense of the funeral
pile, for necromancers, witches and wizards were burnt in those days;
the sexton petitioned for a new rope to toll the dead-bell for the poor
sinner; the carpenters prepared scaffolds for the spectators of the
expected execution; and the judges rehearsed the grand scene, which
they prepared to play at the condemnation of the famous bag-piper. But
although justice was sharp, Willibald was still sharper; for as he
laughed very heartily over the important preparations for his end, he
now laid himself down upon his straw and died!
Shortly before his death, he sent for his beloved Robert, and addressed
him for the last time.
‘Young man,’ said he, ‘you seest that in your way of viewing mankind
and the world I can render you no assistance. I am tired of the whims
your folly has obliged me to perform. You have now acquired experience
enough fully to comprehend that nobody should calculate, or at least
ground, his designs on the goodness of human nature, even if he himself
should be too good to lose entirely his belief in the goodness of
others. I, for my own part, would not rely upon the fulfilment of my
last request to you, if your own interest would not induce you to its
performance. When I am dead, be careful to see that my old bag-pipe is
buried with me. To detain it would be of no use to you, but it may be
the cause of your happiness, if it is laid under ground with me.’
Robert promised to observe strictly the last commands of his old
friend, who shortly after closed his eyes. Scarcely had the report of
Willibald’s sudden death spread, when old and young came to ascertain
the truth. The mayor was more pleased with this turn of the affair than
any other; for the indifference with which the prisoner had received
the news of his approaching promotion to the funeral pile, induced
his worship to suppose the old bag-piper might some fine day be found
invisible in his prison, or rather be found not there at all; or the
cunning wizard, being at the stake, might have caused a wisp of straw
to burn instead of his person, to the eternal shame of the court of
Neisse. He therefore ordered the corpse to be buried as speedily as
possible, as no sentence to burn the body had yet been pronounced. An
unhallowed corner of the churchyard, close to the wall, was the place
assigned for poor Willibald’s resting-place. The jailor, as the lawful
heir of the deceased prisoner, having examined his property, asked what
should become of the bag-pipe, as a _corpus delicti_.
Robert, who was present, was on the point to make his request, when the
mayor, full of zeal, thus pronounced his sentence:
‘To avoid every possible mischief, this wicked, worthless tool shall
be buried together with its master.’ So they put it into the coffin at
the side of the corpse, and early in the morning pipe and piper were
carried away and buried.
But strange things happened in the following night. The watchmen on the
tower were looking out, according to the custom of the age, to give the
alarm in case of fire in the surrounding country, when about midnight
they saw, by the light of the moon, Willibald rising out of his tomb
near the churchyard wall. He held his bag-pipe under his arm, and
leaning against a high tombstone upon which the moon shed her brightest
rays he began to blow, and fingered the pipes just as he was accustomed
to do when he was alive.
While the watchmen, astonished at this sight, gazed wisely on one
another, many other graves opened; their skeleton-inhabitants peeped
out with their bare skulls, looked about, nodded to the measure, rose
afterwards wholly out of their coffins, and moved their rattling limbs
into a nimble dance. At the church windows, and the grates of the
vaults, other empty eye-holes stared on the dancing place: the withered
arms began to shake the iron gates, till locks and bolts sprung off,
and out came the skeletons, eager to mingle in the dance of the dead.
Now the light dancers stilted about, over the hillocks and tombstones,
and whirled around in a merry waltz, that the shrouds waved in the wind
about the fleshless limbs, until the church clock struck twelve, when
all the dancers, great and small, returned to their narrow cells; the
player took his bag-pipe under his arm, and likewise returned to his
vacant coffin.
Long before the dawn of the day, the watchmen awoke the mayor, and made
to him, with trembling lips and knocking knees, the awful report of the
horrid night scene. He enjoined strict secrecy on them, and promised to
watch with them the following night on the tower. Nevertheless, the
news soon spread through the town, and at the close of the evening,
all the surrounding windows and roofs were lined with virtuosi and
cognoscenti of the dark fine arts, who all beforehand were engaged in
discussions on the possibility or impossibility of the events they
expected to witness before midnight.
The bag-piper was not behind his time. At the first sound of the bell
announcing the eleventh hour, he rose slowly, leaned against the
tombstone, and began his tune. The ball guests seemed to have been
waiting for the music, for at the very first notes they rushed forth
out of the graves and vaults, through grass hills and heavy stones.
Corpses and skeletons shrouded and bare, tall and small, men and women,
all running to and fro, dancing and turning, wheedling and whirling
round the player, quicker or more slowly according to the measure he
played, till the clock tolled the hour of midnight. Then dancers and
piper withdrew again to rest.
The living spectators, at their windows and on their roofs, now
confessed that ‘there are more things in heaven and earth than are
dreamt of in our philosophy.’ The mayor had no sooner retired from the
tower, than he ordered Robert to be cast into prison that very night,
hoping to learn from his examination, or perhaps by putting him to the
torture, how the magic nuisance of his foster-father might be removed.
Robert did not fail to remind the mayor of his ingratitude towards
Willibald, and maintained that the deceased troubled the town, bereft
the dead of their rest and the living of their sleep, only because he
had received, instead of the promised reward for the liberation of the
mayor, a scornful refusal, and moreover had been thrown into prison
most unjustly, and buried in a degrading manner. This speech made a
very deep impression upon the minds of the magistrates; they instantly
ordered the body of Willibald to be taken out of his tomb, and laid in
a more respectable place.
The sexton, to show his penetration on the occasion, took the bag-pipe
out of the coffin, and hung it over his bed. For he reasoned thus:
if the enchanting or enchanted musician could not help following his
profession even in the tomb, he at least would not be able to play to
the dancers without his instrument.
But at night, after the clock had struck eleven, he heard distinctly a
knock at his door; and when he opened it, with the expectation of some
deadly and lucrative accident requiring his skill, he beheld the buried
Willibald _in propriâ persona_.
‘My bag-pipe,’ said he, very composedly, and passing by the trembling
sexton, he took it from the wall where it was hung up; then he returned
to his tombstone, and began to blow. The guests, invited by the tune,
came like the preceding night, and were preparing for their midnight
dance in the churchyard. But this time the musician began to march
forward, and proceeded with his numerous and ghastly suite through the
gate of the churchyard to the town, and led his nightly parade through
all the streets, till the clock struck twelve, when all returned again
to their dark abodes.
The inhabitants of Neisse now began to fear lest the awful night
wanderers might shortly enter their own houses. Some of the chief
magistrates earnestly entreated the mayor to lay the charm by making
good his word to the bag-piper. But the mayor would not listen to it;
he even pretended that Robert shared in the infernal arts of the old
piper, and added, ‘The son deserves rather the funeral pile than the
bridal bed.’
But in the following night the dancing spectres came again into the
town, and although no music was heard, yet it was easily seen by their
motions that the dancers went through the figure of the ‘Grandfather’s
Dance.’ This night they behaved much worse than before, for they
stopped at the house wherein a betrothed damsel lived, and here they
turned in a wild whirling dance round a shadow, which resembled
perfectly the spinster in whose honour they moved the nightly bridal
dance. Next day the whole town was filled with mourning, for all
the damsels whose shadows were seen dancing with the spectres had
died suddenly. The same thing happened again the following night. The
dancing skeletons turned before the houses, and wherever they had been,
there was, next morning, a dead bride lying on the bier.
The citizens were determined no longer to expose their daughters and
mistresses to such an imminent danger. They threatened the mayor to
carry Brunhelda away by force and to lead her to Robert, unless the
mayor would permit their union to be celebrated before the beginning of
the night. The choice was a difficult one, for the mayor disliked the
one just as much as the other, but as he found himself in the uncommon
situation where a man may choose with perfect freedom, he, as a free
being, declared freely his daughter to be Robert’s bride.
Long before the spectre hour the guests sat at the wedding table. The
first stroke of the bell sounded, and immediately the favourite tune
of the well-known bridal dance was heard. The guests, frightened to