The Forest Farm: Tales of the Austrian Tyrol Read online

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  The Forest Farm

  _Frontispiece._] THE FOREST FARM. [_Drawn by MilicentNorris._]

  The Forest Farm

  _Tales of the Austrian Tyrol_

  By Peter Rosegger

  With an Appreciation by Maude Egerton King And a Biographical Note by Dr. Julius Petersen

  The Vineyard Press London: A. C. Fifield, 13 Clifford's Inn, E.C. 1912

  WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD. PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH

  Contents

  PAGE

  FRONTISPIECE: THE FOREST FARM. Drawn by MELICENT NORRIS

  ROSEGGER: AN APPRECIATION. By MAUDE EGERTON KING 9

  PETER ROSEGGER: A BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE. By DR. JULIUS PETERSEN. With a portrait 15

  I. MY FATHER AND I. Illustrated by M. E. K. and L. E. 29

  II. HOW I GAVE GOD MY SUNDAY JACKET. Translated by A. T. DE MATTOS 36

  III. CHRISTMAS EVE. Translated by M. E. K. 42

  IV. A LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT. Translated by M. E. K. 61

  V. HOW LITTLE MAXEL'S HOUSE WAS BURNED DOWN. Translated by M. E. K. and L. G. 74

  VI. THREE HUNDRED AND SIXTY-FOUR NIGHTS AND A NIGHT. Translated by A. T. DE MATTOS 80

  VII. HOW THE WHITE KID DIED. Translated by A. T. DE MATTOS 86

  VIII. CHILDREN OF THE WORLD IN THE FOREST. Translated by A. T. DE MATTOS 93

  IX. HOW MEISENSEPP DIED. Translated by LOUISE EVERS 105

  X. THE CORPUS CHRISTI ALTAR. Translated by A. T. DE MATTOS 114

  XI. ABOUT KICKEL, WHO WENT TO PRISON. Translated by ETHEL BLOUNT 124

  XII. HOW I CAME TO THE PLOUGH. Translated by A. T. DE MATTOS 142

  XIII. THE RECRUIT. Translated by A. T. DE MATTOS 146

  XIV. A FORGOTTEN LAND. Translated by A. T. DE MATTOS 161

  XV. THE SCHOOLMASTER. Translated by A. T. DE MATTOS 170

  XVI. THE STAG ON THE WALL. Translated by MELICENT NORRIS and M. E. KING 179

  XVII. FOREST-LILY IN THE SNOW. Translated by A. T. DE MATTOS 186

  XVIII. THE SACRED CORNFIELD. Translated by M. E. KING and L. SWIETOKOWSKI 190

  XIX. ABOUT MY MOTHER. Translated by A. T. DE MATTOS 195

  Rosegger: An Appreciation

  The unmistakable trend of our time is the civilisation--which, in itsmodern form, is largely urbanisation--of the whole habitable globe.From its centres outwards it is thrusting itself upon places, men,processes--ultimate sanctuaries, never before reached by alientrespassing. Most men are looking on at its destruction of the oldorder with shrugging acceptance of the inevitable, or hailing thechaotic stuff of the new in its making with so far unjustified joy.With a wit worn somewhat threadbare with use they invariably counselthe few eccentrics who deny its inevitability and question itsbeneficence to quit the hopes and mops of Mrs. Partington for thediscreet submission of the wiser Canute. Then they grow properly grave,and declare that this modern civilisation, for all its shortcomings,has been well described as a banquet, the like of which, for thosebelow as for those above the salt, has never been spread before.However that may be, there is no question that here and there a guestis sometimes moved to look round on the company and scan its severaltypes with a sudden sense of their significance. Some of these, goodand bad, are common to all late civilisations, he perceives, others ashatefully peculiar to our own as certain diseases. Where, in God'sname, were there ever till now men like these, who bend a complaisantspectacled gaze on a world going under, content if they may but firstsecure their museum sample (including one carefully chosen, perfectlyembalmed, stuffed and catalogued peasant) of every species? Or theiryounger kindred--men whose intellect obeys no inspiration savecuriosity nor law save its own limit, whose inventions, therefore,cannot foster good and beauty but only spoil these in Nature and men'ssouls? As for that splendid group beyond, one may question if Athens,Rome, or Byzantium, whose sumptuous culture of brain and body achievedan almost criminal comeliness by Christian standards, ever equalledthem: question, too, whether their selfish perfection or the travestyof it in this mob of women dull with luxury, of men brutalised by thescramble of getting it for them--be less desirable for the race!Thankfully his eye passes from them to those who turn such a coldshoulder upon their vulgarity: a little company, fine-edged, polishedand flexible with perpetual fence of wit and word, hardly peculiar toour day perhaps, but rather such as might have played theirirresponsible game on the eve of any red revolution. Now and again theylend an amused ear to various gassy gospels over the way, where, as heperceives, he is once more among the children of this latter day alone:notably certain insignificances who, because they have raised theirself-indulgence to the dignity of a problem play, are solemnlymistaking themselves (as actors and audience too) for pioneers ofsocial progress; and some earnest women who have slammed the front dooron their nearest and dearest stay-at-home duties and privileges, to goquesting after problematical rights. It looks, too, as if the sametypes, modified for worse and better by class conditions, were repeatedbelow the salt; but there the multitude is so great that theindividuals are soon lost in a far-off colourless mass--sometimes amenacing mass--by no means so content with stale bread as the otherswith caviare.

  Is then this civilisation to become the universal order? he askshimself; and must the world it has laid waste be repeopled from these?The very fear of it summons a shadowy memory of fathers' fathers amongSussex sheepfolds, Highland crofts, Tuscan vineyards, or Germanforests. After that the banquet grits in the teeth like husks, andthere is nothing possible but to get up and go out from it, sick withlonging for those simpler, saner people. To them, it is said,fatherhood, motherhood, home, were chiefest of prides and sanctitiesoutside Heaven. They either kept or consciously broke the tencommandments, but they never set up the _Seven deadly Sins_ in theirplace. They won life out of the earth, sometimes with difficultyenough, but the struggle bred a muscle and fortitude only now failingtheir descendants in hyper-civilisation. They laboured, and took theirpleasures too, under open skies and in quiet places where the divinevoice could clearly be heard at times, and unperplexedly obeyed.

  Between fear and hope these famished feasters come at last to theancestral places; only too often to find them ruined, or shelteringsome sad survival unaware of his own splendid history. On the coldthresholds they stand, stricken with the sense of the world'sirreparable loss in a virile and faithful race.

  Just so far have many thinking people come to-day, and there remain,needing a leader who can turn regretful retrospect to rational hope.Such a one is Peter Rosegger, whose life is a type of our own day and aprophecy of better. He, too, left the land for the city, and now,because all his culture and experience do but confirm his faith that_Bauernthum_ is as necessary for the world's soul as the bread whichthe peasant grows for its body, he has gone bac
k to it. When he wantsnew vigour for daily life, or for his mission of protecting andpleading for a vanishing folk, he touches earth and gets it.Peasant-born, in most of his books he _is_ Peasantry grown consciousand articulate,--he gives us that life from within. But culture hasenabled him to see the peasant in his true relation to the world aswell, to measure the life he was born into with the civilisation whoseguest he has been. And so in one invaluable book, _Erdsegen_, he writesof the folk life from without, and that with great truth andconsistency. The story is given in a series of letters from a cityjournalist, who for a frivolous wager goes to live "the simple life" asa peasant among peasants for one year. Looking through the townsman'seyes, we find there no stage-peasant's Arcady, no rose-bowered cottagespleasantly ready for week-end lodgers; rather we stare aghast at thecoarse food, rough work, some very unwholesome conditions, andobstinate superstitions. The journalist's earlier letters treat ofthese things with humorous realism, and we respect his pluck forputting up with them. Gradually the tone of the letters changes, and wesee the innate fineness--not the cultured refinement--of the townsman,responding to the strong faith behind the superstition, to the beautyof the traditional labours, the heroic endurance of their undoing bystorm and bad fortune, and the acceptance of good and ill alike as fromthe hands of a good if sometimes incomprehensible Father. The faintsneer, even the amused smile, die from the townsman's face; dirt anddiscomfort are lost sight of in the divine realities which draw him,humbly enough at last, to throw in his lot with these humble people.

  Rosegger is a true prophet, he never disguises truth in defending it.His passion for essential Peasantry is too great for sentimentalities,too honest for whitewash; and so while he exhilarates us with itselemental force he does not fear to show where this merges intobrutality, nor when its simplicity opens the door to superstition. Andyet in the end we are one with his faith in _Bauernthum_ and theworld's need of it. The land-folk who emigrate to cities, and theirchildren there born, are fast losing and will soon quite lose what nomoney or experience can compensate them for. Age after age, greatshaping influences from the forest, the mountain and the waters of themountain, the solitudes, the mastery and love of beasts, thedisciplinary tragedies and triumphs of agriculture, came and wroughtupon the humanity in their midst, gradually creating the customs,traditions, lore and art--everything except religion in its _Church_sense--which is part of the collective soul of Peasantry. Whateverthese uprooted land-folk gain in the city, though they gain the wholeworld, they certainly lose their own soul--the soul special toPeasantry and until now the fullest spring of the world's imaginativelife.

  At times, perhaps when he has stayed too long in Graz, Rosegger writesof _Bauernthum_ as of something irrevocably passing; at others heutters his faith--for it is deeper than hope--that it will come again.To him his own life is racially prophetic. He has had the best ofcivilisation, intellectual intercourse, fame, travel, wealth: but fromthese and all others of its benefits or lures, he has again and againrun back, mastered by a _Heimweh_ which saved him. Sometimes, interrible trouble, once at the point of death, he went back, and everytime the touch of the earth renewed him, body and soul. Signs of thissaving _Heimweh_ he sees here and there among those who remain at thebanquet, actually starving in satiety, some of them; and from the quietvalley where his genius, long since the consecrated champion of theancient peasantry, does its best work, he calls upon these to come backand make possible a new. His loyal traditionalism does not hinder hisbelief that a new peasantry, not born, but becoming such from a choiceinspired by heart's hunger and a surfeit of civilisation, must have astrong redemptive value of its own among the decadent nations.

  Of the earth he writes as he wrote of the stern tender woman who borehim in the Forest Farm,--with a worship that makes a town-bred creaturedrag at his chain or break his heart to run home to her. She has neverfailed him, he says, in any need of spirit or flesh, nor will she everfail her prodigals. When they come back in a hundred or a thousandyears they will find her patiently waiting to teach them all the vitalforgotten things over again: and, even if she take the gewgaws andlumber out of their hands, she will leave them whatever of learning shecan with her ancient processes and gift of wonder transmute intowisdom.

  M. E. K.

  PETER ROSEGGER

  (_By kind permission of Messrs. Staackmann, Leipsic_)

  _To face page 15 "The Forest Farm."_]