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INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

The translation here presented to the public is intended rather as a contribution to the history, or perhaps it should be said the sociology, of the momentous period to which the romance of "Simplicissimus" belongs, than as a specimen of literature. Effective though its situations are, consistent and artistic though its composition is , its interest lies chiefly in the pictures, or rather photographs, of contemporary manners and characters which it presents. It has been said with some truth that if succeeding romancers had striven as perseveringly as our author to embody the spirit and reflect the ways of the people, German fiction might long ago have reached as high a development as the English novel. As it is, there is little of such spirit to be discovered in the prose romances which appeared between the time of Grimmelshausen and that of Jean Paul Richter. But the influence of the latter was completely swept away in the torrent of idealism by which the fictions of the idolised Goethe and his followers were characterised, and his domestic realism has only of late made its reappearance in disquieting and sordid forms.

It should be remembered as an apology for the stress now laid upon the sociological side of the history of the Thirty Years War, that that side has by historians been resolutely thrust into the background. The most detailed and painstaking narratives of the war are either bare records of military operations or, worse still, represent merely meticulous and valueless unravellings of the web of intrigue with which the pedants of the time deceived themselves into the belief that they were very Machiavels of subtlety and resource. While the Empire was bleeding to death, the chancelleries of half Europe were intent on the detaching from one side or the other of a venal general, or the patching up of some partial armistice that might afford breathing-time to organise further mischief. It does not matter much to any one whether Wallenstein was knave or fool, but it did matter and does matter that the war crippled for two hundred years the finances, the agriculture, and the enterprise of the German people, and dealt a blow to their patriotism from the like of which few nations could have recovered. Even the character of the civil administration was completely altered when the struggle ended. An army of capable bourgeois secretaries and councillors had for centuries served their princes and their fellow subjects well. It is wonderful that throughout the devastating wars waged by Wallenstein and Weimar, and even later on during the organised raids of Wrangel and K?nigsmark, the records were kept, the village business administered , and even revenue collected with wellnigh as much regularity as in time of peace. These functionaries, who had worked so well, were at the end of the war gradually dispossessed of their influence, and their posts were taken by a swarm of young place-hunters of noble birth whom the peace had deprived of their proper employment, and whose pride was only equalled by their incapacity. But neither particulars nor generalisations bearing on such subjects are to be found in the pages of professional historians; they must be sought in the contemporary records of the people, of which the present work affords one of the few existing specimens, or else in the work of picturesque writers who, laying no claim to the title of scientific investigators, yet possess the power of selecting salient facts and deducing broad conclusions from them. Freitag's "Bilder aus der Deutschen Vergangenheit" indicates a wealth of material for sociological study which has as yet been but charily used; and recent German works dealing directly with the subject are more remarkable for elegance of production than for depth of research.

Such being the purpose for which this translation has been undertaken, an Introduction to it must necessarily be concerned not so much with the bibliography of the book or even the sources, if any, to which the author was beholden for his material, as with his own personality and the amount of actual fact that underlies the narrative of the fictitious hero's adventures. In respect of the first point, we are presented with a biography almost as shadowy and elusive as that of Shakespeare. In many ways, indeed, the particulars of the lives of these two which we possess are curiously alike. Both were voluminous writers; both enjoyed considerable contemporary reputation; and in both cases our knowledge of their actual history is confined to a few statements by persons who lived somewhat later than themselves, and a few formal documents and entries. In Grimmelshausen's case this obscurity is increased by his practice of publishing under assumed names. In the score of romances and tracts which are undoubtedly his work, we find only two to which his real name is attached. He has nine other pseudonyms, nearly all anagrams of the words "Christoffel von Grimmelshausen." Of these, "German Schleifheim von Sulsfort" and "Samuel Greifnsohn vom Hirschfelt" are the best known; the latter being the name to which he most persistently clung, and under which "Simplicissimus" was published, though the former appears on the title-page as that of the "editor." Only as the signature to a kind of advertisement at the end do we find the initials of "Hans Jacob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen," his full name. Until the publication of a collection of his works by Felsecker at Nuremberg in 1685, the true authorship of most of them remained unknown. But that editor, by his allusions in the preface, practically identified the writer as the "Schultheiss of Renchen, near Strassburg," whom he seems to have known personally. The reasons for anonymity were, no doubt, firstly, the fact that "Simplicissimus" at least dealt with the actions of men yet alive; and secondly, with regard to the other books, the continual references to details of the author's own life and opinions. His dread of offending a contemporary is shown by his disguising of the name of St. Andr?, the commandant of Lippstadt, as N. de S. A. of L. .

Besides his military expeditions, it is pretty clear from his works that he had visited Amsterdam and Paris and knew them fairly well; but for nineteen years we have no further trace of his career, till he suddenly appears as Schultheiss, under the Bishop of Strassburg, of Renchen, now in the Grand Duchy of Baden, a town of which he deliberately conceals the name exactly as he does his own, by anagrams, calling it now Rheinec, now Cernheim. In October 1667 he appears as holding this office and issuing an order concerning the mills of the town, which is still in existence. His wife was Katharina Henninger, and entries have been found of the birth of two children, a daughter and a son, in 1669 and 1675. A curious episode in the first part of the "Enchanted Bird's-nest," quoted hereafter, seems to indicate a grave family disappointment. In 1676 he died, aged fifty-one only, but having reached what may almost be called a ripe age for the battered and spent soldier of the Thirty Years War. The entry of his death is peculiarly full and even discursive, and tells how though he had again entered on military service--no doubt on the occasion of the French invasion in 1674--and though his sons and daughters were living in places widely distant from each other, they were all present at his death, in which he was fortified by the rites of Holy Church. A final touch of uncertainty is added by the fact that we do not even know whether Grimmelshausen was his true name: it is more likely to be that of some small estate which he had acquired, and of which he assumed the name when, as we learn, he was raised to noble rank.

It is plain even from this brief outline of his life that Grimmelshausen was emphatically a self-taught man; and it is partly to this fact that we owe the originality of his work; for he had never fallen under the baleful influence of the pedantry of his time. He had, it is true, picked up a deal of out-of-the-way knowledge, which he is willing enough to set before us to the verge of tediousness. But his learning is very superficial; he was a poor Latinist; and it is likely that for most of his erudition he was indebted to the translations which were particularly plentiful during that golden period of material prosperity in Germany which preceded the terrible war. It is clear enough that everywhere he thought more of the content than of the literary form of his own or any other work; and for the times his scientific and mathematical knowledge was considerable. In the field of romance he knows, and does not hesitate to borrow from, Boccaccio, Bandello , and the "Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles," while in his minor works he shows ample acquaintance with old German legend and also with stories like that of King Arthur of England. Lastly, we find him commending the "incomparable Arcadia" of Sir Philip Sidney as a model of eloquence, but corrupting and enervating in its effect upon the manly virtues .

Yet his own earlier works are themselves in the tedious, unreal, and stilted style of the romances of chivalry. "The Chaste Joseph," "Dietrich and Amelind," and "Proximus and Limpida," though widely different in subject, are alike in this, and show no sign of the genius which created Simplicissimus. Yet for the first-named work--the "Joseph"--its author cherished an unreasoning affection, and even alludes to it in our romance as the work of the hero himself . But it is no discredit to Grimmelshausen's originality if we conjecture that the translations of Spanish picaresque novels , which appeared during the first two decades of the seventeenth century, gave him the idea--they gave him little or nothing more--of a vagabond hero. Mateo Aleman's famous "Guzman de Alfarache" had been succeeded by two miserably poor "Second Parts" by different authors, and in one of these there appears a tedious episode containing the submarine adventures of the hero under the form of a tunny-fish, to which we may conceivably owe the equally tedious story of Simplicissimus and the sylphs of the Mummelsee. At the end of the original book is an unblushing copy of a passage from a work of Antonio Quevara or Guevara, also translated by Albertini.

That Grimmelshausen died a Romanist is pretty clear from the entry of his death quoted above; nor is it likely that a Protestant could have held the office of Schultheiss under the Bishop of Strassburg. There is also extant a curious dialogue ascribed to Grimmelshausen in which Simplicissimus's arguments against changing his religion are combated and finally overthrown by a certain Bonarnicus, who effects his complete conversion. It is far from improbable that the account of his rescue from sinful indifference at Einsiedel which Simplicissimus gives --of course apart from the miraculous incident of the attack on him by the unclean spirit--roughly represents the experience of his author. That the latter had been brought up a Protestant we simply assume from the fact that Simplicissimus is understood to have been so; the first indication which we have of a change in his opinions being his exclamation of "Jesus Maria!" , which draws upon him the suspicions of the pastor at Lippstadt. But Papist or not, our author's superstition is unmistakable.

Another whole cycle of superstitions centres round the belief in possible invisibility of persons. Of this we have no example in "Simplicissimus," though the whole plot of the delightful double romance of the "Enchanted Bird's-nest" depends on it. On the other hand, the story of the production of the puppies from the pockets of the colonel's guests by the wizard Provost in book, ii., chap. 22, is narrated by a man who plainly believed such things possible; and absolute credence is given to the powers of prophecy possessed both by old Herzbruder and by the fortune-teller of Soest , who is apparently a well-known character of the times. It is noteworthy that Herzbruder thinks meanly of the art of palmistry.

At the very beginning of Simplicissimus's story he is brought in contact with at least one historical personage--James Ramsay, the Swedish commandant of Hanau, whose heroic defence of that town is well known. Simplicissimus is said to be the son of his brother-in-law, one Captain Sternfels von Fuchsheim. This man's Christian name is nowhere given; the boy is expressly said by his foster-father to have been christened Melchior after himself, and the fictitious character of the supposed parentage seems amply proved by the fact that the whole name, "Melchior Sternfels von Fugshaim" , is an exact anagram of "Christoffel von Grimmelshausen." We may therefore pass over as unmeaning the attribution to this supposed father of "estates in Scotland." by the pastor in book i., chapter 22, and must probably consign to the realms of imagination the lady-mother, Susanna Ramsay, also. That Grimmelshausen was really brought in contact, possibly as a page, with the commandant of Hanau, seems likely. He knows a good deal of him. But of his later career he is quite ignorant; he even repeats as true the malignant calumny circulated by the Jesuits of Vienna to the effect that Ramsay had gone mad with rage at the loss of Hanau . As a matter of fact, the poor man died partly of his wounds and partly of a broken heart. The only other historic personage in the story who can be identified with certainty is Daniel St. Andr?, a Hessian soldier of fortune of Dutch descent, and commanding at Lippstadt for the "Crown of Sweden."

For what reason Grimmelshausen wrote the "Continuatio," a dull medley of allegories, visions, and stories of knavery, brightened only by the "Robinsonade" at the end, it is hard to say; probably at the urgent request of his publisher, when the striking success of the original work became assured. It appeared at M?pelgard in the very same year, viz. 1669, as the first known edition, or more probably editions, of the first five books, and is sometimes quoted as a sixth book. Two years later there were issued three more "Continuations," even more unworthy of their author, and laying stress chiefly on the least estimable side of the hero's character--the roguery by which he paid his way on his journey back from France. The worthlessness of these sequels is the more remarkable when we consider the excellence of the other books which make up what may be called the Simplicissimus-cycle. These are "Trutzsimplex," "Springinsfeld," the two parts of the "Enchanted Bird's-nest," and the "Everlasting Almanack." They are all deserving of attention.

The first, which is also known as the "Life of the Adventuress 'Courage,'" appeared immediately after "Simplicissimus," with which it is connected by the fact that the heroine is none other than the light-minded lady of the Spa at Griesbach, the alleged mother of Simplicissimus's bastard son; she is also at one time the wife or companion of "Springinsfeld" or "Jump i' th' Field," Simplicissimus's old servant. Her history, which is narrated with extraordinary vivacity, covers nearly the whole period of the war, and is interwoven with the remaining books of the cycle in a sufficiently ingenious manner. A secretary out of employ is driven by the cold into the warm guest-room of an inn in a provincial town. Here he finds a huge old man armed with a cudgel "that with one blow could have administered extreme unction to any man." This is Simplicissimus, with the famous club that had so terrified the resin-gatherers of the Black Forest . Either the episode of the Desert Island is left out of account altogether--possibly not yet invented--or he has not yet started on his final journey. The latter is unlikely, for the date is indicated as 1669 or 1670. To these two enters an old wooden-legged fiddler who turns out to be Simplicissimus's faithful knave, "Jump i' th' Field." Of the former hero the secretary had read; of the latter he himself had written; for meeting, as a poor wandering scholar, with a gang of gipsies in the Schwarzwald, he had been engaged by their queen, an aged but still handsome woman, to write her history, on the promise of a pretty wife and good pay. He is cheated of both, and the gipsies disappear with their queen, who is in fact the famous "Courage" or "Kurrasche."

The daughter of unknown parents, this heroine was living in a small Bohemian town with an old nurse when the Imperialists, under Bucquoy, conquered the country in 1620. She was then thirteen years old, and thus fifteen years senior to Simplicissimus. The nurse, to protect her chastity, disguises her as a boy, and in this garb she becomes page to a young Rittmeister, to whom, her secret having been all but discovered in a scuffle, she reveals her sex and becomes his mistress. The name Courage is, for amusing but quite unmentionable reasons, given to her in consequence of this episode. To her first lover she is actually married on his death-bed, and now begins her career nominally as an honourable widow, but in reality as an accomplished courtesan. She still follows the army, for which she has an invincible love, and being, of course, "frozen" or invulnerable, takes part in various fights, in one of which she captures a major, who, when she in turn is taken prisoner, revenges himself on her in the vilest fashion. He is preparing to hand her over, according to custom , "to the horseboys," when she is rescued by a young Danish nobleman, who proposes to make her his wife. The terrible story is told with an exactness of detail, which plainly can only be the work of the witness of similar scenes, and it is to be feared represents only too faithfully the truth as to the treatment of women in the war. It is remarkable, however, that few officers of high rank on either side are accused of wanton offences against public morals. Holk and K?nigsmark are the only two who are charged with publicly keeping their mistresses; and they were the two most brutal commanders of their time. As a rule superior officers took their wives with them even to the field of battle, and if such ladies fell into the enemy's hands, as did many after N?rdlingen, they were treated with all possible respect.

But to return to "Courage." Her Danish lover is about to marry her when he too dies, and after this disappointment she sinks lower and lower in the social scale, forming temporary connections successively with a captain, a lieutenant, a corporal and finally with a musqueteer, who is no other than our old friend "Jump i' th' Field," for whose name she gives us a very complete and quite untranslatable reason. With him she journeys, as a Marketenderin or female sutler, to Italy, following the army of Colalto and Gallas, and there, with his assistance, she plays a variety of tricks, always knavish and often highly diverting. Grown rich, the vivandi?re dismisses poor "Jump i' th' Field" with a handsome present, and again resumes her trade of a superior courtesan in the town from which she journeys to the Spa, where she found and beguiled Simplicissimus. Her luck now turns; owing to a scandalous adventure under a pear-tree--the story is a mere copy of a well-known one in the "Hundred New Novels"--she is expelled from the town with the loss of all her money and almost of her life--so severe in the matter of public morals were the laws, in the midst of the general welter of wickedness then prevailing. Her beauty lost, she becomes a petty trader in wine and tobacco, and finally marries a gipsy chief; in which position we find her and leave her.

This story ended, the secretary and his friends in the inn are joined by Simplicissimus's old foster-father and mother--the "Dad" and "Mammy" of our romance--and also by young Simplicissimus, Courage's alleged son. She has avenged herself on her faithless lover, as she tells us in her own history, by laying at his door the child of her maid. It is for this reason that she entitles her narrative "Trutzsimplex," or "Spite Simplex." Her revenge, however, for reasons plainly hinted at, miscarries; the child is her lover's after all. The merry company of six then divert themselves during the short winter afternoon with a profitable exhibition of Simplicissimus's tricks in the market-place, and the night is pleasantly spent in listening to Springinsfeld's account of his own life and adventures.

The son of a Greek woman and an Albanian juggler, he follows in early boyhood his father's trade. Carried away from the port of Ragusa by an accident, he is landed in the Spanish Netherlands, and there serves under Spinola, then with that general's army in the Rhine Palatinate, and then in Pappenheim's cavalry. He is present at Breitenfeld and L?tzen, and while temporarily out of the service falls in with "Courage" as above narrated. On leaving her, he sets up as an innkeeper, and prospers, but is ruined through his own incorrigible knavery. Serving against the Turks, he is wounded, and takes to fiddling to support himself, marrying also a hurdy-gurdy girl of loose character. In the course of their vagabond life there occurs the incident which leads to the most ingenious and attractive of all the romances of the cycle.

Sitting by a stream, they see in the water the shadow of a tree with a lump on one of the branches: on the tree itself there is no such lump. It is a bird's-nest, invisible itself, which makes its possessor invisible also. The wife seizes it and at once disappears, with all their money in her pocket. She does not, however, abandon her husband altogether, but when he goes into the neighbouring town of Munich she slips a handful of money into his pocket. He finds that this is a part of the proceeds of an impudent robbery just committed in the house of a merchant, and will have none of it, but is compelled to be witness of numerous amusing and mischievous pranks played by his wife of which he alone knows the secret. He goes to the wars again and loses a leg, after which he begs his way back to Munich and finds his wife dead. She has befooled a young baker's man into believing her to be the fairy Melusina, and after a sanguinary chance-medley in the baker's chamber, whither she is pursued for thefts committed for his sake, is slain by a young halberdier of the watch sent to arrest her. Her body is burned as that of a witch, and her slayer disappears bodily. His story thus ended, Springinsfeld is taken home by Simplicissimus to his farm, where he dies in the odour of sanctity.

Here begins the first part of the history of the "Enchanted Bird's-nest." The young halberdier is an honest lad, who uses his powers for good only, and his experiences are of exceeding interest as giving a picture of the manners of the time viewed in their most intimate particularities by an invisible witness. We have matrimonial infelicities circumstantially described, as likewise the efforts of an impoverished family of nobles to keep up appearances in their tumble-down old castle. The halberdier prevents hideous and unspeakable crime, captures burglars who are effecting their purpose by a device similar to that of the "hand of glory," wreaks vengeance upon loose-living pastors and rescues the intended victims of footpads. The adventures follow one upon another in quick succession, but are ended by a somewhat unnecessary fit of remorse, during which the halberdier tears up the nest. It is, however, found, and the portion which contains its magic properties kept, by a passer-by. This First Part ends with a fresh appearance of Simplicissimus, who is in deep grief over the rejection by a neighbouring nobleman of his application for a post for his son, whom the invisible halberdier has seen and helped out of trouble in the convent where he was studying. This scene is so utterly unconnected with the course of the narrative that it is conjectured to refer to some real family misfortune of Grimmelshausen, of which he is anxious to give an explanation to the public.

The new owner of the enchanted nest is the merchant whom Springinsfeld's wife had robbed at Munich, and the "Second Part" is occupied with the story of his wicked misuse of his powers. His actions are the very opposite of the halberdier's, though the contrast is not so pointed as to become inartistic. He makes use of his supernatural facilities to seduce his own servant, to perpetrate a peculiarly filthy act of revenge upon his faithless wife, and finally to accomplish the crowning deception of his whole career. He makes his way into the family of a respectable Portuguese Jew, in the first instance with a view to robbery; but becoming enamoured of the beautiful daughter of the house, he employs his invisibility to practise a most blasphemous piece of knavery. He succeeds in making the unfortunate parents believe that the maiden is destined to be the mother of the future Messiah by the prophet Elias. The latter part he of course plays himself, and enjoys the society of his victim till at length a child is born, which turns out, to the general horror, to be a girl. The motive is not new and the story is a sordid one; but it is most artistically recounted, and an intimate knowledge of Jewish manners and ideas is displayed. The narrative is also diversified by an element found in none of the other romances of the cycle--acute and farsighted political discourses and reasonings on European affairs as likely to be affected by the war then impending with France, which ended with the treaty of Nimwegen in 1678.

Rendered desperate by his sins, though now deeply enamoured of the unfortunate Jewess Esther, the merchant is on the verge of surrendering himself to the power of "black magicians" of the worst and most diabolical kind when he escapes by betaking himself to the wars. Possessing besides his invisibility the power of rendering himself invulnerable, he is nevertheless wounded by a "consecrated" bullet, and finally makes his way home in poverty and misery accompanied by a pious monk. The nest is thrown into the Rhine and disappears for ever, and the merchant prepares to spend the remainder of his life in prayer and penitence.

The connection of the fifth work, the "Everlasting Almanack," with Simplicissimus is nominal only. It appeared in 1670, and is a perfect specimen of what may be called the best class of chapbooks of that day. It is the Whitaker's Almanack of the period. Each day has its special saints given: there are rules of good husbandry and weather prognostics; recipes for the house, the kitchen, and the farmyard; together with matters adapted for the higher class of readers, such as brief scientific notices, fragments of historical interest, narratives of marvellous occurrences, and, of course, in the spirit of the time, a mass of particulars as to astrology and the casting of horoscopes. Ingenious as it all is, and not without interest from the sociological point of view the book reminds us of Simplicissimus only by its connection with that side of his character which we would willingly forget, but for which Grimmelshausen seems to have cherished an unreasoning admiration, and on which he insisted more and more in his successive works--namely his qualities as a quack and mountebank.

As already pointed out, the interest of the central romance of "Simplicissimus" is less literary than historic, whereas German critics in their estimate of its value have considered the first aspect only, and their opinions are consequently little worth recording. Gervinus for example, looking at the book from a purely artistic point of view, finds it wanting. Other critics have followed him blindly and with a considerable amount of underlying ignorance to boot. The accurate Dahlmann, for example, though he reckons the romance among his "historical sources," speaks of it as published at M?pelgard in 1669 in six "volumes." Plainly he had never seen a copy, but had heard of the six books and mistook them for volumes. Tittmann, one of the latest editors of the work, sums up its chief merits when he says: "Simplicissimus and the Simplician writings are almost our only substitute, and that a poor one, for the contemporary memoirs in which our western neighbours are so rich."

The bibliography of the book is for our purpose not important. For a year or two editions seem to have succeeded each other with such rapidity that it is difficult to distinguish between them; but the only additional value which those printed later than 1670 possess is the questionable one of including the three worthless little sequels above referred to. Of modern editions the best, perhaps, is that of Tittmann , which has been principally used for this translation. The annotations, however, leave much to be desired; many difficulties are left unexplained, and there are some positive mistakes, of which a single instance may suffice. In book v., chapter 4, we find the expression "in prima plana," which is a sufficiently well-known military phrase of the time and means "on the first page" , which contained the names of the officers of a company written separately from those of the rank and file. It is explained by Tittmann to mean "at the first estimate," and succeeding editors have copied this, adding as a possible alternative "in the first engagement," or "at the first start". The editions for school and family reading which are current in Germany are, as a rule, so expurgated as to deprive the book of much of its interest. In this translation it has been found necessary to omit a single episode only, which is as childishly filthy as it is utterly uninteresting.

A. T. S. G.

There appeareth in these days of ours among the common folk, a certain disease which causeth those who do suffer from it forthwith to give themselves out gentlemen and nobles of ancient descent. Whereas it doth often happen that their ancestors were day-labourers, carters, and porters, their cousins donkey-drivers, their brothers turnkeys and catchpolls, their sisters harlots, their mothers bawds--yea, witches even: and in a word, their whole pedigree of thirty-two quarterings as full of dirt and stain as ever was the sugar-bakers' guild of Prague. Yea, these new sprigs of nobility be often themselves as black as if they had been born and bred in Guinea.

Now as my dad's manner of living will be perceived to be truly noble, so any man of sense will easily understand that my upbringing was like and suitable thereto: and whoso thinks that is not deceived, for in my tenth year had I already learned the rudiments of my dad's princely exercises: yet as touching studies I might compare with the famous Amphistides, of whom Suidas reports that he could not count higher than five: for my dad had perchance too high a spirit, and therefore followed the use of these days, wherein many persons of quality trouble themselves not, as they say, with bookworms' follies, but have their hirelings to do their ink-slinging for them. Yet was I a fine performer on the bagpipe, whereon I could produce most dolorous strains. But as to knowledge of things divine, none shall ever persuade me that any lad of my age in all Christendom could there beat me, for I knew nought of God or man, of Heaven or hell, of angel or devil, nor could discern between good and evil. So may it be easily understood that I, with such knowledge of theology, lived like our first parents in Paradise, which in their innocence knew nought of sickness or death or dying, and still less of the Resurrection. O noble life! in which none troubles himself about medicine. And by this measure ye can estimate my proficiency in the study of jurisprudence and all other arts and sciences. Yea, I was so perfected in ignorance that I knew not that I knew nothing. So say I again, O noble life that once I led! But my dad would not suffer me long to enjoy such bliss, but deemed it right that as being nobly born, I should nobly act and nobly live: and therefore began to train me up for higher things and gave me harder lessons.

For he invested me with the highest dignity that could be found, not only in his household, but in the whole world: namely, with the office of a shepherd: for first he did entrust me with his swine, then his goats, and then his whole flock of sheep, that I should keep and feed the same, and by means of my bagpipe protect them from the wolf. Then was I like to David , which was no bad beginning for me, but a good omen that in time, if I had any manner of luck, I should become a famous man: for from the beginning of the world high personages have been shepherds, as we read in Holy Writ of Abel, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and his sons: yea, of Moses also, which must first keep his father-in-law his sheep before he was made law-giver and ruler over six hundred thousand men in Israel.

And now may some man say these were holy and godly men, and no Spessart peasant-lads knowing nought of God? Which I must confess: yet why should my then innocence be laid to my charge? Yet, among the heathen of old time you will find examples as many as among God's chosen folk. So among the Romans were noble families that without doubt were called Bubulci, Vituli, Vitellii, Caprae, and so forth, because they had to do with the cattle so named, and 'tis like had even herded them. 'Tis certain Romulus and Remus were shepherds, and Spartacus that made the whole Roman world to tremble. What! was not Paris, King Priam's son, a shepherd, and Anchises the Trojan prince, Aeneas's father? The beautiful Endymion, of whom the chaste Luna was enamoured, was a shepherd, and so too the grisly Polypheme. Yea, the gods themselves were not ashamed of this trade: Apollo kept the kine of Admetus, King of Thessaly; Mercurius and his son Daphnis, Pan and Proteus, were all mighty shepherds: and therefore be they still called by our fantastic poets the patrons of herdsmen. Mesha, King of Moab, as we do read in II Kings, was a sheep-master; Cyrus, the great King of Persia, was not only reared by Mithridates, a shepherd, but himself did keep sheep; Gyges was first a herdsman, and then by the power of a ring became a king; and Ismael Sophi, a Persian king, did in his youth likewise herd cattle. So that Philo, the Jew, doth excellently deal with the matter in his life of Moses when he saith the shepherd's trade is a preparation and a beginning for the ruling of men, for as men are trained and exercised for the wars in hunting, so should they that are intended for government first be reared in the gentle and kindly duty of a shepherd: all which my dad doubtless did understand: yea, to know it doth to this hour give me no little hope of my future greatness.

But to come back to my flock. Ye must know that I knew as little of wolves as of mine own ignorance, and therefore was my dad the more diligent with his lessons: and "lad," says he, "have a care; let not the sheep run far from each other, and play thy bagpipe manfully lest the wolf come and do harm, for 'tis a four-legged knave and a thief that eateth man and beast, and if thou beest anyways negligent he will dust thy jacket for thee." To which I answered with like courtesy, "Daddy, tell me how a wolf looks: for such I never saw yet." "O thou silly blockhead," quoth he, "all thy life long wilt thou be a fool: thou art already a great looby and yet knowest not what a four-legged rogue a wolf is." And more lessons did he give me, and at last grew angry and went away, as bethinking him that my thick wit could not comprehend his nice instruction.

So I began to make such ado with my bagpipe and such noise that 'twas enough to poison all the toads in the garden, and so methought I was safe enough from the wolf that was ever in my mind: and remembering me of my mammy how she had often said the fowls would some time or other die of my singing, I fell upon the thought to sing the more, and so make my defence against the wolf stronger; and so I sang this which I had learned from my mammy:

So far and no further could I get with my song: for in a moment was I surrounded, sheep and all, by a troop of cuirassiers that had lost their way in the thick wood and were brought back to their right path by my music and my calls to my flock. "Aha," quoth I to myself, "these be the right rogues! these be the four-legged knaves and thieves whereof thy dad did tell thee!" For at first I took horse and man to be but one beast, and could not but conceive these were the wolves; and so would sound the retreat for these horrible centaurs and send them a-flying: but scarce had I blown up my bellows to that end when one of them catches me by the shoulder and swings me up so roughly upon a spare farm horse they had stolen with other booty that I must needs fall on the other side, and that too upon my dear bagpipe, which began so miserably to scream as it would move all the world to pity: which availed nought, though it spared not its last breath in the bewailing of my sad fate. To horse again I must go, it mattered not what my bagpipe did sing or say: yet what vexed me most was that the troopers said I had hurt my dear bagpipe, and therefore it had made so heathenish an outcry. So away my horse went with me at a good trot, like the "primum mobile," for my dad's farm.

Now did strange and fantastic imaginings fill my brain; for I did conceive, because I sat upon such a beast as I had never before seen, that I too should be changed into an iron man. And because such a change came not, there arose in me other foolish fantasies: for I thought these strange creatures were but there to help me drive my sheep home; for none strayed from the path, but all, with one accord, made for my dad's farm. So I looked anxiously when my dad and my mammy should come out to bid us welcome: which yet came not: for they and our Ursula, which was my dad's only daughter, had found the back-door open and would not wait for their guests.

Although it was not my intention to take the peace-loving reader with these troopers to my dad's house and farm, seeing that matters will go ill therein, yet the course of my history demands that I should leave to kind posterity an account of what manner of cruelties were now and again practised in this our German war: yea, and moreover testify by my own example that such evils must often have been sent to us by the goodness of Almighty God for our profit. For, gentle reader, who would ever have taught me that there was a God in Heaven if these soldiers had not destroyed my dad's house, and by such a deed driven me out among folk who gave me all fitting instruction thereupon? Only a little while before, I neither knew nor could fancy to myself that there were any people on earth save only my dad, my mother and me, and the rest of our household, nor did I know of any human habitation but that where I daily went out and in. But soon thereafter I understood the way of men's coming into this world, and how they must leave it again. I was only in shape a man and in name a Christian: for the rest I was but a beast. Yet the Almighty looked upon my innocence with a pitiful eye, and would bring me to a knowledge both of Himself and of myself. And although He had a thousand ways to lead me thereto, yet would He doubtless use that one only by which my dad and my mother should be punished: and that for an example to all others by reason of their heathenish upbringing of me.

The first thing these troopers did was, that they stabled their horses: thereafter each fell to his appointed task: which task was neither more nor less than ruin and destruction. For though some began to slaughter and to boil and to roast so that it looked as if there should be a merry banquet forward, yet others there were who did but storm through the house above and below stairs. Others stowed together great parcels of cloth and apparel and all manner of household stuff, as if they would set up a frippery market. All that they had no mind to take with them they cut in pieces. Some thrust their swords through the hay and straw as if they had not enough sheep and swine to slaughter: and some shook the feathers out of the beds and in their stead stuffed in bacon and other dried meat and provisions as if such were better and softer to sleep upon. Others broke the stove and the windows as if they had a never-ending summer to promise. Houseware of copper and tin they beat flat, and packed such vessels, all bent and spoiled, in with the rest. Bedsteads, tables, chairs, and benches they burned, though there lay many cords of dry wood in the yard. Pots and pipkins must all go to pieces, either because they would eat none but roast flesh, or because their purpose was to make there but a single meal.

Our maid was so handled in the stable that she could not come out; which is a shame to tell of. Our man they laid bound upon the ground, thrust a gag into his mouth, and poured a pailful of filthy water into his body: and by this, which they called a Swedish draught, they forced him to lead a party of them to another place where they captured men and beasts, and brought them back to our farm, in which company were my dad, my mother, and our Ursula.

And now they began: first to take the flints out of their pistols and in place of them to jam the peasants' thumbs in and so to torture the poor rogues as if they had been about the burning of witches: for one of them they had taken they thrust into the baking oven and there lit a fire under him, although he had as yet confessed no crime: as for another, they put a cord round his head and so twisted it tight with a piece of wood that the blood gushed from his mouth and nose and ears. In a word, each had his own device to torture the peasants, and each peasant his several torture. But as it seemed to me then, my dad was the luckiest, for he with a laughing face confessed what others must out with in the midst of pains and miserable lamentations: and such honour without doubt fell to him because he was the householder. For they set him before a fire and bound him fast so that he could neither stir hand nor foot, and smeared the soles of his feet with wet salt, and this they made our old goat lick off, and so tickle him that he well nigh burst his sides with laughing. And this seemed to me so merry a thing that I must needs laugh with him for the sake of fellowship, or because I knew no better. In the midst of such laughter he must needs confess all that they would have of him, and indeed revealed to them a secret treasure, which proved far richer in pearls, gold, and trinkets than any would have looked for among peasants. Of the women, girls, and maidservants whom they took, I have not much to say in particular, for the soldiers would not have me see how they dealt with them. Yet this I know, that one heard some of them scream most piteously in divers corners of the house; and well I can judge it fared no better with my mother and our Ursel than with the rest. Yet in the midst of all this miserable ruin I helped to turn the spit, and in the afternoon to give the horses drink, in which employ I encountered our maid in the stable, who seemed to me wondrously tumbled, so that I knew her not, but with a weak voice she called to me, "O lad, run away, or the troopers will have thee away with them. Look to it well that thou get hence: thou seest in what plight ..." And more she could not say.

Now did I begin to consider and to ponder upon my unhappy condition and prospects, and to think how I might best help myself out of my plight. For whither should I go? Here indeed my poor wits were far too slender to devise a plan. Yet they served me so far that towards evening I ran into the woods. But then whither was I to go further? for the ways of the wood were as little known to me as the passage beyond Nova Zembla through the Arctic Ocean to China. 'Tis true the pitch-dark night was my protection: yet to my dark wits it seemed not dark enough; so I did hide myself in a close thicket wherein I could hear both the shrieks of the tortured peasants and the song of the nightingales; which birds regarded not the peasants either to show compassion for them or to stop their sweet song for their sakes: and so I laid myself, as free from care, upon one ear, and fell asleep. But when the morning star began to glimmer in the East I could see my poor dad's house all aflame, yet none that sought to stop the fire: so I betook myself thither in hopes to have some news of my dad; whereupon I was espied by five troopers, of whom one holloaed to me, "Come hither, boy, or I will shoot thee dead."

"Aha!" says he, "thou art a proper fellow enough, to tempt saints without God's leave": and more than that I heard not: for his approach caused in me such fear and trembling that I lost my senses and fell forthwith into a swoon.

After what manner I was helped to myself again I know not; only this, that the old man had my head on his breast and my jacket open in front, when I came to my senses. But when I saw the hermit so close to me I raised such a hideous outcry as if he would have torn the heart out of my body. Then said he, "My son, hold thy peace: be content: I do thee no harm." Yet the more he comforted me and soothed me the more I cried, "Oh, thou eatest me! Oh! thou eatest me: thou art the wolf and wilt eat me." "Nay, nay," said he, "my son, be at peace: I eat thee not."

This contention lasted long, till at length I let myself so far be persuaded as to go into his hut with him, wherein was poverty the housekeeper, hunger the cook, and want clerk of the kitchen: there was my belly cheered with herbs and a draught of water, and my mind, which was altogether distraught, again brought to right reason by the old man's comfortable kindness. Thereafter then I easily allowed myself to be enticed by the charm of sweet slumber to pay my debt to nature. Now when the hermit perceived my need of sleep he left me to occupy my place in his hut alone: for one only could lie therein. So about midnight I awoke again and heard him sing the song which followeth here, which I afterwards did learn by heart.

"Come, joy of night, O nightingale: Take up, take up thy cheerful tale; Sing sweet and loud and long. Come praise thine own Creator blest, When other birds are gone to rest, And now have hushed their song.

"With thy voice loud rejoice; For so thou best canst shew thy love To God who reigns in heaven above.

"For though the light of day be flown, And we in darkness dwell alone, Yet can we chant and sing Of God his power and God his might: Nor darkness hinders us nor night Our praises so to bring. Echo the wanderer makes reply And when thou singst will still be by And still repeat thy strain. All weariness she drives afar And sloth to which we prisoners are, And mocks at slumber's chain. The stars that stand in heaven above, Do shew to God their praise and love And honour to Him bring; And owls by nature reft of song Yet shew with cries the whole night long Their love to God the king. Come hither then, sweet bird of night, For we will share no sluggard's plight Nor sleep away the hours; But, till the rosy break of day Chase from these woods the night away, God's praise shall still be ours."

Now while this song did last it seemed to me as if nightingale, owl, and echo had of a truth joined therein, and had I ever heard the morning star or had been able to play its melody on my bagpipe, I had surely run out of the hut to take my trick also, so sweet did this harmony seem to me: yet I fell asleep again and woke not till day was far advanced, when the hermit stood before me and said, "Up, child, I will give thee to eat and thereafter shew thee the way through the wood, so that thou comest to where people dwell, and also before night to the nearest village."

So I asked him, what be these things, "people" and "village"?

"What," says he, "hast never been in any village and knowest not what people or folks be?"

"Nay," said I, "nowhere save here have I been: yet tell me what be these things, folk and people and village."

"God save us," answered the hermit, "art thou demented or very cunning?"

"Nay," said I, "I am my mammy's and dad's boy, and neither Master Demented nor Master Cunning."

Then the hermit shewed his amazement with sighs and crossing of himself, and says he, "'Tis well, dear child, I am determined if God will better to instruct thee."

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