class="x-ebookmaker-pageno" title="[17]"/> drifting down the stream on their timber, their sorrow in wandering back again along the shore. Hence the difference in their costume from that of the glass manufacturers. They wear jackets of a dark linen cloth, braces a hand-breadth wide, displayed over the chest, and trousers of black leather, from the pocket of which a brass rule sticks out as a badge of honour; but their pride and joy are their boots, which are probably the largest that are worn in any part of the world, for they may be drawn two spans above the knee, and the raftsmen may walk about in water at three feet depth without getting their feet wet.

It is but a short time ago that the belief in hobgoblins of the wood prevailed among the inhabitants, this foolish superstition having been eradicated only in modern times. But the singularity about these hobgoblins who are said to haunt the Schwarzwald, is, that they also wear the different costumes of the people. Thus it is affirmed of the Little Glass Man, a kind little sprite three feet and a half high, that he never shows himself except in a painted little hat with a broad brim, a doublet, white trousers, and red stockings; while Dutch Michel, who haunts the other side of the forest, is said to be a gigantic, broad-shouldered fellow wearing the dress of a raftsman; and many who have seen him say they would not like to pay for the calves whose hides it would require to make one pair of his boots, affirming that, without exaggeration, a man of the middle height may stand in one of them with his head only just peeping out.

The following strange adventure with these spirits is said to have once befallen a young Schwarzwälder:—There lived a widow in the Schwarzwald whose name was Frau Barbara Munk; her husband had been a charcoal-burner, and after his death she had by degrees prevailed upon her boy, who was now sixteen years old, to follow his father’s trade. Young Peter Munk, a sly fellow, submitted to sit the whole week near the smoking stack of wood, because he had seen his father do the same; or, black and sooty and an abomination to the people as he was, to drive to the nearest town and sell his charcoal. Now a charcoal-burner has much leisure for reflection, about himself and others; and when Peter Munk was sitting by his stack, the dark trees around him, as well as the deep stillness of the forest, disposed his heart to tears, and to an unknown secret longing. Something made him sad, and vexed him, without his knowing exactly what it was. At length, however, he found out the cause of his vexation,—it was his condition. ‘A black, solitary charcoal-burner,’ he said to himself; ‘it is a wretched life. How much more are the glass manufacturers, and the clock-makers regarded; and even the musicians, on a Sunday evening! And when Peter Munk appears washed, clean, and dressed out in his father’s best jacket with the silver buttons and bran-new red stockings—if then, any one walking behind him, thinks to himself, “I wonder who that smart fellow is?” admiring, all the time, my stockings and stately gait;—if then, I say, he passes me and looks round, will he not say, “Why, it is only Peter Munk, the charcoal-burner”?’

The raftsmen also on the other side of the wood were an object of envy to him. When these giants of the forest came over in their splendid clothes, wearing about their bodies half a hundredweight of silver, either in buckles, buttons, or chains, standing with sprawling legs and consequential look to see the dancing, swearing in Dutch, and smoking Cologne clay pipes a yard long, like the most noble Mynheers, then he pictured to himself such a raftsman as the most perfect model of human happiness. But when these fortunate men put their hands into their pocket, pulled out handfuls of thalers and staked a Sechsbätzner piece upon the cast of a die, throwing their five or ten florins to and fro, he was almost mad and sneaked sorrowfully home to his hut. Indeed he had seen some of these gentlemen of the timber trade, on many a holy-day evening, lose more than his poor old father had gained in the whole year. There were three of these men in particular of whom he knew not which to admire most. The one was a tall stout man with ruddy face, who passed for the richest man in the neighbourhood; he was usually called ‘fat Hezekiel.’ Twice every year he went with timber to Amsterdam, and had the good luck to sell it so much dearer than the others that he could return home in a splendid carriage, while they had to walk. The second was the tallest and leanest man in the whole Wald, and was usually called ‘the tall Schlurker’; it was his extraordinary boldness that excited Munk’s envy, for he contradicted people of the first importance, took up more room than four stout men, no matter how crowded the inn might be, setting either both his elbows upon the table, or drawing one of his long legs on the bench; yet, notwithstanding all this, none dared to oppose him, since he had a prodigious quantity of money. The third was a handsome young fellow, who being the best dancer far around, was called ‘the king of the dancing-room.’ Originally poor, he had been servant to one of the timber merchants, when all at once he became immensely rich; for which some accounted by saying he had found a potful of money under an old pine tree, while others asserted that he had fished up in the Rhine, near Bingen, a packet of gold coins with the spear which these raftsmen sometimes throw at the fish as they go along in the river, that packet being part of the great ‘Niebelungenhort,’ which is sunk there. However this might be, the fact of his suddenly becoming rich caused him to be looked upon as a prince by young and old.

Often did poor Peter Munk the coal-burner think of these three men when sitting alone in the pine forest. All three indeed had one great fault, which made them hated by everybody; this was their insatiable avarice, their heartlessness towards their debtors and towards the poor, for the Schwarzwälder are naturally a kind-hearted people. However, we all know how it is in these matters; though they were hated for their avarice, yet they commanded respect on account of their money, for who but they could throw away thalers, as if they could shake them from the pines?

‘This will do no longer,’ said Peter one day to himself, when he felt very melancholy, it being the morrow after a holiday, when everybody had been at the inn; ‘if I don’t soon thrive I shall make away with myself; oh that I were as much looked up to and as rich as the stout Hezekiel, or as bold and powerful as the tall Schlurker, or as renowned as the king of the dancing-room, and could, like him, throw thalers instead of kreutzers to the musicians! I wonder where the fellow gets his money!’ Reflecting upon all the different means by which money may be got, he could please himself with none, till at length he thought of the tales of those people who, in times of old, had become rich through the Dutchman Michel, or the Little Glass Man. During his father’s lifetime other poor people often came to call, and then their conversation was generally about rich persons, and the means by which they had come by their riches; in these discourses the Little Glass Man frequently played a conspicuous part. Now, if Peter strained his memory a little, he could almost recall the short verse which one must repeat near the Tannenbühl in the heart of the forest, to make the sprite appear. It began as follows—