and his mists bedim my eyes. In mouldy tombs my friends are lying; I alone am left behind, like a solitary stalk forgotten by the reaper. A new race has blossomed into life, with new wishes and new thoughts. Full of surprise, I hear new names and new songs; the old ones are forgotten, and I too am forgotten, honoured by few, despised by many, but loved by none! And rosy-cheeked children run to me and press into my trembling hands the old harp, and say unto me with laughter, "Thou hast been long time silent, lazy greybeard; sing again to us the songs of the dreams of thy youth." Then I take the harp, and old joys and old sorrows re-awaken; the mists are dissolved, tears flow once more from my dead eyes, it is spring-time again in my heart; I see again the blue stream, and the marble palaces, and the fair matron and maiden faces; and I sing a song of the flowers of Brenta. It will be my last song; the stars look upon me as in the nights of my youth; the enamoured moonlight again kisses my cheeks; the spirit choir of the dead nightingales warbles from out the distance; sleep-drunk, my eyelids close, my soul dies away with the tones of my harp; sweet odours are exhaled from the flowers of Brenta. A tree will overshadow my grave. I had wished a palm, but it grows not in our cold north. Let it be a linden, and of summer evenings lovers will sit and caress beneath it. The greenfinch, listening from amid the swaying branches, is silent, and my linden murmurs in sympathetic manner over the heads of the lovers who are so happy that they have not time even to read the writing on my white gravestone. But afterwards, when the lover has lost his maiden, then will he to the well-known linden and sigh and weep, and look long and often upon the gravestone, and read thereon the writing-" He loved the flowers of Brenta." And Heine either could borrow an idea boldly, or else, sometimes, he was original too late. In Mr. Snodgrass's admirable volume, we find him giving, at p. 209, the axiom, "Against stupidity the gods themselves combat in vain" ("Gegen die Dummheit kämpfen die Götter selbst vergebens "); but if Heine was not then consciously quoting without acknowledgment, how chagrined heeven he must have been, on turning over, some day, the pages of Schiller's "Jungfrau von Orleans," to come on this line in one of the speeches of Talbot: "Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens." Verily, 'tis hard to be original; and from this little. coincidence the honest struggler in literature may indeed take heart. ALEX. H. JAPP. 79 Ο NIGHTMARE. NE of the most disagreeable sensations to which the flesh is heir is popularly styled nightmare. Indeed, there are few persons who have not, at some time or other, experienced that terrible feeling of suffocation or oppression which has rendered them absolutely powerless, when apparently awake, to resist the attack of some malevolent spectre or threatening foe, or to escape from some imminent danger. In spite of every effort and struggle, the victims of such delusive fancies have been obliged to remain completely passive even their very tongue, for the time being, refusing to assist them in their cry for help. Thus, by way of illustration, it may be remembered how a patient of Galen felt the cold sensation of a marble statue having been put into bed with him, and how Conrad Gesner fancied that he had been stung in the left breast by a serpent. It is impossible, moreover, to say how many of those weird and thrilling ghost-stories which credulous mortals would have us credit may be attributed to the same cause-the dreamer when in this condition imagining himself not asleep, a delusion which even on awaking he oftentimes cannot discard. It is not surprising, therefore, that this highly unpleasant disturber of our night's slumbers should have been invested with a most extensive folk-lore, and given rise both in this and other countries to a variety of curious traditions, a brief survey of which it is proposed to give in the present paper. In the first place, then, it may be noted that many of the superstitious beliefs attached to nightmare are distinct survivals of those primitive efforts which were made by our early forefathers to account for the various phenomena which confronted them in their daily life. Fully cognisant of the difficulties with which these were beset, they nevertheless assigned theories for their elucidation; and however unscientific and childish these may appear to us in this advanced age, yet it must be remembered that knowledge was then limited, and man had not reached that state of civilisation which, by a gradual process of evolution, has unveiled to us at the present day the meaning of many of those problems which relate to human life. In dealing, therefore, with the origin and history of those eccentric notions and odd legends with which nightmare has been surrounded, we must recognise them as so many attempts made from time to time to unravel and explain the cause of this nocturnal intruder. Referring to the term nightmare, it must not be supposed that it has any reference to the horse, the mare meaning spirit, elf, or nymph. Thus, in Germany, the nightmare, or "night-hag," is popularly known as the "alp," i.e. elf. Among, too, its provincial names is "mahrt," or "mahr," different forms of a word which has no relation whatever to the equine species, but is identical with the Sanscrit marut. We may also compare the expression with the Anglo-Saxon "wudumore" (wood-mare), which is equivalent to "echo." Indeed, as soon as we recognise the true meaning of nightmare as meaning a "night-spirit," or "night-elf," we have the key to the right interpretation of many of those otherwise obscure superstitions and legends which in such large numbers have interwoven themselves around this curious phenomenon. Thus the once popular theory, to account for this painful derangement oftentimes of the digestive organs, was founded on the notion that certain female demons were in the habit of coming at night-time and tormenting men and women by crouching on their chests and stopping their respiration. As, too, these fiends were supposed to be gifted with supernatural qualities-being able, like Proteus of old, to change themselves in an instant into various forms-they eluded the recognition of their victims, and in their disguised shape practised with comparative ease their mischievous tricks. Hence, however anxious any one might be to discover and frustrate the influence of such an unwelcome trespasser, it was generally of little avail, as the unfortunate sufferer was nearly always overmatched by the insidious craftiness of his midnight foe. It is, too, interesting to note that at the present day in many parts of Germany we find this explanation given to account for the nightmare; and, as we shall have occasion to show, the peasantry still practise sundry charms and incantations to ward off any interference on the part of these imaginary beings. Among these, one of the forms in which the nightmare has been supposed to make its way at night into the chamber of slumber is in that of a cat. Thus, we are told of a joiner in Bühl who was much plagued with the nightmare, and night after night was subjected to the most unmerciful treatment at its hands. At last, however, he 2 1 See Tylor's Primitive Culture, 1873, ii. 189. Kelly's Indo-European Folk-Lore, 1863, 240. Fiske's Myths and Myth-makers, 1873, 91. See Brand's Popular Antiquities, 1849, iii. 279-280. saw his foe secretly steal into his room in the form of a cat, about midnight. Having stopped up, first of all, the hole through which it had made its entry, he next proceeded to catch the animal, and to make its capture a complete certainty he nailed it by one paw to the floor. On awaking, however, in the morning, much to his surprise and alarm, he discovered in the place of the cat a beautiful young woman with a nail driven through her hand. Attracted by her charms, he married her, and in process of time they had three children. One day, however, he uncovered the hole which he had stopped up, when, much to his dismay and consternation, she instantly resumed the shape of a cat, and escaped through it never to return again. Stories, indeed, of this kind are very extensive, and under various forms are found scattered here and there in different parts of the Continent. The cat, also, it may be remembered, has from time immemorial been one of the most favourite forms which the witch tribe is fond of assuming.2 On this account, in years gone by, it was subjected to every kind of ill-treatment at the hands of the ignorant and superstitious classes; and among the cruel usages to which it was exposed may be mentioned the following, which is alluded to by Shakespeare in "Much Ado About Nothing" (act i. sc. 1), where Benedick says:— Hang me in a bottle like a cat, and shoot at me. It appears that the poor animal was enclosed in a cask with a quantity of soot, suspended on a line, and the person who was clever enough to knock out the bottom of the cask as he ran under it, and yet escape its contents, was considered the hero of the game. Referring, however, to the many stories in which witches have disguised themselves as cats to carry out their fiendish designs, may be noticed the following one :-A woodman out working in the forest has his dinner every day stolen by a cat, when at last, exasperated at the continued repetition of the theft, he lies in wait for the aggressor, and succeeds in cutting off his paw, when, lo, on his return home, he finds his wife minus a hand.3 Again, an honest Yorkshireman, who fed pigs, often lost his young ones. On applying to a certain wise woman, he was informed that they were bewitched by an old woman who had lived near. The owner of the pigs, remembering that he had often seen a cat prowling about his yard, decided that this was the old woman in disguise. He accordingly watched for her, and as soon 'See Thorpe's Northern Mythology, 1851, ii. 32-35. See Brand's Popular Antiquities, 1849, iii. 7, 38-39. Sternberg's Dialect and Folk-Lore of Northamptonshire, 1879, 206. as she made her appearance flung at her a poker with all his might. The cat instantly disappeared, but, curiously enough, the poor old woman in question that night fell and broke her leg. This was considered as conclusive that she was the witch who had simulated the form of a cat. To quote one further example, we are told that witches are adepts in the art of brewing, and therefore fond of tasting what their neighbours brew. On these occasions they generally masquerade as cats, and what they steal they consume on the spot. There was a countryman whose beer was all drunk up by night whenever he brewed, so that he finally resolved for once to sit up all night and watch. As he was standing by his brewing-pan, a number of cats made their appearance, and calling them to him he said, "Come, puss, puss, come, warm you a bit." Thereupon they formed themselves in a circle round the fire as if to warm themselves. After a time he asked them if the water was hot. "Just on the boil," they replied. And as he spoke he dipped his long-handled pail into the wort and soused the whole company with it. They all vanished at once, but on the following day his wife had a terribly scalded face, which was of itself sufficient evidence to convince him who it was that had always drunk his beer. This story is widely prevalent, and is current among the Flemish-speaking natives of Belgium. In the majority of these stories the sequel is much the same as in that of the joiner of Bühl; the injury done to the witchanimal being apparent on the witch resuming again her accustomed form. Thus, to give a further example, in a village near Riesenburg, in East Prussia, there was a girl who, unknown to herself, was every night transformed into a black cat. In the morning she generally felt exhausted as after a heavy dream; but the fact was that in her transformed state she was in the habit of visiting her betrothed lover, whom she scratched and tormented. One night, however, he caught the cat and tied it up in a sack, in which on the following morning he found, instead of the cat, his lady-love. Again, the nightmare is also supposed to make its appearance occasionally in the form of a toad; which is one reason, no doubt, why there is such a deep antipathy to this harmless animal. Thus one of our master bards has likened the evil spirit, it may be remembered, to a toad, as a semblance of all that is devilish and disagreeable :— Him they found, Squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve, 1 Thorpe's Northern Mythology, iii. 32. |