Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 8.pdf/408

400[September 7, 1872.] country town, these motley and varied fellow-creatures of mine share the Willowfleet and its banks between them.





“ course,” remarked Maximilian, “you are familiar with the plot of Weber’s opera, Der Freischütz?”

“Certainly,” replied Laurence. “Kind, the author of the libretto, founded it upon a story written by Apel, as one of a collection of tales, which was very popular about half a century ago, and was called, I think, the Wunderbuch, or Book of Wonders. He so far departed from Apel that he made the piece end happily, instead of terminating it with the death of the bride.”

“My reason for referring to the subject,” proceeded Maximilian, “is this, that although the figure of a Freischütz, that is to say, a hunter who derives his skill from the black art, is common enough in the annals of German superstition, the precise condition of the charmed bullets in the opera seem to have been devised by modern imagination only, and to have no foundation in popular belief.”

“Let me see,” said Edgar, counting his fingers; “the bullets were to be cast at midnight, and in addition to lead—let me be accurate—some broken glass from a church window, some quicksilver, three bullets that had already hit the mark, the left eye of a lynx, and the right eye of an owl, were to enter into the composition.”

“All mere fancy!” ejaculated Maximilian.

“Nay,” objected Laurence, “if we criticise such minute details, we shall never accept any record of a tradition whatever. No one supposes, I imagine, that the long list of ingredients mentioned by the witches in Macbeth, was derived by Shakespeare from a recipe bequeathed by some actual sorceress. Nevertheless, we may opine that the deeds and words of the weird sisters represent a state of popular belief, according to which ill-favoured hags prepared charms in a cauldron, compounding them of ingredients of an evil nature.”

“And that such a belief existed even in the times of antiquity, not, however, implying that a witch was necessarily old or ill-favoured, is known to every schoolboy,” exclaimed Edgar. “What are you driving at, Maximilian?”

“I perceive that I spoke a little too soon,” said Maximilian. “So pass over the foul ingredients which compose what Shakespeare calls the ‘gruel,’ and come to the particular property of the bullets cast in the opera. They must be seven in number, and the first six that are fired off will obey the will of the marksman, whereas the seventh is subjected to the direction of the fiend Zamiel, who in Apel’s tale uses it to kill the huntsman’s bride.”

“True,” said Laurence, “and this exceptional distinction of the seventh bullet gives an exceptional character to the story. In most traditions respecting compacts with powers of darkness, we find the human bargainer selling his hope of salvation to the Fiend, but here the right to direct the seventh bullet seems to be a sufficient price for the Evil One’s assistance.”

“The peculiarity is indeed interesting,” observed Edgar.

“The peculiarity would be extremely interesting,” said Maximilian, “if we could trace it to popular tradition; but unfortunately we cannot do anything of the kind. Doctor Grässe, a most laborious collector of legends, especially of those connected with the chase, declares in his Hunter’s Breviary (Jäger-Brevier) that in all his researches he has never found a legend of a Freischütz in which such a distinction is assigned to a particular bullet. He therefore supposes that it had its origin in the imagination of Apel.”

“And a very clever fellow Apel must have been,” exclaimed Laurence.

“The genuine legends of the Freischütz—that is to say, the Free-shooter, who is sometimes called the Freijäger or Free-hunter—are far less complicated. Thus we read of a hunter who lived near Ravenberg, in Baden, towards the end of the last century, and was never known to miss a mark. This power he had acquired, it was thought, by kneeling on a cloth and firing three free-shots—one at the sun, another at the moon, and the third at heaven itself. Three drops of blood had fallen from the sky in consequence, and after death the spirit of the hunter haunted the forest until it was exorcised into a sack. Similar in principle is the legend of the so-called Eternal Hunter of Treudenstadt, in the Wirtemberg territory, who on either Christmas or Good Friday fired at the sun, and collected in a handkerchief the blood which fell. With this he anointed his bullets, and thus rendered them sure of hitting any mark he chose. When his stock was exhausted he shot again at the sun, and obtained a new supply. He also used to wander after his death.” 