Page:Foreign Tales and Traditions (Volume 2).djvu/399

Rh father’s Dance’ which, till within these few years, was always played at our weddings. Whenever Master Wilibald struck up this tune, the proudest spinsters in Neisse would have blushed to have sat still,—old stiff-jointed matrons footed it as deftly as their grand-daughters,—and silver-haired grand-fathers leapt up and whirled about with the youngest of their descendants. It was these rejuvenescent properties of this marvellous melody which obtained for it the name of ‘the Grandfather’s Dance.’

A young man lived with Master Wilibald, who, though a painter by profession, was generally thought to be the son or foster-son of the old bagpiper. But the musician’s art all at once lost its effect upon this youth, who remained thoughtful and melancholy even when Wilibald was playing his most lively and mirth-inspiring tunes in the same room with him. It soon became evident that there was a sound cause for this. The youth was in love. Emma, the mayor’s daughter, had captivated his heart; and the poor youth was so desperately over head and ears in this his first passion, that he could think of nothing else but his fair one. And she, to say the truth, loved him as heartily as ever bashful maid loved handsome youth; but then her father was in the way; he was a proud, consequential, overbearing man,—ever alive to the dignities of his municipal office, and as vain of his pretty daughter as a father could be.

Piper Wilibald saw and marked all this, and from time to time promised to assist the love-sick youth in his distress. But he found great difficulty in setting about the affair. At one time he thought of exhibiting to the good citizens of Neisse a new Oberon and Pappageno in the persons of himself and the mayor, and to make the consent of the latter to his daughter’s marriage with Wido the condition of his release from the musical spell which he designed to cast over him. At another, like a second Orpheus, he proposed to draw away the bride by the enchanting force of his melody from her father’s home. But Wido constantly objected to these very