Page:The Literary Magnet 1824 vol 2.djvu/190

 am tired of the whims thy folly obliged me to perform. Thou hast now acquired experience enough fully to comprehend, that nobody should calculate, or at least ground, his designs on the goodness of human nature, even if he himself should be too good to lose entirely his belief in the goodness of others. I, for my own part, would not rely upon the fulfilment of my last request to thee, if thine own interest would not induce thee to its performance. When I am dead, be careful to see that my old bag-pipe is buried with me. To detain it would be of no use to thee, but it may be the cause of thy happiness, if it is laid under ground with me.” Wido promised to observe strictly the last commands of his old friend, who shortly after closed his eyes. Scarcely had the report of Master Wilibald’s sudden death spread, when old and young came to ascertain the truth. The Mayor was more pleased with this turn of the affair than any other; for the indifference with which the prisoner had received the news of his approaching promotion to the funeral-pile, induced his Worship to suppose, the old bag-piper might some fine day be found invisible in his prison, or rather be found not there at all; or the cunning wizard, being at the stake, might have caused a whisp of straw to burn instead of his person, to the eternal shame of the court of Neisse. He therefore ordered the corpse to be buried as speedily as possible, as no sentence to burn the body had yet been pronounced. An unhallowed corner of the churchyard, close to the wall, was the place assigned for poor Wilibald’s resting-place. The jailor, as the lawful heir of the deceased prisoner, having examined his property, asked what should become of the bagpipe, as a corpus delicti.

Wido, who was present, was on the point to make his request, when the Mayor, full of zeal, thus pronounced his sentence: “To avoid every possible mischief, this wicked, worthless tool shall be buried together with its master.” So they put it into the coffin at the side of the corpse, and early in the morning pipe and piper were carried away and buried. But strange things happened in the following night. The watchmen on the tower were looking out, according to the custom of the age, to give the alarm in case of fire in the surrounding country, when about midnight, they saw, by the light of the moon, Master Wilibald rising of his tomb near the church-yard wall. He held his bag-pipe under his arm, and leaning against a high tomb-stone, upon which the moon shed her brightest rays, he began to blow, and fingered the pipes, just as he was accustomed to do when he was alive.

Whilst the watchmen, astonished at this sight, gazed wisely on one another, many other graves opened; their skeleton-inhabitants peeped out with their bare sculls, looked about, nodded to the measure, rose afterwards wholly out of their coffins, and moved their rattling limbs into a nimble dance. At the church-windows, and the grates of the vaults, other empty eye-holes stared on the dancing place: the withered arms began to shake the iron gates, till locks and bolts sprung off, and out came the skeletons, eager to mingle in the dance of the dead. Now the light dancers stilted about, over the hillocks and tombstones, and whirled around in a merry waltz, that the shrouds waved in the wind about the fleshless limbs, until the church-clock struck twelve,