—from Then and Now – Opus 1, No.3: ‘Interpretations’

By W. D. JACKSON.

“Benedick: Like the old tale, my lord: ‘It is not so, nor ’twas not so: but indeed, God forbid it should be so!’”
– Much Ado About Nothing, I.i.200-201

“The thief cometh not but to steal and to kill and to destroy. I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.”
– John X.10

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AROUND 1800 IN the township of Hanau, amid the great forests of Hessen in Central Germany, Marie Hassenpflug, then about twelve years of age, must have heard a folk-tale (or Märchen) – there was no printed version at that time – which she later told (with a number of others) to her brothers-in-law, Wilhelm and Jakob Grimm, who included it as “No.40″ in their Kinder- und Hausmärchen (1812-14), under the title of Der Räuberbräutigam (“The Robber Bridegroom”). From the 2nd edition (1819) of the Märchen onwards Marie’s tale was combined with material gathered from three other story-tellers – and in this form it is known today. “The Robber Bridegroom” has many recorded analogues throughout Europe. The version mentioned by Benedick was already “old” in 1598; another seems to have been current in seventeenth and eighteenth century England; and Dickens claimed that the trivialized variant in ch. xv of The Uncommercial Traveller (1861) was told him by his nurse. The Grimms’ tale (one of their best written) is unusually horrible – almost sacrilegious – and “The Bride’s Story” elaborates on this:

In Hanau, on the Kinzig, there once lived
A miller, born in Frankfurt, who had thrived
Away from home – become, in fact, so rich
That of all millers on the river, which
Had more than twenty mills, he took the cake.
His daughter was a handsome girl, who’d make
A wife as staunch and sweet as any man’s.
But only wealthy suitors stood a chance;
Her dad was vulgar, greedy, and a tyrant,
Which cooled the love of more than one aspirant.

At last she met by some unhappy chance
At Hanau’s yearly Harvest Festival dance
A certain Captain Fox, who’d bought a house,
Left vacant in the deepest darkest Bulau’s
Pathless interior – a place for fattening swine.
His father lived in Frankfurt on the Main;
The miller knew the name: Well-heeled, he thought.
The property was large – just what he’d sought.
Although the rumour was he’d been a pirate,
With ready cash Fox easily acquired it.

– A much-feared robber on the Spanish Main,
A captain who’d enjoyed inflicting pain –
Or worse – on culprits… The tales, of course, were many
And gory. Fox had made a pretty penny,
Everyone knew. And brought it home with him.
His manner was forbidding, if not grim.
The miller liked him – soon he came to woo
The daughter, who was told to like him too.
A plucky girl, she was not weak or weepy.
But as for Captain Fox, she found him creepy.

Her father remonstrated. And she had
Always obeyed him until now – felt bad
About not wanting to do something he
Insisted on so energetically;
So went to ask the parish priest’s advice.
The miller seldom prayed, but found it nice
That she did. His family had been Huguenots,
Her mother’s Roman Catholics: these were pious, those
Preferred their pie on the table. Before she died.
Her mother made her promise: Be brave, be good.

“Honour thy father and thy mother,” said
The priest – “in life, and after they are dead.
Unless, that is, some just impediment
Arises, which may rightfully prevent
A child from doing what it’s asked to do…”
And so they were betrothed, although she knew
Something was wrong. Maria was her name:
She also pondered – “What, though…?” All the same,
Whenever Captain Fox arrived to greet her
She thought he looked as if he’d like to eat her.

One day he almost smiled: she’d not yet seen
The house in which she’d shortly be his queen:
“Let’s have – why not? – a secret rendezvous.”
He licked his lips: “Just me, the house, and you.
I’m sure you’ll find it all a big surprise.”
He looked at her with strange, unfeeling eyes:
“Next week is Easter week. Will Wednesday do?”
She couldn’t find a reason to say no.
He’d meet her at the footbridge by the river.
Thinking of this next day, she started to quiver…

By Tuesday, though, she also thought Why not?
Perhaps she’d know then more exactly what
Her intuition told her was not right.
Or was she wrong about him? Awake in the night,
She was afraid of tales dismissed by day.
On Wednesday late wet snow fell, blocking the way
To the narrow bridge – on which he’d pinned a note
The night before, however, in his neat
But spiky hand… No one must see him show her
The primrose path to her pre-bridal bower…

Next day she was alone and – feeling bored –
Decided, since the snow had mostly thawed,
To find the house herself – she was sure she could,
And rode along the Kinzig into the wood…
April. The sun went in. But she could see
His note like a white bird nailed to a black tree.
– “Be bold, ride on,” it said: “turn right – left – right.
The Fox will see his fiancée home tonight!”
The clouds were grey with snow. The wind howled coldly.
But she was curious now, and set off boldly.

Across the bridge the track led on and on
Into the ancient forest. She had gone
Much further than she’d ever been before
When all at once a house with a green door
Appeared between the trees, and the path stopped.
The door swung on its hinges. Her heart hopped.
The building was small and derelict. How could
So broken-down a place, so deep in the wood,
With cobwebbed chairs and tables, empty boxes
And rubble on the floor, be Captain Fox’s?

He’d said he spent a lot of time at home.
But here? Impossible! Still, since she’d come,
Why not inspect the premises? Bereft
Of occupants, the house had long been left –
Sadly, she thought – to moulder and collapse.
Once full of life – a hunters’ lodge, perhaps –
Only birds, bugs and spiders lodged there now
And snow blew in and dust blew out – although
The door was freshly painted. Also, pale yellow
Firelight came flickering up the steps from the cellar.

Frightened, she gasped. But, then, crept slowly down.
A bent old crone was cooking. With a groan
She asked Maria why, of her own free will,
She’d come to that infernal place. She still
Had time to escape; but when Herr Fuchs returned…
Beneath a blackened pot a red fire burned,
Boiling what looked like joints of salted pork:
She’d seen pigs’ bones and ashes round the back.
– Suddenly, though, gruff curses! frantic screaming!…
In later years, what followed seemed like dreaming

Nightmare on nightmare – which she couldn’t shake
Her mind or body free of: wide awake,
She pinched her forearm purple making sure.
The old woman hid her. Frail, unwell, and poor,
Unable to escape from Fox on her own,
She’d always been the cook there – had stayed on,
After the hunters left. But, small and light,
She lay in staunch Maria’s lap that night
And both rode quickly home. His drunken snorting
And sated grunts accompanied their parting.

“Once a thief…” pre-judges – but the old saying
Made sense next day when it struck Maria, praying
In church, that Fox’s tic had given her proof
Of what he’d done and might do… She was safe
And sound at home, but others lived in danger.
He was, for most young girls, a tall, dark stranger
Who’d bought a house nearby not long ago.
A milkmaid and a chambermaid were two
She’d known from church, supposed to have “left the area”.
But now she feared the truth was much, much scarier.

The pile of bones and ashes, the old woman told her,
Were not a pig’s. At first this made her bolder:
What to do now about her coming marriage?
And Friday in church restored her former courage.
But then the things she’d seen made her feel sick
All over again. Was he mad? Could he be Satanic –
An Anti-Christ? Once more she asked the priest –
Who feared he was an unregenerate Beast…
Would this thief ever change?… Meanwhile, his duty
Must be to help maltreated – brave – shocked Beauty.

He praised her pious virtue. Every Sunday
She went to Mass, and sang in the choir. On Mondays,
Attended Morning Prayer or Evensong…
And so her spirit was willing, her flesh strong –
And so as well, he thought, still felt so shocked.
“A deeply ruthless brute. But God is not mocked:
What each man sows, that shall he also reap.”
– A widely travelled padre, his flesh would creep
Still, he confided, at how he’d once converted
To Christian rites minds almost as perverted

As Fox’s – who, perhaps, had learned to kill
And cook in that same region of Brazil
Where he had laboured many years before,
Where tribes of Tupi, constantly at war
With one another, ate each other’s leaders:
Such heroes’ flesh, they thought, was sent to feed us –
And all its strength and courage, they believed,
Became one’s own: whoever took received.
The weak were burned or buried – never eaten.
Their hide was used for wiping unclean feet on.

It was, in other words, an honour if
Your corpse was prized more highly than your life.
– “I was, at first, as horrified and shocked
By this as you… But my mind, at last, unblocked –
In church, to be exact, while saying Mass.
Soon many Tupis’ greatest hero was
Our Lord, whose god-like virtues were so great
That, there and then, they thought, whoever ate
The blessed bread and drank the wine became
More virtuous, strong and godlike through His name.

This turned things upside down, of course, to put
It mildly. Not instantly, or simply. But
A new commandment I give unto you…
Helped change their fundamental point of view.
And Greater love hath no man than to lay
His life down for his friends turned darkness to day:
He took the cup and gave it them and said
This is my blood – now and forever shed
For many. Took the bread – blessed – broke – and gave it:
To save your life is to lose it – lose it, save it.

They understood, at least, that they and He
Interpreted the world so differently
That their way led to never-ending Death
Whereas He breathed the everlasting breath
Of life into the nostrils of all people.
By the time I left they’d raised a modest steeple
Out of the jungle into the deep blue
Of where they thought He’d come from and gone to –
As fearless in His dying as in His living:
Taking was now subsumed in natural giving.”

– Fox, though, was neither natural nor a part
Of unresponsive things-without-a-heart.
His ruthless pirate habits seemed ingrained,
His appetites never to have been restrained
By thoughts of loving-kindness: he took pleasure
In taking – things / lives / bodies – without measure
Or mercy – as if, in Holy Week, to defile
Easter itself. The more you tried to unveil
A mind as dangerous, mad and bad as Fox’s was,
The more it seemed inhuman, heartless, noxious…

All this being more than enough impediment
And cause why not to marry him, they spent
Saturday thinking what they should do next…
– Why marry her? The answer to this vexed
Issue appeared to be: he’d been unable
To get her on the lodge’s kitchen table
In any other way. He knew she went
To church, and that the holy sacrament
Of matrimony enjoined her to obey him…
“He’ll go berserk,” she groaned, “when I betray him.”

– “I fear that all you’ll get ’s a flat denial…
He’ll also find, I think, the chance to defile
A sacred vow impossible to resist –
And so won’t give up easily.” – “But he must
Be stopped!” – “Yes, yes, my child – but how?” – “There’s proof
Of what he did” – and showed him… He gaped. “The truth
Will out,” was all he said.
……………………………………Soon after, they
Attended the Welcome Party of her three-day
Wedding, with friends and family. Her rich father
Talked shop. There was much gossip, and much blather –

Until her oldest friends began to tell
Stories about her as a child – how well
She could climb trees – play football – read and write –
Tell Märchen, which were told her every night
By her mother’s mother, a well-known Märchenfrau
Who’d scared her sometimes, reminding her of how
Mama had died in childbirth – she’d only known
A portrait of her, dressed in her wedding gown…
“Tell us one now, my child,” the priest suggested.
“Yes, tell us one, tell us one now!” they all requested.

“Why not?” she murmured: “A tale you’ve never heard –
A little gruesome, but please don’t be scared.
‘All’s well that ends well’, my grandmother said;
It was and is not so – and God forbid
Our lives should ever be a ‘horror story’!”
Fox almost smiled to think how much more gory
Real life could be. No one told tales of him
As a boy. His father, and a sister, had not come
From Frankfurt. And no one dared repeat a rumour,
Or crack a joke. He was not known for his humour…

Maria’s ‘Märchen’

“In Hanau, on the Kinzig, there once lived
A miller, born in Frankfurt, who had thrived
Away from home – become, in fact, so rich
That of all millers on the river, which
Had more than twenty mills, he took the cake…
A Märchen ’s just a Märchen, father. Take
My story how you will, no story’s real.”
– “And yet they can resemble – help reveal –
Whatever happened,” the priest pontificated.
Maria’s girlfriends giggled – whispered – waited…

“One day the miller’s daughter met by chance
At Hanau’s yearly Harvest Festival dance
A certain Captain Wolf, who’d bought a house,
Left vacant in the deepest darkest Bulau’s
Pathless interior – a place for fattening swine…
My dear, the story isn’t yours – or mine.
And anything may happen any time…
Whoever heard real people talk in rhyme?
– The miller knew the family: Rich, he thought…
The house was just the lair that Wolf had sought –

And though the rumour was he’d been a pirate,
With cash in hand he easily acquired it.
– A much-feared robber on the Spanish Main,
A captain who’d enjoyed inflicting pain –
Or worse – on culprits… The tales, of course, were many
And gory. Wolf had made a pretty penny:
The miller liked him. When he came to woo
The daughter, she was told to like him too.
This girl was neither timid, weak nor weepy.
But as for Captain Wolf, she found him creepy.

Her father remonstrated. And she had
Always obeyed him until now – felt bad
About not wanting to do something he
Insisted on so energetically;
So went to ask her parish priest’s advice.
The miller seldom prayed, but found it nice
That she did… His family had been Huguenots –
Like yours, dear father, and the story knows
They like their pie on the table… Before she died.
Her Catholic mother blessed her: Be brave, be good.”

– “ ‘Honour thy father and thy mother,’ ” said
The priest – “ ‘in life, and after they are dead.’
– Excuse me, but that’s what all priests would say.
And instruct her to confess her sins and pray…
Unless, that is, some just impediment
Arose – which might, then, rightfully prevent
Her doing what her father asked her to…”
– “And so they were betrothed, although she knew
Something was wrong. When Wolf arrived to greet her
She thought he looked as if he’d like to eat her…

One day he almost smiled: she’d not yet seen
The house in which she’d shortly be his queen:
“Let’s have – why not? – a secret rendezvous.”
He licked his lips: “Just me, the house, and you.”
And looked at her with strange, unfeeling eyes.
Which may or may not come as a surprise,
Dearest… – “Next week is Easter. Will Wednesday do?”
She couldn’t find a reason to say no.
He’d meet her at the footbridge by the river.
Thinking of this next day, she started to quiver…

By Tuesday, though, she also thought ‘Why not?’
Perhaps she’d know then more exactly what
Her intuition told her was not right.
Or was she wrong about him? Awake in the night,
She was afraid of tales dismissed by day.
On Wednesday late wet snow fell, blocking the way
To the narrow bridge – on which he’d pinned a note
The night before, however, in his neat
But spiky hand… No one must see him show her
The primrose path to her pre-bridal bower…

Next day she was alone and – feeling bored –
Decided, since the snow had mostly thawed,
To find the house herself – she was sure she could,
And rode along the Kinzig into the wood…
April. The sun went in. But she could see
His note like a white bird nailed to a black tree.
– ‘Be bold, ride on,’ it said: ‘turn right – left – right.
The Wolf will see his fiancée home tonight!’”…
By now the groom had started sweating slightly;
Her father grinned – and tried to treat it lightly.

“It’s just a story,” the priest repeated: “You
Can’t call it, therefore, either false or true…”
Some guests were bored, some found it a touch provoking;
Maria’s girlfriends thought she must be joking.
The old woman eavesdropped; other servants stared.
The priest said nothing more – watched Fox – prepared
For trouble. Maria watched her quarry as well,
Who in the meantime wished them all in hell –
But tried to suss how much Maria was wise to,
And guess what best to ignore, evade, or rise to…

“Across the wooden bridge,” his bride went on,
The track led into the forest. She had gone
Much further than she’d ever been before
When all at once a house with a green door
Appeared between the trees, and the path stopped.
The door swung on its hinges. Her heart hopped.
– An abandoned hunters’ lodge, perhaps. But how could
So broken-down a place, so deep in the wood,
Be Wolf’s?… She stepped inside, and gasped – pale yellow
Firelight came flickering up the steps from the cellar.

She froze, afraid. But, then, crept slowly down.
An old bent crone was cooking. With a groan
She asked Maria why, of her own free will,
She’d come to that infernal place. She still
Had time to escape; but when Herr Wolf returned…
Beneath a blackened pot a red fire burned,
Boiling what looked like joints of salted pork:
She’d seen pigs’ bones and ashes round the back.
– Suddenly, though, gruff curses! frantic screaming!…
Later, what followed seemed to her like dreaming

Nightmare on nightmare – which she couldn’t shake
Her mind or body free of: wide awake,
She pinched her forearm purple making sure.
The old woman hid her. Frail, unwell, and poor,
Unable to escape from Wolf on her own,
She’d always been the cook there – had stayed on,
After the hunters left… You know what’s next,
Herr Fuchs.” – “How should I know?” Fox snarled – pale, vexed,
And deeply worried by Maria’s nerve.
– “Hail, Mary!” whooped the priest, without reserve.

– “You raped the girl, and butchered her lovely limbs
As if they were a pig’s.” – “A hundred hymns
Of praise shall be recited to Maria!” –
“You salted, boiled, and washed her down with beer.
The pile of bones and ashes, the old woman told me,
Were not a pig’s… Dear father, please don’t scold me,
I cannot marry this man-monster” – “I
Emphatically, unreservedly deny
Her every allegation.” – “Your drunken snorting
And sated grunts accompanied our parting.

Your cook can testify to all I say.” –
“An ancient lying witch! And, anyway,
Where is she now?” – “In our kitchen. Small and light,
She lay in my blood-soaked lap that snowy night,
And both of us rode home.” – “Your blood-soaked lap!
Soaked with whose blood?” – “To steal her rings you chopped
The poor girl’s fingers off. One flew through the air
And landed behind the hunters’ hogshead, where
I sat in terror on the dirty floor”:
She pulled it from her apron – “Need I say more?”

The game was up. Fox made a run for it;
Her father blocked the doorway. In a fit
Of furious energy, the pirate lunged
About him with his captain’s sword, and plunged
It deep in the corpulent belly of one guest –
Then in his wife’s decolleté left breast.
The miller, in the fray, was seen to stagger –
And died that evening, stabbed by Fox’s dagger…
The priest, defrocked for blasphemous behaviour,
Married Maria – each other’s loving saviour.

NOTES.

1. At Hanau, on the Kinzig, there once lived / A miller: The Kinzig is an 80-mile tributary of the Main, into which it flows somewhat to the west of Hanau. The biggest mill on the river was for centuries the Herrenmühle, in the oldest part of Hanau, where the miller of “The Bride’s Story” presumably lived. Before reaching Hanau, the Kinzig flows through the extensive natural forest known as the Bulau. A few miles up the river from the mill is one of its few (wooden) footbridges, the Kinzigsteg – which comes into the poem. The bridge was formerly used by swineherds, the citizens of Hanau having long been permitted to fatten their pigs in the forest… The earlier editions of the Grimms’ collection of folktales (there were seven in all, the last in 1857) were not primarily intended for children. In later editions, many tales were more or less rewritten with children in mind, but not all… Der Räuberbräutigam, for example, became less rather than more suited to the nursery when other material was added to Marie Hassenflug’s.
2. A new commandment I give unto you, etc.: Jesus’s radical reinterpretation of the Jewish Law and inversion of pagan values – in particular Roman materialism – might in fact have turned the (Western) world upside down, were it not for the human capacity to say or even believe one thing and do another. For certain societies and individuals at certain times, of course, Jesus’s teaching has always seemed to offer the world a future… The Biblical quotations (slightly adapted in some cases) are from John XIII.34, John XV.13, Mark XIV.23-25, Luke XIX.24, respectively. The priest might have added, in this context, “Blessed are the merciful” (Matthew V.7) – and, in all seriousness, the preceding verse: “Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.” 
3. as if, in Holy Week, to defile / Easter itself: If Maria was right and Fox was really so insane as to see himself as a sort of Anti-Christ, he may well have been aware that – as is still the case in parts of Central Germany (for example, around Heidelberg) – the Wednesday on which he (less casually than appears?) arranged to meet Maria at the Kinzigsteg was known as Krummer Mittwoch (Crooked Wednesday) because it was the day on which Judas arranged to betray Jesus, as he – Fox – intended to betray Maria’s trust. Far-fetched though this may seem, “The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose”, as Jesus himself (cp. Matthew IV.6) as well as Shakespeare knew. Moreover, the following day, Gründonnerstag (Maundy Thursday), was the day of the Last Supper, the Eucharist and the “new commandment” (“…that ye love one another, as I have loved you”) – whereas Fox intended, with Maria in his possession, only “to steal and to kill and to destroy”.

♦

W.D. JACKSON’s five books and a pamphlet are all parts of his work-in-progress, Then and Now, on the subject of the individual’s place in history.  The most recent of them, Opus 3 (Shoestring Press, Nov 2018), was reviewed in The Fortnightly, and was one of Frederick Raphael’s TLS Books of the Year in 2019.  A review by Chris McCully in PN Review 253 can be read here (under Altered Distances Vol 54, Nos. 1-2, ‘Special Features’).  A new pamphlet, Aesopean (with woodcuts by Alan Dixon) is due from Shoestring in 2022.