The number of these queer fellows is very great; whoever sets out to count them has his work cut out for him. The gallant war-prince Gedeon himself had cause to wonder that so many milksops turned up in the army he led out against the Madianites.1 For when at God’s command he had it proclaimed, “Whosoever is fearful and timorous, let him return,”2 two and twenty thousand men went straight home: hare-hearts and fearful fools, every one.
Hertzfeld, “Heart-field,” is a fine place in the Duchy of Bremen; Hertzberg, “Heart-hill,” is a princely castle not far from the town of Osterode. But not everyone writes himself “of” these two places, for you meet a great many here and there who have no heart at all. More, and far more, write themselves “of Forchheim,” “Fear-home,” a town between Bamberg and Nuremberg.3 Oh, what fearful folk are to be found in every age!
Heliogabalus, that emperor so haughty at other times, was so fearful that when the enemy advanced he locked himself in a privy chamber with his mother, and there came to a wretched end. Well, no other balsam is fit for such a nose.4
Aristogiton, a noble gentleman of Athens and a man of remarkable bodily strength, was forever bragging that he trusted himself to put a whole army to rout. By his own account he was such an iron-biter that he could toss a man in armour into the air like a feather-duster. But when he was to march into the field with the others, at once he bandaged up both his feet and came hobbling along in full public view, like a dog that has been shown out of the kitchen with the poker.5
Caligula, that dauntless hero (forsooth!), trembled in a thunderstorm like a pork jelly, took refuge under the bed, and stopped up both his ears.6
There are fools more fearful yet than these, and not a few of them, who are often afraid even of their own shadow. A few years ago some people were sitting together in a room one winter’s night. Unknown to them, a boy had put two apples in the stove to roast, and these, as it happened, began to whistle and sputter. At this they looked at one another and all turned pale, and at last every one of them wanted to be first at the door, each convinced it was a ghost. O fearful fools!
A journeyman lad was travelling from Vienna to Neustadt.7 When he was not far from a mill commonly called the Devil’s Mill, he remembered having once heard that a living devil walked at that spot (which is not so). This gave him such a fright, since it was already late in the evening, that he began to run. Now he had earlier stuffed a few kreuzers’ worth of nuts into his pocket, and the pocket had a hole in it; so one nut after another dropped onto his heels, and he was quite convinced that the Black One was already treading on his feet.8 He ran until at last he was so worn out that he fell to the ground and cried, “Devil, take me or don’t take me, I truly can’t run any further!” O fool!
I myself know a place where the following ridiculous story happened. An honest man had departed this life and been laid in the earth with due ceremony. Afterwards, as is the custom, the sung office and exequies were held for him, with a High Mass and a sermon. But since the sacristan had no proper bier to set up, he took a baker’s kneading-trough instead, covered it with the pall, and then decked it out as best he could with burning candles, as is usually done. Meanwhile a dog, unnoticed, crept in under this funeral catafalque and began to gnaw at the kneading-trough, which had been in use only the day before, until at last the trough began to move.9 The preacher in the pulpit and the others present did not feel at all easy about the business, for none of them knew anything of the dog. At last the dog gnawed so hard that the bier fell to the ground, candlesticks and all. That drove the preacher out of the pulpit and all the people out of the church, and threw them into the greatest terror, for they supposed the dead man had risen and wanted to protest against the praise the preacher had given him. O fools!
You will find hare-hearts who cannot lie alone at night. Others do not dare so much as put a hand out of bed. Others take fright if they merely hear a mouse, or if a board creaks; every block and stump they take for a bugaboo or a ghost.10 O fearful fools! Who is the cause of this faint-heartedness of yours? None other than a bad conscience. “A bad conscience makes a man fearful and timid,” says St. John Chrysostom:11 a bad conscience makes a man tremble at everything and turns him into a perpetual milksop.
King Baltasar, a son of the proud Nabuchodonosor, held a banquet, and a thousand of his nobles came as guests. When everything had been handsomely laid out, and all were fairly drunk, and the whole company was at the height of its merriment and jubilation, the king saw three fingers of an invisible hand writing something upon the wall. At this he was so terrified that he went as pale as wax; indeed he trembled so in all his body that his knees knocked together without ceasing.12 Most of the bystanders tried to talk the king out of the fancies he had taken into his head, and some even interpreted it as something good; but Baltasar went on trembling like an aspen leaf, and it wanted but little for the spirits of life to leave him altogether. What was it, then, that struck such terror into him? What? You may well ask! It was his bad conscience that did it. A wounded conscience is the reason so many fearful fools are found in the world. A righteous conscience, on the contrary, is a shield, a shelter, and a stronghold against all things, and fears not even the devil, with all his crew.
St. Macarius once took his night’s lodging in a churchyard, or God’s acre, and for a pillow or bolster he used a dead body that lay there and was not to be buried until the next day. When the devils saw this, they began to move the body, to strike fear and terror into Macarius. But the righteous man got up, gave the body a shake, entirely undaunted, and said, “Get up, if you can, and move along,” and so forth. At which the devil at once took to flight.13 No one who has a good conscience is afraid of this hound of hell: bark he can, but bite he cannot, without God’s special leave.14
Lettfeigen, an old south German word of abuse for a coward. Haasen-Hertz, “hare’s heart,” is another.↩︎
Judges 7:3. Abraham: qui formidolosus & timidus est, &c. In Scripture ten thousand remained.↩︎
The jokes are on Herz, “heart,” and Forcht, “fear”; sich schreiben von, “to write oneself of,” is to bear a noble title taken from a place. Herzberg castle near Osterode am Harz was a residence of the dukes of Brunswick; Forchheim lies where he says. His Hertzfeld “in the Duchy of Bremen” cannot be identified with certainty.↩︎
Elagabalus (emperor 218–222) was killed by the Praetorian Guard together with his mother, Julia Soaemias; the Historia Augusta (Elagabalus 17) has him slain in a latrine. Heimliches Gemach, “secret chamber,” was also the ordinary word for a privy: hence the balsam for his nose.↩︎
Plutarch, Phocion 10, where Aristogeiton is an Athenian demagogue and informer, loud for war in the assembly, who turned up on the day of the levy leaning on a staff with both legs bandaged. The noble birth and great strength are Abraham’s. Eisenbeißer, “iron-biter,” is a braggart; a Flederwisch is a goose-wing used for dusting.↩︎
Suetonius, Caligula 51: at thunder he would shut his eyes and cover his head, and at a heavy storm leap from his bed and hide under it. The stopped ears are Abraham’s.↩︎
Wiener Neustadt, about thirty miles south of Vienna. The kreuzer was the smallest silver coin in common use, a sixtieth of a florin. Abraham does not say where on the road the “Devil’s Mill” stood.↩︎
Der Schwartze, “the Black One,” a common name for the devil.↩︎
The requiem was held after the burial, so the bier set up in church stood empty under its pall. The trough (Bach-Trog, Bach-Zuber) was a baker’s kneading-trough, still smelling of dough.↩︎
Wau Wau, the nursery bogeyman.↩︎
Cited by Abraham as Chrysostom, Hom. 8 ad Pop. (the homilies to the people of Antioch): mala conscientia pavidum facit & timidum. The sentence has not been traced in that homily.↩︎
Dan. 5:1–6. Scripture has “fingers, as it were of the hand of a man,” and “his knees struck one against the other” (5:6); the three fingers and the invisible hand are Abraham’s, and it is the queen who bids the king not be troubled (5:10). Challoner spells the king Baltasar.↩︎
The tale is told of St. Macarius of Egypt in the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, where he sleeps in a pagan tomb with a mummified body for his pillow and the demons try to frighten him through it.↩︎
The devil as a chained dog that can bark but not bite is an old preacher’s image, known from a sermon long ascribed to St. Augustine.↩︎