At this, the little imps broke out into a t.i.tter that sounded like the cackle of a hen trying to tell she had laid an egg.
"Good for you! Serves the old schim right," said a good kabouter, who loved to help human beings. "Now, I"ll tell you about his brother, who has a wife and baby. He feeds and clothes them well, and takes good care of his old mother.
"Almost every week he helps some poor little boy, or girl, that has no mother or father. I heard him say he wished he could take care of poor orphans. So, when he was asleep, at night, I whispered in his ear and made him dream.
""Put away your coin where it won"t get mouldy and show that a penny that keeps moving is not like a rolling stone that gathers no moss.
Deliver it to the goldsmiths for interest and leave it in your will to increase, until it becomes a great sum. Then, long after you are dead, the money you have saved and left for the poor _weesies_ (orphans) will build a house for them. It will furnish food and beds and pay for nurses that will care for them, and good women who will be like mothers.
Other folks, seeing what you have done, will build orphan houses. Then we shall have a Wees House (orphan asylum) in every town. No child, without a father or mother, in all Holland, will have to cry for milk or bread. Don"t let your penny mould."
"The third brother, named Spill-penny, woke up on the same morning, with a headache. He remembered that he had spent his silver penny at the gin house, buying drinks for a lot of worthless fellows like himself. He and his wife, with little to eat, had to wear ragged clothes, and the baby had not one toy to play with. When his wife gently chided him, he ran out of the house in bad humor. Going to the tap room, he ordered a drink of what we call "Dutch courage," that is, a gla.s.s of gin, and drank it down. Then what do you think he did?"
"Tell us," cried the imps uproariously.
"He went into a clothing house, bought a suit of clothes, and had it "charged.""
"That"s it. I"ve known others like him," said an old imp.
"Now it was kermiss day in the village, and all that afternoon and evening this spendthrift was roystering with his fellow "zuip zaks"
(boon companions). With them, it was "always drunk, always dry." Near midnight, being too full of gin, he stumbled in the gutter, struck his head on the curb, and fell down senseless.
"Her husband not coming home that night, the distracted wife went out early in the morning. She found several men lying asleep on the sidewalks or in the gutters. She turned each one over, just as she did buckwheat cakes on the griddle, to see if this man or that was hers. At last she discovered her worthless husband, but no shaking or pulling could awake him. He was dead.
"Now there was a covetous undertaker in town, who carted away the corpse, and then told the widow that she must spend much money on the funeral, in order to have her husband buried properly; or else, the tongues of the neighbors would wag. So the poor woman had to sell her cow, the only thing she had, and was left poorer than ever. That was the end of Spill-penny."
"A jolly story," cried the kabouters in chorus. "Served him right. Now tell us about Vrek the miser. Go on."
"Well, the saying "Much coin, much care," is hardly true of him, for I and my trusty helpers ran away with all he had. With his first silver penny he began to h.o.a.rd his money. He has been hunting for years for that penny, but has not found it. It will be rather mouldy, should he find it, but that he never will."
"Why not?" asked a young imp.
"For a good reason. He would not pay his boatmen their wages. So they struck, and refused to work. When he tried to sail his own boat, it toppled over and sunk, and Vrek was drowned. His wife was saved the expenses of a funeral, for his carca.s.s was never found, and the covetous undertaker lost a job."
"What of the third one?" they asked.
"Oh, Mynheer Eerlyk, you mean? No harm can come to him. Everybody loves him and he cares for the orphans. There will be no mouldy penny in his house."
Then the meeting broke up. The good kabouters were happy. The bad ones, the imps, were sorry to miss what they hoped would be a jolly story.
When a thousand years pa.s.sed away and the age of newspapers and copper pennies had come, there were no descendants of the two brothers Spill-penny and Schim; but of Mynheer Eerlyk there were as many as the years that had flown since he made a will. In this doc.u.ment, he ordered that his money, in guilders of gold and pennies of silver, should remain at compound interest for four hundred years. In time, the ever increasing sum pa.s.sed from the goldsmiths to the bankers, and kept on growing enormously. At last this large fortune was spent in building hundreds of homes for orphans.
According to his wish, each girl in the asylum dressed in clothes that were of the colors on the city arms. In Amsterdam, for example, each orphan child"s frock is half red and half black, with white ap.r.o.ns, and the linen and lace caps are very neat and becoming to their rosy faces.
In Friesland, where golden hair and apple blossom cheeks are so often seen with the white lace and linen, some one has called the orphan girls "Apples of gold in pictures of silver." Among the many glories of the Netherlands is her care for the aged and the orphans.
One of the thirty generations of the Eerlyks read one day in the newspaper:
"Last week, while digging a very deep ca.n.a.l, some workman struck his pickaxe against timbers that were black with age, and nearly as hard as stone. These, on being brought up, showed that they were the ribs of an ancient boat. Learned men say that there was once a river here, which long since dried up. All the pieces of the boat were recovered, and, under the skilful hands of our ship carpenters, have been put together and the whole vessel is now set up and on view in our museum."
"We"ll go down to-morrow on our way home from school, and see the curiosity," cried one of the Eerlyk boys, clapping his hands.
"Wait," said his father, "there"s more in the story.
"To-day, the janitor of the museum, while examining a wide crack in one of the ribs, which was covered with wax, picked this substance away. He poked his finger in the crack, and finding something soft, pulled it out. It was a rough leather purse, inside of which was a coin, mouldy with age and dark as the wood. Even after cleaning it with acid, it was hard to read what was stamped on it; but, strange to say, the face of the coin had left its impression on the leather, which had been covered with wax. From this, though the metal of the coin was black, and the mould thick on the coin, what they saw showed that it was a silver penny of the age of Charlemagne, or the ninth century."
"Charlemagne is French, father, but we call him Karel de Groot, or Charles the Great."
"Yes, my son. Don"t you hear Karel"s Klok (the curfew) sounding? "Tis time for little folks to go to bed."
THE GOLDEN HELMET
For centuries, more than can be counted on the fingers of both hands, the maidens and mothers of Friesland have worn a helmet of gold covering the crown and back of their heads, and with golden rosettes at each ear.
It marks the Frisian girl or woman. She is thus known by this head-dress as belonging to a glorious country, that has never been conquered and is proudly called Free Frisia. It is a relic of the age of gold, when this precious metal was used in a thousand forms, not seen to-day.
Of how and why the golden helmet is worn, this is the story:
In days gone by, when forests covered the land and bears and wolves were plentiful, there were no churches in Friesland. The people were pagans and all worshipped Woden, whom the Frisians called Fos-i-te". Certain trees were sacred to him. When a baby was ill, or grown people had a disease, which medicine could not help, they laid the sick one at the foot of the holy tree, hoping for health soon to come. But, should the patient die under the tree, then the sorrowful friends were made glad, if the leaves of the tree fell upon the corpse. It was death to any person who touched the sacred tree with an axe, or made kindling wood, even of its branches.
Now among the wild people of the north, who ate acorns and were clothed in the skins of animals, there came, from the Christian lands of the south, a singer with his harp. Invited to the royal court, he sang sweet songs. To these the king"s daughter listened with delight, until the tears, first of sorrow and then of joy, rolled down her lovely cheeks.
This maiden was the pride of her father, because of her sweet temper and willing spirit, while all the people boasted of her beauty. Her eyes were of the color of a sky without clouds. No spring flower could equal the pink and rose in her cheeks. Her lips were like the red coral, which the ship men brought from distant sh.o.r.es. Her long tresses rivalled gold in their glory. And, because her father worshipped Fos-i-te", the G.o.d of justice, and his daughter was always so fair to all her playmates, he, in his pride of her, gave her the name Fos-te-di"-na, that is, the darling of Fos-i-te", or the Lady of Justice.
[Ill.u.s.tration: WHICH WAS THE MORE GLORIOUS, HER LONG TRESSES OR THE SHINING CROWN ABOVE.]
The singer from the south sang a new song, and when he played upon his harp his music was apt to be soft and low; sometimes sad, even, and often appealing. It was so much finer, and oh! so different, from what the glee men and harpers in the king"s court usually rendered for the listening warriors. Instead of being about fighting and battle, or the hunting of wolves and bears, of stags and the aurochs, it was of healing the sick and helping the weak. In place of battles and the exploits of war lords, in fighting and killing Danes, the harper"s whole story was of other things and about gentle people. He sang neither of war, nor of the chase, nor of fighting G.o.ds, nor of the storm maidens, that carry up to the sky, and into the hall of Woden, the souls of the slain on the battlefield.
The singer sang of the loving Father in Heaven, who sent his dear Son to earth to live and die, that men might be saved. He made music with voice and instrument about love, and hope, and kindness to the sick and poor, of charity to widows and to orphans, and about the delights of doing good. He closed by telling the story of the crown of thorns, how wicked men nailed this good prophet to a cross, and how, when tender-hearted women wept, the Holy Teacher told them not to weep for him, but for themselves and their children. This mighty lord of n.o.ble thoughts and words lived what he taught. He showed greatness in the hour of death, by first remembering his mother, and then by forgiving his enemies.
"What! forgive an enemy? Forgive even the Danes? What horrible doctrine do we hear!" cried the men of war. "Let us kill this singer from the south." And they beat their swords on their metal shields, till the clangor was deafening. The great hall rang with echoes of the din, as if for battle. The Druids, or pagan priests, even more angry, applauded the action of the fighting men.
But Fos-te-di-na rushed forward to shield the harper, and her long golden hair covered him.
"No!" said the king to his warriors. "This man is my guest. I invited him and he shall be safe here."
Sullen and bitter in their hearts, both priests and war men left the hall, breathing out revenge and feeling bound to kill the singer. Soon all were quiet in slumber, for the hour was late.
Why were the pagan followers of the king so angry with the singer?
The answer to this question is a story in itself.
Only three days before, a party of Christian Danes had been taken prisoners in the forest. They had come, peaceably and without arms, into the country; for they wanted to tell the Frisians about the new religion, which they had themselves received. In the cold night air, they had, unwittingly, cut off some of the dead branches of a tree sacred to the G.o.d Fos-i-te to kindle a fire.
A spy, who had closely watched them, ran and told his chief. Now, the Christian Danes were prisoners and would be given to the hungry wolves to be torn to pieces. That was the law concerning sacrilege against the trees of the G.o.ds.
Some of the Frisians had been to Rome, the Eternal City, and had there learned, from the cruel Romans, how to build great enclosures, not of stone but of wood. Here, on holidays, they gave their prisoners of war to the wild beasts, for the amus.e.m.e.nt of thousands of the people. The Frisians could get no lions or tigers, for these fierce brutes live in hot countries; but they sent hundreds of hunters into the woods for many miles around. These bold fellows drove the deer, bears, wolves, and the aurochs within an ever narrowing circle towards the pits. Into these, dug deep in the ground and covered with branches and leaves, the animals fell down and were hauled out with ropes. The deer were kept for their meat, but the bears and wolves were shut up, in pens, facing the great enclosure. When maddened with hunger, these ravenous beasts of prey were to be let loose on the Christian Danes. Several aurochs, made furious by being goaded with pointed sticks, or p.r.i.c.ked by spears, were to rush out and trample the poor victims to death.