"Let no one touch them," said the carpenter. "The way to do with the letters from the Flying Dutchman is to case them upon deck, by nailing boards over them, so that if he sends back for them, they are still there to give him." The carpenter went to fetch his tools. During his absence the ship gave so violent a pitch, that the piece of iron slid off the letters, and they were whirled overboard by the wind, like birds of evil omen whirring through the air. There was a cry of joy amongst the sailors, and they ascribed the favourable change which soon took place in the weather, to our having got quit of Vanderdecken. We soon got under weigh again. The night watch being set, the rest of the crew retired to their births. PETER KLAUS. The Legend of the Goatherd. The following legend is offered to our readers, not only on the score of its intrinsic merit, but as being the undoubted source from which Geoffry Crayon drew his Rip Van Winkle. This story is to be found in Büsching's Popular Tales, where it is followed by a second legend on the same subject; both have reference to the celebrated Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, who is the subject of many a winter's tale amongst the Germans. According to this primal story, he once took refuge, with a party of followers, in the Kyffhausen mountains, where he still lives, under the influence of magic. Here he sits, with bis friends, on a bench, before a table in a state of apparent slumber. His red beard has grown down to his feet, while his head nods and his eyes twinkle as if he slept uneasily, or where about to wake. At times this slumber is interrupted, but his naps are tolerably long, something about a hundred years' duration. In his waking moments, he is supposed to be foud of music, and there is a tale of a party of musicians, who thought proper to treat him with a regular concert. Each was rewarded with a green bough; but upon their return to earth, they all flung away his gifts, save one, and he kept the bough only as a memorial of the adventure; great, however, was his surprise, when, upon shewing it to his wife, every leaf was changed into a golden dollar. But even the first tale of the Emperor's prolonged slumber can hardly be deemed original; and, perhaps, is nothing more than a popular version of the Seven Sleepers, not a little disfigured by time, and the peculiar superstitions of the country. PETER KLAUS was a goatherd of Sittendorf, and tended his flocks in the Kyffhäusen mountains; here he was accustomed to let them rest every evening in a mead surrounded by an old wall, while he made his muster of them; but for some days he had remarked that one of his finest goats always disappeared some time after coming to this spot, and did not join the flock till late watching her more attentively, he observed that she slipped through an opening in the wall, upon which he crept after the animal, and found her in a sort of cave, busily employed in gleaning the oat-grains that dropped down singly from the root. He shook his ears, amidst the shower of corn that now fell down upon looked up, him, but with all his enquiry could discover nothing. At last he heard above the stamp of horses, from whose mangers it was probable the oats had fallen. Peter was yet standing in astonishment at the sound of horses in so unusual a place, when a boy appeared, who by signs, without speaking a word, desired him to follow. Accordingly he assended a few steps and passed over a walled court in a hollow, closed in on all sides by lofty rocks, where a partial twilight shot through the overspreading foilage of the shrubs. Here, upon a smooth fresh lawn, he found twelve knights playing gravely at ninepins, and not one spoke a syllable; with equal silence Peter was installed in the office of setting up the nine-pins. At first he performed this duty with. knees that knocked again each other, as he now and then stole a partial look at the long beards and slashed doublets of the noble knights. By degrees, however, custom gave him courage; he gazed on every thing with firmer look, and at last even ventured to drink out of a bowl that stood near him; from which the wine exhaled a most delicious odour. The glowing juice made him feel as if re-animated, and whenever he found the least weariness, he again drew fresh vigour from the inexhaustible goblet. Sleep at last overcame him. Upon waking, Peter found himself in the very same enclosed mead where he was wont to tell his herd. He rubbed his eyes, but could see no sign either of dog or goats, and was, besides, not a little astonished at the high grass, and shrubs, and trees, which he had never observed there. Not well knowing what to think, he continued his way over all the places that he had been accustomed to frequent with his goats, but no where could he find any traces of them; below him he saw Sittendorf, and, at length, with hasty steps he descended. The people, whom he met before the village, were all strangers to him; they had not the dress of his acquaintance, nor yet did they exactly speak their language; and, when he asked after his goats, all stared and touched their chins. At last he did the same almost involuntary, and found his beard lengthened by a foot at least, upon which he began to conclude that himself and those about him were equally under the influence of enchantment; still he recognized the mountain he had descended, for the Kyffhäusen; the houses too, with their yards and gardens, were all familiar to him, and to the passing questions of a traveller, several boys replied by the name of Sittendorf. With increasing doubt he now walked through the village to his house: it was much decayed, and before it lay a strange goatherd's boy in a ragged frock, by whose side was a dog worn lank by age, that growled and snarled when he spoke to him. He then entered the cottage through an opening which had once been closed by a door; here too he found all so void and waste, that he tottered out again at the back door, as if intoxicated, and called his wife and children by their names; but none heard-none answered. In a short time, women and children thronged around the stranger with the long hoary beard, and all, as if for a wager, joined in inquiring what he wanted. Before his own house to ask others after his wife, or children, or even of himself seemed so strange, that, to get rid of these querists, he mentioned the first name that occurred to him, "Kurt Steffen." The byestanders looked at each other in silence, till at last an old woman said, "He has been in the church-yard these twelve years, and you'll not go there to-day." "Velten Meier ?"—" Heaven rest his soul!" replied an ancient dame, leaning upon her crutch, "heaven rest his soul! he has lain these fifteen years in the house that he will never leave." The goatherd shuddered, as in the last speaker he recognized his neighbour, who seemed to have suddenly grown old; but he had lost all desire for further question. At this moment a brisk young woman pressed through the anxious inquirers, carrying an infant in her arms, and leading by the hand a girl about fourteen years old, all three the very image of his wife. With increasing surprise he asked her name: "Maria!" "And your father's?" "Pe ter Klaus, heaven rest his soul! It is now twenty years since we sought him, day and night, on the Kyffhäusen mountains, when his flock returned without him; I was then but seven years old." The goatherd could contain himself no longer; "I am Peter Klaus," he cried, "I am Peter Klaus, and none else," and he snatched the child from his daughter's arms. All for a moment stood as petrified, till at length one voice, and another, and another, exclaimed, "Yes, this is Peter Klaus! Welcome, neighbour! Welcome, after twenty years!" Tradition records that William the Second, or "The Red-King," as he is commonly called (from the sandy colour of his hair) on the day that he hunted, for the last time, in the New Forest, was warned of his approaching death, by a monk, who mysteriously appeared to him, when separated from his companions, and told him of the curse which hung over his family on account of his father's tyranny, in laying waste so large a tract of country for the purpose of amusement. This tale has been related by William of Malmesbury, who also observes that "not only William the Second, but Richard, a son of the Conqueror, and a son of Robert, Duke of Normandy, are said to have died in this forest, severo Dei judicio." Gilpin, in his " Forest Scenery," has a remark which tends to illustrate the tradition. "There is an oak at Cadenham, or Canterton, a little to the north of Castle Malwood, which buds every year in the depth of winter; the buds fall off in a few days; the tree continues torpid, like other deciduous trees during the remainder of the winter and vegetates again in the spring at the usual season. Camden, in his history of the New Forest, speaks of the premature vegetation of the oak from which Tyrrell's arrow glanced; and we have been informed that another tree with the same property of early germination, has lately been found near the spot where Rufus' monument now stands. In Milner's "Winchester" it is stated that "the old tree against which the arrow glanced, had become so decayed and mutilated, that the late Lord Delawar, to preserve the remembrance of the spot, caused a triangular stone to be erected about five feet high, and inscribed thus: "Here stood an oak tree on which an arrow shot by Sir Walter Tyrrell, at a stag, glanced and struck King William the Second, surnamed Rufus, on the breast, of which he instantly died, on the 2nd day of August, Auno 1100." King William the Second, surnamed Rufus, being slain as before related, was laid in a cart belonging to one Purkiss, and drawn from hence to Winchester, and was buried in the cathedral church of that city." ANNO 1745, "That where an event so memorable had happened, might not be hereafter unknown, this stone was set up by John Lord Delawar, who had seen the tree growing in this place." Purkiss, on whose cart the king was placed, was a charcoal maker, and his lineal descendants, (still named Purkiss), live within the distance of a bow shot from the spot where William fell, in a neat cottage, and still continue to follow the trade of their ancestors; and according to the tradition of the country, have never been sufficiently rich to keep a complete team, nor poor enough to apply for parish relief since the event thus commemorated. THE morn beams brightly in the eastern sky, and the Red-King looks proudly from the vaulted cornices of merry Malwood hall, to mark the deer as they come bounding across the lawn. And hark the forest bugle sounds cherrily to the chase; echo lengthens out the note from her deep glades and caverned recesses, and wafts it to the ear of the attentive monarch; he in the pride of his royalty with his trusty henchman by his side, vaults lightly on his fiery charger, and hurries forward in the pastime. The heavy sounding draw-bridge is raised, and the warder's bell from the northern angle of the battlements, summon the adjacent tenantry to the chase. The pawing courser snuffs the perfumed air, and its ruffled mane waves wildly to the wind. But say, shall the Red-King ever return to the proud keep of Malwood? Shall his cheek be flushed in the coming twilight with the ruddy glow of gaiety? From the gay turrets that swing loosely to the midnight gale, the raven whooped his death dirge the winds caught the sound and bore it on their heavily flapping wings, and the spirits of destruction shouted it back from their cloud-capped palace of storms. What form steals dimly along the dark avenue of pines, where the deer sweep trimly by ?-What sound breaks on the tranquil solitude of day, and points with the spectral hand to the death-devoted monarch as he hastens onward with his suite? It is the DruidSeer of Malwood! him, of whom peasants have read, and holy monks have spoken; who has been from the birth of time; who has never felt death, and of whom no man knows aught. "Sir King," he exclaims, confronting with his gaunt form, the path of England's monarch; "hie thee on to the chace, but the spirit of evil shall ride swifter still. He passed me even now, as I called on him from his cloudy palace of skulls, and breathed his visions into my soul; his ministers of wrath hymned aloud the death-dirge, and the dark bosomed ocean rolled back the voice! Thus through me he repeats the words of mystery and horror! Sound the horn of triumph in the corniced galleries of Castle Malwood; but there is a sound that shall peal a louder strain in the dark depth of midnight. It is the voice of the victims of thine ambition, who cry from their cold graves where the slimy worm enfolds them in its embraces, to the denouncing judgment of heaven."-"I know thee not, old seer," replied the scared monarch, "I fear thee not, for the spirits of the damned are leagued with me, and the bloodsealed compact of hell has awarded 'destruction only, when the immutable laws of vegetable nature are reversed, and the winter-battered oak that now withers in the dark forests of Cadenham, blooms with luxuriant foliage, borrowed from the genial sunshine of summer." "Ha! laughest thou, Sir King? Then know from me, that ere the day sinks behind the western hills, and the moon-beam glimmers on the ocean wave, I tell thee we shall meet again! Ride on then in thy devoted splendour, but the steed shall return without its rider, for ere the west wind whistles over the stubble, and the black cock whizzes across the moor; the corpse of England's monarch shall slumber on the mountain heather!" Like a dream of light he hath passed-passed in silence from the horrorstricken gaze of the alarmed monarch. Stillness is again on the hills-the breeze slumbers on the mountain ashtranquillity spreads her leaden pinions round, save where the echoing horn of the royal huntsman sounds faintly in the distance. The forests trees are bare, and the wind makes hollow moan among the branches, as the Red-King hurries home by twilight to the gay keep of Malwood. But see! the old oak of the forest is in sight, and the monarch pauses awhile to gaze on its ruined honours. Why does the Red-King trem 35 ble? Why flits the changing colour from his face, as the sun-beam that sparkles and fades through the darkling thunder-clouds? He reins his jaded steed beneath the tree; he moves fearfully towards it, and by the dim light of the uprising moon-beam, sees it blooming in the full luxuriance of summer! A deer flits across his path, and the hand of Sir Walter Tyrrell, him whom the monarch delights to honour, is raised to bend the bow of death. The spirit of evil, as he rides on the wings of the wind, arrests the greygoose shaft in its path, and hurls it with sinewy grasp at the defenceless breast of the Red-King he falls-he totters against the charmed oak, and the crimson life-blood rolls in a purple tide from the gaping wound. The Druid-Seer of the forest stands triumphant by his side, and his giant-form assumes the gaunt livid hues of a decayed skeleton !-Life scarce ebbs through the carious bones, thinly clad in the cadaverous livery of death. His glassy eyes from which a livid lightning flashed, are fixed in exultation on the Red monarch, while with a demoniac grin, he reminds him of his bloodsealed compact of evil, that has awarded destruction only" when the immutable laws of vegetative nature are reversed, and the winter-battered oak that withers in the gloomy forests of Cadendam blooms with luxuriant foliage borrowed from the genial sunshine of summer." The proud king starts with agony at the unholy recollection-the death-rattle choaks his blackened throat-the ague of approaching dissolution convulses his quivering limbs with anguish -his hollow filmy eyes start from their blood-red sockets-a moment more and the bursting spirit of the proud king bath passed away! * * In the dark-browned cathedral of Saint Swithin, the voice of wailing is heard! There is a mighty pomp of people moving in solemn abstraction to the shrine |