Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 1/Eckart the Trusty

by Theodore Martin

ECKART THE TRUSTY.
(FROM GOETHE.)

 

“How dark it is growing—I wish we were back!
They are coming, they’re here, the hobgoblins, alack!
The band of the Sorceress Sisters!
See, see, where they come! If they light on us here,
They’ll be certain to drink every drop of the beer
It has cost us such trouble to fetch here.”

So saying, the children push on in affright,
When up from the heath starts a grizzly old wight.
“Stop, stop, child!—my children, be quiet!
They are thirsty and hot, for they come from the chase,
Let them drink what they like without squall or grimace,
And the Grewsome Ones they will be gracious.”

And up come the goblins that moment, and they
Look ghostlike and grewsome, and ghastly and grey,
Yet they revel and riot it roundly.
The beer it has vanish’d, the pitchers are bare,
Then whooping and hooting away through the air,
O’er hill and dale clatter the Weird Ones.

Off homeward, all quaking, the children they hied,
And the kindly old greybeard troops on by their side.
“Do not weep so and whimper, my darlings.”
“They’ll scold us and beat us for this.” “Never fear,
All yet will go famously well with the beer,
If you’ll only be mum as young mice, dears.

“Mind you follow my bidding, and surely you may,
I am he who delights with small children to play:
You know me—Old Eckart the Trusty.
Of that wonderful wight you’ve heard many a lay,
But never had proof what he is till to-day:
Now you hold in your hands a most rare one.”

Arrived at their home, each small child, with a face
Of terror, his pitcher sets down in its place,
And waits to be beaten and scolded.
When the old folks they sip: “Oh, what excellent beer!”
Three, four times they take a strong pull at the cheer,
Yet still do the pitchers brim over.

The miracle lasted that night and next day;
And if you should ask, as you very well may,
What became, in the end, of the pitchers?
The little mice titter, enjoying the joke,
But at length, sirs, they stammer’d and stutter’d and spoke,
And the pitchers immediately dried up!

And, children, if e’er, looking kindly and true,
An old man, or father, or master teach you,
Give heed, and do all that he bids you.
Though to bridle your tongues it may cost you some pain,
Yet to chatter is bad, to be silent is gain,
And it makes the beer brim in the pitchers!

Theodore Martin.