The speech of the Astrologer, prompted by Mephistopheles, refers to the seven metals, to which the mediæval alchemists attached the names of the seven planets. The sun is gold, the moon silver; Mercury is quicksilver, Venus copper, Mars iron, Jupiter tin, and Saturn lead.
13. There lies the fiddler, there the gold!
Clemens Brentano, in his “Boy’s Wonder-horn,” states that it is a common superstition in Germany, that, when one accidentally stumbles, he is passing over the spot where a fiddler is buried.
The expressions of Mephistopheles refer to the power of divination supposed to be possessed by certain persons. They suggest a passage in Wilhelm Meister, where Jarno describes a man who accompanies him on his mineralogical journeys: “He possessed very wonderful faculties, and a most peculiar relation to all which we call stone, mineral, or even element. He felt not only the strong effect of the subterranean streams, deposits of metal, strata of coal, and all such substances as are found in masses, but also, what was more remarkable, his sensations changed with every change of the soil.” Goethe, himself, seems to have had a half-belief in the possibility of an occult instinct of this nature.
14. He seeks saltpetre where the clay-walls stand.
Old walls, especially in damp cellars and subterranean passages, become covered with an incrustation of saltpetre, the collection of which was formerly a government monopoly.
15. A cask of tartar holds the wine.
It is a general belief in Germany that when a cask of wine has been kept for centuries, it gradually deposits a crust of tartar, which may acquire such a consistency as to hold the liquid when the staves have rotted away. The wine thus becomes its own cask, and preserves itself in a thick, oily state. It is then supposed to possess wonderful medicinal powers.
