A Prussian tale of such a spirit centered on a maiden
named lenore who lived in the chill flatlands that border the Baltic Sea.
The men of her village -- all but the grandfathers and little boys --were
impressed into the army of the Prussian King, as often happened in those
days. Amond them was her own lover. Under the eye of the King's
officers, the company marched briskly south to fight, and nothing was seen of
them for many months.
Lenore waited patiently as the slow days dawned,
darkened, and dawned again. She watched the highway that led into the
village, and so she knew when the soldiers began to return. She saw the
menfolk of her sisters and her cousins, some of them blinded, some missing arms
or legs, all of them ragged and joyful to be home. Her lover never
appeared.
He had died on a battlefield far away, but no word came
of his fate. At length, Lenore shut herself in her chamber and paced
alone, dry-eyed, hearing nothing and saying not a word. In the night,
however, when the town slept, she wept and whispered her grief to the
darkness. She called upon her lover to return. She asked for death,
to give her heart ease.
Death would not come, only one long night to face and
then the next. But at last one winter evening, when the town lay locked in
sleep, horseshoes clattered on the cobblestones of the street. They halted
by her house, and she heard her lover's voice. He called her name.
In the hall below, a door swung open. His familiar footstep sounded on the
stair, and Lenore was there at once to greet him.
He did not smile, nor did he hold out his arms.
He stood stiffly on the stair, his face expressionless. His voice, when he
spoke, was like that of a soldier giving orders.
"Come ride with me now," he said. "I will take
you to our marriage bed."
Worn and unthinking from nights of weeping, Lenore
obeyed. Just as she was, wearing only her nightshift, she descended the
shadowy stair and followed her lover out the door. Without protest she
mounted behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist. The horse flew
through the village street and out onto the broad highway, where a winter
landscape spread silver before her.
Shivering with the cold, she held fast to her lover,
but no warmth came from him, and he did not speak. A rank, sweet smell
enveloped her. On either side of the pathe the gaunt black branches of the
trees reached out, waving blindly in the moonlight. Among them, above the
thunder of the horse's hooves, she heard the reedy wail of an owl's
cry.
She called her lover's name, and he spoke once, over
his shoulder, so that the wind caught his words, but all he said was, "We ride
swiftly, as we must, to reach the place before the cock crow."
And, indeed, they rode as swiftly as the wind, so that
rooftops, tree branches and fields flashed by in blurs.
They slowed at last, after hours of riding, in
unfamiliar country, bleak and bare. The horse came to a halt atop a
windswept barrow.
It was not empty. The ghastly figures of
dissheveled soldiers, their decaying corpses rank with the smell of death,
crowded round the horse, plucking at Lenore's shigt and tugging at her
arms. They pulled her screaming from the horse, and her lover slid to the
ground beside her. His uniform was rotted; the dry flesh of his face
stretched into a wintry grin.
"This is the wedding party," he said. "And there
is the wedding bed." He pointed to her feet, where the earth yawned
open.
The rest of the tale was told by a lonely beggar, who
at day break was wandering over the dismal place intent on plundering what
little remained of the defeated army's dead. He found the exhausted horse
and smelled anew the stench of death. He saw the mound of a freshly filled
grave. Protruding from the tumbled earth was a single scrap of
lace -- all that remained of the grieving Lenore.
*************************
Where have you been my long lost
love,
These seven long years and more?
"Seeking gold for thee my love,
And riches of great store.
Oh, I might have married a king's
daughter,
Far, far beyond the sea,
But I refused their golden crown
All for the love of thee."
What have you to keep me with,
if I with you should go?
If I forsake my husband dear, and
my young son also?
"I'll show you where the white lillies
grow
On the banks of Italy --
I'll show you where the white fishes swim
at the bottom of the sea.
"Seven ships are on the sea,
the eighth brought me to land,
with four and twenty mariners,
and music on every hand."
She set her foot upon the ship
No mariners could behold,
The sails were of the shining
silk,
The masts of beaten gold.
Oh what are yon high high hills,
the sun shines sweetly in?
"Yon are the mountains of heaven,
my love, that you will never
win."
What is that mountain yonder
there,
where evil winds do blow?
"Yon is the mountain of Hell," he
cried,
"Where you and I must go."
He took her up to the top mast
high
to see what he could see,
And he sunk the ship in a clash of
fire,
to the bottom of the sea!
"I'll show you where the white lillies
grow
on the banks of Italy --
I'll show you where the white fishes
swim,
At the bottom of the sea . . . "