Volume 19 — Odd Stories. VI.—King Ruli.

Once upon a time there was, on this side of the Hartz Mountains, a secret place, where, touching a hidden spring, you found yourself in a trice between immense walls of rock, whence a mysterious person, dressed in red from top to toe, took you into a great cavern, the first of a series of vast caves filled with hogsheads and tuns of wine and beer, and lighted up in such a manner that the brilliant stalactites with which it was hung sparkled and flashed like the most precious gems in a jeweller's dream. The awe inspired by this scene hardly left you a moment to observe that the nose of your guide was even redder than his body, when you were ushered through another secret door into the domain of a grand old castle, the battlements of which, covered with moss, overlooked a pastoral valley and its white flocks, and seemed to rule the landscape, notwithstanding the presence of many other castles, as if it were the house of a monarch. And so it was. Here dwelt King Ruli, the patron of minnesingers and jolly cavaliers—that stalwart king whose brow, and beard, and port were the very signs of genial majesty. Pleasure ruled the board where he sat; and when the juice of the Weinberg warmed up in the blood of the lords and minstrels in Weinbergland, the ten noble companions of King Ruli swept the mystic chords of the harp, and with voices free sang in echoing strain their merry roundelay:

We're rovers all, we're singers five

And rhymers five; come round, come round;

Ye five shall give us honest rhyme,

And we shall give you sound.

Let laurels crown his great gray head,

A big arm-chair his throne be made.

Then sing:

Ruli, King Ruli! And he shall be our king.

To sounds of cheerful thoughts like these each royal night wore on, while the castled lords of hill and valley feasted at the king's table, and made merry over jest and story, to the clinking of many glasses and in the pleasant uproar of many voices. Seated in his chair at the head of the table, he drank from a great flagon of crystal, or smoked from a pipe as long as his body, the bowl of which required a page-in-waiting to support it, lest, in a drowsy moment, it should drop from the mouth of the king. Below him were ranged the ten minnesingers, who smoked from one immense bowl of tobacco, having long stems that led to all their mouths, whence issued a volume of smoke, which, as it rose around the great burning bowl, was like the fume of a conflagration; and thus betimes the merry minnesingers sang:

Ah! never once so jolly face

In green old Arcady appeared;

And as he drinks, the drink flows down

His flowing, streaming beard.

He's six feet high, his beard is long,

And broad his body is and strong.

Then sing:

King Ruli, King Ruli! He shall be our king.

No king could resist such flattery as this, and it was with truth that his minstrels pictured him standing, and, in a tone of majestic joviality, wishing the health of the whole company:

“True liegemen all, I give ye joy,

For I am host and landlord here;

Ho! varlets, bring me Rhenish wine,

And flagons fill of beer!”

Right red Rhine wine! right red Rhine wine!

Was ever glass so clear and fine?

So sing:

Ruli, King Ruli! And he shall be our king!

[pg 138]

Late in the night the sound of song and story made for the gentle monarch a lullaby, and his head rested on his bosom in slumber, as he laid down his flagon. Had his chief minstrel then tickled his great ear, it would not have waked him up; and so, seeing that the king had filled himself with slumber as with the drugs of Morpheus, his lieges sang:

But, hold! the monarch's sleepy grown;

His pipe has dropt, he's drowsed and sped.

Hark! how he snores! Wide open doors;

We'll bury him in bed.

Then, while our loyal shoulders bear

His burden, thus our burden hear:

King Ruli!

The king is dead; long live the king!

And live again, King Ruli!

But as night after night of song and wine went by, the king grew older and older in his cups. Little he saw or cared that new revellers, new minstrels, new lords, had one by one taken the places of old ones, and that the speech of the new-comers was loud and hoarse, and their song ribald and discordant. Those who remained with him of his old friends and retainers had gradually imbibed the character of the latest revellers, and their potations were deeper and their jests broader than ever. Once in a while the king groaned and complained that his beer was too bitter; but they so flattered his jokes, and praised his beard, and spoke of his noble brow, and his royal blood, and his glorious voice, that he sang and roared as of old, and swallowed his beer without further complaint. On such an occasion as this it required the cynical courage of the minstrel Knipfenbausenstein to sing, as he did, from the end of the hall, which he had just entered after a long absence:

There were ten vintners old and sick,

And all their wine had gone to lees;

Of empty casks they made them cells:

Oh! very bitter folks were these.

Misgives me now, good friends, to think

A king should be a king of drink.

But sing:

Ruli, King Ruli! this night shall be our king!

The minstrel doubtless had in mind the ten companions of the king, who, being no longer able to keep up with the stalwart Ruli in the vigor of his potations, had cried out as with one voice against their sovereign, declaring that his beer was bitter beyond endurance, and his pleasures a gilded despotism. For this offence the king, swearing roundly that they were traitor knights, who knew not how to be moderate drinkers or loyal feasters, consigned them to his darkest wine caverns, where they were doomed to dwell in empty hogsheads for many a year.

Now, after a life of good living, the rare old king sat in his great velvet-cushioned chair, warming his legs, which were rather swollen, and his feet, which were encased in large slippers, before a fire sufficient to cook an ox. Glided to his side his eldest child, the queenly Hermengilde, and said softly: “Alas! sire, and hast thou not heard that my first-born has killed young Siegbert of Bierhalle, in a drunken brawl, and wilt thou persist in these foolish feasts?”

“Tut, tut, silly girl! This feasting hurts not thy fasting. 'Twere better to kill his man in drink than sober; and, tut, tut! we must not grieve for ever, child. Wine is for the drinking, and life for the living. Heaven send thee luck!” With this the jovial king took a draught from his flagon.

Ere he had smoked his pipe, the fair Joanna, second princess of the blood, whose wont it was to fill the king's pipe with affectionate care, said to him musingly: “Methinks it is the night when our brother Max fell over into the chasm and was killed. Ill befits that its peace be marred by roysterers whom, say they, he had most to blame for his death.”

“What! and have ye turned dames [pg 139] of the cloister, that ye seek to make crows' nests of my beard and gray hairs? Umph! my lady counsellors; and ye would have no more wine drank because rocks are steep! Did not sober Hans fall into the well, and ere thou wast born? Ay, but a brave lad was Max, and a merry one. A glass to his memory!”

The king was unaware, as he thus spoke, of the near presence of a reverend and noble matron, whose face bore marks of care and grief. It was the queen Roxalana. A child of tender years ran from her side to climb her grandsire's knee, but, seeing that the royal flagon stood in the way, exclaimed: “O grandfather! that horrid drink!” The king, with a majestic motion, waved the child away, and she returned in tears to the side of the mute queen.

“So, my lady, queen of woebegones and nurse of whimperings, thou art here to tease thy lord and trouble his gout. 'Tis well. Train the brats of the land to do imps' work to their fathers, and make your daughters have long faces; but have a care, goodwife, lest an old man's patience be too weak for this old maid's gossip. Pray, what new worm is in thy brain, that thou tellest we must not drink the cup of our fathers?”

Not long after this scene, a loud clash of arms was heard in the court, and the debauched minnesinger, Wittekind, staggered into the hall, his face stained with blood as with wine. The king's guests had just drunk their tenth glass, when a crowd of rioters, armed to the teeth, rushed in upon them, and, breaking glasses right and left, proclaimed the downfall of King Ruli. With a bitter and heavy heart, the king recognized among the crowds who now drank to his perdition many of his old revellers; and, seizing a favorable moment, fled totteringly into the wine mountain. There, to his great surprise, he found that all the tuns and hogsheads of wine and beer which had been stored away were quite empty. Once more he joined his ten companions locked up in the wine caves, lamenting bitterly that the wine of his life had gone to lees, and much tormented by the man in red, whose nose was like fire.