They tell me,
also, that while it will be pouring with rain just in the village
the sun will be shining brightly all round about, and that the
villagers, when the water begins to come in through their roofs,
snatch up their children and hurry off to the nearest field, where
they sit and wait until the storm is over."
"Do you believe them - the persons that you say tell you these
tales?" I ask.
"Personally I do not," he replies. "I think people exaggerate to me
because I look young and innocent, but no doubt there is a ground-
work of truth in their statements. I have myself left Ober-Ammergau
under a steady drenching rain, and found a cloudless sky the other
side of the Kofel.
"Then," he continues, "you can comment upon the hardihood of the
Bavarian peasant. How he or she walks about bare-headed and bare-
footed through the fiercest showers, and seems to find the rain only
pleasantly cooling. How, during the performance of the Passion
Play, they act and sing and stand about upon the uncovered stage
without taking the slightest notice of the downpour of water that is
soaking their robes and running from their streaming hair, to make
great pools upon the boards; and how the audience, in the cheaper,
unroofed portion of the theatre, sit with equal stoicism, watching
them, no one ever dreaming even of putting up an umbrella - or, if he
does dream of doing so, experiencing a very rude awakening from the
sticks of those behind."
B. stops to relight his pipe at this point, and I hear the two
ladies in the next room fidgeting about and muttering worse than
ever. It seems to me they are listening at the door (our room and
theirs are connected by a door); I do wish that they would either
get into bed again or else go downstairs. They worry me.
"And what shall I say after I have said all that?" I ask B. when at
last he has started his pipe again.
"Oh! well, after that," he replies, "you can give the history of the
Passion Play; how it came to be played."
"Oh, but so many people have done that already," I say again.
"So much the better for you," is his reply. Having previously heard
precisely the same story from half a dozen other sources, the public
will be tempted to believe you when you repeat the account. Tell
them that during the thirty year's war a terrible plague (as if half
a dozen different armies, marching up and down their country,
fighting each other about the Lord only knows what, and living on
them while doing it, was not plague enough) swept over Bavaria,
devastating each town and hamlet. Of all the highland villages,
Ober-Ammergau by means of a strictly enforced quarantine alone kept,
for a while, the black foe at bay. No soul was allowed to leave the
village; no living thing to enter it.
"But one dark night Caspar Schuchler, an inhabitant of Ober-
Ammergau, who had been working in the plague-stricken neighbouring
village of Eschenlohe, creeping low on his belly, passed the drowsy
sentinels, and gained his home, and saw what for many a day he had
been hungering for - a sight of his wife and bairns. It was a
selfish act to do, and he and his fellow-villagers paid dearly for
it. Three days after he had entered his house he and all his family
lay dead, and the plague was raging through the valley, and nothing
seemed able to stay its course.
"When human means fail, we feel it is only fair to give Heaven a
chance. The good people who dwelt by the side of the Ammer vowed
that, if the plague left them, they would, every ten years, perform
a Passion Play. The celestial powers seem to have at once closed
with this offer. The plague disappeared as if by magic, and every
recurring tenth year since, the Ober-Ammergauites have kept their
promise and played their Passion Play. They act it to this day as a
pious observance. Before each performance all the characters gather
together on the stage around their pastor, and, kneeling, pray for a
blessing upon the work then about to commence. The profits that are
made, after paying the performers a wage that just compensates them
for their loss of time - wood-carver Maier, who plays the Christ,
only receives about fifty pounds for the whole of the thirty or so
performances given during the season, to say nothing of the winter's
rehearsals - is put aside, part for the temporal benefit of the
community, and the rest for the benefit of the Church. From
burgomaster down to shepherd lad, from the Mary and the Jesus down
to the meanest super, all work for the love of their religion, not
for money. Each one feels that he is helping forward the cause of
Christianity."
"And I could also speak," I add, "of grand old Daisenberger, the
gentle, simple old priest, 'the father of the valley,' who now lies
in silence among his children that he loved so well. It was he, you
know, that shaped the rude burlesque of a coarser age into the
impressive reverential drama that we saw yesterday. That is a
portrait of him over the bed. What a plain, homely, good face it
is! How pleasant, how helpful it is to come across a good face now
and then! I do not mean a sainted face, suggestive of stained glass
and marble tombs, but a rugged human face that has had the grit, and
rain, and sunshine of life rubbed into it, and that has gained its
expression, not by looking up with longing at the stars, but by
looking down with eyes full of laughter and love at the human things
around it."
"Yes," assented B. "You can put in that if you like.
