Page - 147 - in The Forest Farm - Tales of the Austrian Tyrol

later, when, crippled through illness, she tottered along on my arm! And, on this forest road, I thought of my parents’ life. He had come to the forest farm a young man. People called him Lenz, not because he was young and blooming and joyful as the Lenz, or spring, but because his name was Lorenz. His father had been severely wounded in a brawl, lain ill for but a little while and died an early death. So now Lenz was the owner of the forest farm. To recover in a measure from his sadness for his father’s sake, he did a capital thing: he looked about him for a wife. He took almost the poorest and the most disregarded that the forest valley contained: a girl who was frightfully black all through the week, but had quite a nice little white face on Sundays. She was the daughter of a charcoal-burning woman and worked for her aged mother, but had never seen her father. One year after the wedding, in the summer, the young woodman’s wife presented her Lenz with a first-born. He received the name of Peter and now runs all over the world with it, an everlasting child. Her life was so peculiar, her life was so good, her life had a crown of thorns. Our farm was no small one and its days were well-ordered; but my mother did not play the grand farmer’s wife: she was housewife and servant-maid in one. My mother was an educated woman: she could “read print”; she had learnt that from a charcoal-burner. She knew the story of the Bible by heart; and she had no end of legends, fairy-tales and songs from her mother. Moreover, she was always ready with help in word and deed and never lost her head in any mishap and always knew the right thing to do. “That’s how my mother used to do, that’s what my mother used to say,” she was constantly remarking; and this continued her rule and precept, long after her mother was laid to rest in the churchyard. No doubt, there was at times a little bigotry, what we call “charcoal- burner’s faith,” mixed up with it, yet in such a way that it did no harm, but rather spread a gentle poetry over the poor life in the houses in the wood. The poor knew my mother from far and wide: none knocked at her door in vain; none was sent hungry away. To him whom she considered really poor and who asked her for a piece of bread she gave half a loaf; and, if he begged for a gill of flour, she handed him a lump of lard with it. And “God bless