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farm were blessed with holy water and incense, my father and my mother fell
out a little. Maggie the Moss-gatherer had been there to wish us all a blessed
Christmastide, and my mother had presented her with a piece of meat for the
feast-day. My father was somewhat vexed at this; in other ways, he was a
good friend to the poor, and not seldom gave them more than we could well
spare; but in his opinion one ought not to give Moss-Maggie any alms
whatever. The Moss-gatherer was a woman not belonging to our
neighbourhood, who went wandering around in the forests without
permission, collecting moss and roots, making fires and sleeping in the half-
ruined huts of charcoal-burners. Besides that, she went begging to the
farmhouses, offering moss for sale, and if she did but poor business there she
wept and railed at her life. Children at whom she looked were sore terrified,
and many even became ill; and she could make cows give red milk. Whoever
showed her kindness, she would follow for several minutes, saying, “May
God reward you a thousand and a thousandfold right up into heaven!” But to
anyone who mocked, or in any other way whatsoever offended her, she said,
“I pray you down into the nethermost hell!”
Moss-Maggie often came to us, and she loved to sit before the house on the
grass, or on the stile over the hedge, in spite of the loud barking and chain-
clanking of our house-dog, who showed singular violence towards this
woman. She would remain there until my mother took her out a cup of milk
or a bit of bread. My mother was glad when Moss-Maggie thereupon gave her
a thousandfold-right-up-to-heaven-may-God-reward-you; but my father
considered the wish of this person worthless, whether as curse or blessing.
Some years earlier, when they were building the school-house in the
village, this woman had come to the place with her husband and helped at the
work, until one day the man was killed at stone-blasting. Since then she had
worked no more, nor did she go away; but she just idled about, nobody
knowing what she did nor what she wanted. She could never again be
persuaded to do any work—she seemed to be crazed.
The magistrate had several times sent Moss-Maggie out of the district, but
she always returned. “She wouldn’t always be coming back,” said my father,
“if she got nothing by begging in the neighbourhood. As it is she’ll just stay
about here, and when she’s old and ill, we shall have to nurse her as well: it’s
a cross that we ourselves have tied round our necks.”
My mother said nothing in reply to such words, but when Moss-Maggie
came she still gave the usual alms, and to-day in honour of the great feast a
little more.
Hence then arose the little dispute between my father and mother, which
however was at once silenced when two farm-hands bearing the incense and
The Forest Farm
Tales of the Austrian Tyrol
- Titel
- The Forest Farm
- Untertitel
- Tales of the Austrian Tyrol
- Autor
- Peter Rosegger
- Verlag
- The Vineyard Press
- Ort
- London
- Datum
- 1912
- Sprache
- englisch
- Lizenz
- PD
- Abmessungen
- 21.0 x 29.7 cm
- Seiten
- 169
- Kategorien
- Geographie, Land und Leute
- International