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Page 14
After church, when I had scarce put off my surplice, Hinrich Seden his
squint-eyed wife came and impudently asked for more for her husband's
journey to Liepe; neither had she had anything for herself, seeing she had
not come to church. This angered me sore, and I said to her, "Why wast thou
not at church? Nevertheless, if thou hadst come humbly to me thou shouldst
have gotten somewhat even now, but as thou comest impudently, I will give
thee nought: think on what thou didst to me and to my child." But she stood
at the door and glowered impudently about the room till my daughter took
her by the arm and led her out, saying, "Hear'st thou, thou shalt come back
humbly before thou gett'st anything, but when thou comest thus, thou also
shalt have thy share, for we will no longer reckon with thee an eye for an
eye, and a tooth for a tooth; let the Lord do that if such be his will, but
we will gladly forgive thee!" Hereupon she at last went out at the door,
muttering to herself as she was wont; but she spat several times in the
street, as we saw from the window.
Soon after I made up my mind to take into my service a lad, near upon
twenty years of age, called Claus Neels, seeing that his father, old
Neels of Loddin, begged hard that I would do so, besides which the lad
pleased me well in manners and otherwise. Then, as we had a good harvest
this year, I resolved to buy me a couple of horses forthwith, and to sow
my field again; for although it was now late in the year, I thought that
the most merciful God might bless the crop with increase if it seemed
good to him.
Neither did I feel much care with respect to food for them, inasmuch as
there was a great plenty of hay in the neighbourhood, seeing that all the
cattle had been killed or driven away (as related above). I therefore made
up my mind to go in God's name with my new ploughman to G�tzkow, whither a
great many Mecklenburg horses were brought to the fair, seeing that times
were not yet so bad there as with us. Meanwhile I went a few more times up
the Streckelberg with my daughter at night, and by moonlight, but found
very little; so that we began to think our luck had come to an end, when,
on the third night, we broke off some pieces of amber bigger even than
those the two Dutchmen had bought. These I resolved to send to my wife's
brother, Martin Behring, at Hamburg, seeing that the schipper Wulff of
Wolgast intends, as I am told, to sail thither this very autumn, with
pitch and wood for shipbuilding. I accordingly packed it all up in a
strong chest, which I carried with me to Wolgast when I started with my
man on my journey to G�tzkow. Of this journey I will only relate thus
much, that there were plenty of horses and very few buyers in the market.
Wherefore I bought a pair of fine black horses for twenty florins apiece;
_item_, a cart for five florins; _item_, twenty-five bushels of rye, which
also came from Mecklenburg, at one florin the bushel, whereas it is hardly
to be had now at Wolgast for love or money, and costs three florins or
more the bushel. I might therefore have made a good bargain in rye at
G�tzkow if it had become my office, and had I not, moreover, been afraid
lest the robbers, who swarm in these evil times, should take away my corn,
and ill-use and perchance murder me into the bargain, as has happened to
sundry people already. For, at this time especially, such robberies were
carried on after a strange and frightful fashion on Strellin heath at
G�tzkow; but by God's help it all came to light just as I journeyed
thither with my man-servant to the fair, and I will here tell how it
happened. Some months before a man had been broken on the wheel at
G�tzkow, because, being tempted of Satan, he murdered a travelling
workman. The man, however, straightway began to walk after so fearful a
fashion, that in the evening and night-season he sprang down from the
wheel in his gallows' dress whenever a cart passed by the gallows, which
stands hard by the road to Wolgast, and jumped up behind the people, who
in horror and dismay flogged on their horses, and thereby made a great
rattling on the log embankment which leads beside the gallows into a
little wood called the Kraulin. And it was a strange thing that on the
same night the travellers were almost always robbed or murdered on
Strellin heath. Hereupon the magistrates had the man taken down from the
wheel and buried under the gallows, in hopes of laying his ghost. But it
went on just as before, sitting at night snow-white on the wheel, so that
none durst any longer travel the road to Wolgast. Until at last it
happened that, at the time of the above-named fair, young R�diger von
Nienkerken of Mellenthin, in Usedom, who had been studying at Wittenberg
and elsewhere, and was now on his way home, came this road by night with
his carriage. Just before, at the inn, I myself had tried to persuade him
to stop the night at G�tzkow on account of the ghost, and to go on his
journey with me next morning, but he would not. Now as soon as this young
lord drove along the road, he also espied the apparition sitting on the
wheel, and scarcely had he passed the gallows when the ghost jumped down
and ran after him. The driver was horribly afraid, and lashed on the
horses, as everybody else had done before, and they, taking fright,
galloped away over the log-road with a marvellous clatter. Meanwhile,
however, the young nobleman saw by the light of the moon how that the
apparition flattened a ball of horse-dung whereon it trod, and straightway
felt sure within himself that it was no ghost. Whereupon he called to the
driver to stop; and as the man would not hearken to him, he sprang out of
the carriage, drew his rapier, and hastened to attack the ghost. When the
ghost saw this he would have turned and fled, but the young nobleman gave
him such a blow on the head with his fist that he fell upon the ground
with a loud wailing. _Summa_: the young lord, having called back his
driver, dragged the ghost into the town again, where he turned out to be a
shoemaker called Schwelm.
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