At one time Gotthelf planned to write a connected cycle of legendary-historical stories which should form a sequence of pictures from the Bernese past. This plan was never carried out, but a number of individual tales on these themes were written, of which The Black Spider is the best. This is a plague legend, and it is known that the valley was ravaged by plague in 1434. The spider theme is linked with motifs from ancient myth – the cheating of the Devil, human sacrifice, the imprisonment of the demon within a beam of wood, and others – which stretch back from legendary material of Bernese origin to remote manifestations. Hans von Stoffeln, the tyrannical knight whose harshness drives his shifty and hapless peasants into the fateful pact that precipitates the plague, was master of Sumiswald from 1512 to 1527; the historical figure, however, was known as a generous ruler, and he is in fact commemorated in one of the windows of Sumiswald Church. The Teutonic Order to which he belonged was in control of this district from 1285 to 1698, when the Sumiswald area passed into the charge of the canton of Berne. At the time of the first and more important of the two legendary narratives which are related at the christening celebration, the Order was an important military and colonizing organization, though by the seventeenth century, when the second visitation of the spider takes place, it was without authority in these lands and on the verge of disintegration. Two narratives of a historical-legendary character are thus enclosed within the framework of the Ascension Sunday christening celebration, and the unifying theme of the whole work is the baptism of children. In the legends the onslaught of the plague is described with a combination of realism and fantasy that brings myth into daily life as the battle between good and evil. Throughout the tale we are conscious of the presentation of the divine and the diabolic as co-existent with the material and human world.

Gotthelf was essentially a spontaneous and original writer, owing little to literary traditions or fashions. Echoes of the Bible are more easily discernible than any other reading influences. He wrote in a German style that was unmistakably his, colloquial, racy and shot through with local Swiss idioms, and yet at the same time massive and rocklike, capable of visionary sweep and power. The writing in The Black Spider often gives a sense of being written in a fury of impetuosity which is careless of conventional grammar and syntax; Gotthelf is, as it were, creating his own language and style as well as his own characters and action.

The version that follows is based on my edition of the German text, which was revised from the original manuscript now in the archives of the Stadt- und Hochschulbibliothek in Berne. For further information about this story the reader is referred to this edition (Jeremias Gotthelf, Die schwarze Spinne, Oxford: Blackwell, 1956) and for a fuller account of Gotthelf’s life and works to my study Jeremias Gotthelf: An Introduction to the Swiss Novelist (Oxford: Blackwell, 1953).

– H.M. Waidson

Chronology

The Black Spider

THE SUN ROSE OVER THE HILLS, shone with clear majesty down into a friendly, narrow valley and awakened to joyful consciousness the beings who are created to enjoy the sunlight of their life. From the sun-gilt forest’s edge the thrush burst forth in her morning song, while between sparkling flowers in dew-laden grass the yearning quail could be heard joining in with its love-song; above dark pine tops eager crows were performing their nuptial dance or cawing delicate cradle songs over the thorny beds of their fledgeless young.

In the middle of the sun-drenched hillside nature had placed a fertile, sheltered, level piece of ground; here stood a fine house, stately and shining, surrounded by a splendid orchard, where a few tall apple trees were still displaying their finery of late blossom; the luxuriant grass, which was watered by the fountain near the house, was in part still standing, though some of it had already found its way to the fodder store. About the house there lay a Sunday brightness which was not of the type that can be produced on a Saturday evening in the half-light with a few sweeps of the broom, but which rather testified to a valuable heritage of traditional cleanliness which has to be cherished daily, like a family’s reputation, tarnished as this may become in one single hour by marks that remain, like bloodstains, indelible from generation to generation, making a mockery of all attempts to whitewash them.

Not for nothing did the earth built by God’s hand and the house built by man’s hand gleam in purest adornment; today, a festal holiday, a star in the blue sky shone forth upon them both. It was the day on which the Son had returned to the Father to bear witness that the heavenly ladder is still standing, where angels go up and down, and the soul of man too, when it wrenches itself from the body – that is, if its salvation and purpose have been with the Father above and not here below on earth – it was the day on which the whole plant world grows closer towards heaven, blooming in luxuriant plenty as an annually recurring symbol to man of his own destiny. Over the hills came a wonderful sound; no one knew where it came from, it sounded as if from all sides; it came from the churches in the far valleys beyond; from there the bells were bringing the message that God’s temples are open to all whose hearts are open to the voice of their God.

Around the fine house there was lively movement. Near the fountain horses were being combed with special care, dignified matrons, with their spirited colts darting around them; in the broad trough cows were quenching their thirst, looking about them in a comfortable manner, and twice the farmer’s lad had to use shovel and broom because he had not removed the traces of their well-being cleanly enough. Well-set maids were vigorously washing their ruddy faces with a handy face cloth, while their hair was twisted into two bunches over their ears; or with bustling industry they were carrying water through the open door; and in mighty puffs a dark column of smoke from the short chimney rose straight and high, up into the clear air.

Slowly the grandfather, a bent figure, was walking with his stick round the outside of the house, watching silently the doings of the farm servants and the maids; now he would stroke one of the horses, or again restrain a cow in her clumsy playfulness, or point out to the careless farmer’s boy wisps of straw still lying forgotten here and there, while taking his flint and steel assiduously out of the deep pocket of his long waistcoat in order to light his pipe again, which he enjoyed so much in the morning in spite of the fact that it did not draw well.

The grandmother was sitting on a clean-swept bench in front of the house near the door, cutting fine bread into a large basin, every piece sliced thin and just the right size, not carelessly as cooks or maids would do it, who often hack off pieces big enough to choke a whale. Proud, well-fed hens and beautiful doves were quarrelling over the crumbs at her feet, and if a shy little dove did not get its share, the grandmother threw it a piece all to itself, consoling it with friendly words for the want of sense and the impetuosity of the others.

Inside in the big, clean kitchen a huge fire of pine wood was crackling; in a big pan could be heard the popping of coffee beans which a stately-looking woman was stirring around with a wooden ladle, while nearby the coffee mill was grinding between the knees of a freshly washed maid; but standing by the open door of the living room was a beautiful, rather pale woman with an open coffee sack in her hand, and she said, “Look, midwife, don’t roast the coffee so black today, or else they might think I wanted to be stingy with it. The godfather’s wife is really awfully suspicious and always makes the worst of everything anybody does. Half a pound or so is neither here nor there on a day like this. Oh, and don’t forget to have the mulled wine ready at the right time.