The Erl-King

O who rides by night thro' the woodland so wild?

It is the fond father embracing his child;

And close the boy nestles within his loved arm.

To hold himself fast, and to keep himself warm.

"O father, see yonder! see yonder!" he says;

"My boy, upon what dost thou fearfully gaze?"

"O, 'tis the Erl-King with his crown and his shroud."

"No, my son, it is but a dark wreath of the cloud."

(The Erl-King speaks)

"O come and go with me, thou loveliest child;

By many a gay sport shall thy time be beguiled;

My mother keeps for thee full many a fair toy,

And many a fine flower shall she pluck for my boy."

"O father, my father, and did you not hear

The Erl-King whisper so low in my ear?"

"Be still, my heart's darling--my child, be at ease;

It was but the wild blast as it sung thro' the trees."

Erl-King

"O wilt thou go with me, thou loveliest boy?

My daughter shall tend thee with care and with joy;

She shall bear thee so lightly thro' wet and thro' wild,

And press thee, and kiss thee, and sing to my child."

"O father, my father, and saw you not plain

The Erl-King's pale daughter glide past thro' the rain?"

"O yes, my loved treasure, I knew it full soon;

It was the gray willow that danced to the moon."

Erl-King

"O come and go with me, no longer delay,

Or else, silly child, I will drag thee away."

"O father! O father! now, now, keep your hold,

The Erl-King has seized me-- his grasp is so cold!

Sore trembled the father; he spurr'd thro' the wild,

Clasping close to his bosom his shuddering child;

He reaches his dwelling in doubt and in dread,

But, clasp'd to his bosom, the infant was dead.

Sir Walter Scott's translation of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's original German

Illustration by Albert Edward Sterner, 1910

The original can be found here, with literal translation. As we see, Scott has daintified the ending of the poem somewhat, to remove the element of rape. Other translators render these lines more accurately -

"I love thee, I'm charm'd by thy beauty, dear boy!

And if thou'rt unwilling, then force I'll employ."

(Edgar A. Bowring, 1853)

Obviously, this is only a Hallowe'en blog post, mildly entertaining (to those who like Romantic German poetry in translation) and with only a  tangential connection to Gilles de Rais. 

Or is it? 

We know, because I have been banging this drum since I was sixteen, that Gilles de Rais was not Bluebeard. Those who argue that Charles Perrault based his uxoricidal spouse on an alleged child-murderer - rather than, say, the alleged wife-killer Comorre the Cursed - lamely argue that Gilles' story was so horrifying that it had to be bowdlerised for fairy tales. Well, fairy tales were written for adults and they were strong meat, as the Grimms demonstrated. 

And here we see once more folklore out-Heroding Herod. The King of the Alders, like some latter-day Zeus, becomes enamoured of a mortal boy and seizes him to be his cup-bearer or catamite. Scott may shrink from the sexual implications, but Goethe did not. The parallels with the traditional image of Gilles de Rais are hard to avoid.  

I am not the first to point this out. Before he wrote his novella Gilles et Jeanne, Michel Tournier dabbled with the subject in a war story called Le Roi des Aulnes, (The Erl-King) where the antihero is  Abel Tiffauges and he rides a  horse named Barbe Bleue. To my mind, it is a far better book than Gilles et Jeanne and probably Tournier's masterpiece. And although he throws Bluebeard into the mix, probably to elucidate matters for the dim ones at the back of the class, he is quite clear: Gilles is the Erl-King. 

 For those who just can't get enough of the Erl-King, here is a blog on the subject, which includes the Bowring translation. 

POSTSCRIPT There is a strong link between the Erl-King and the Wild Hunt, as this story illustrates -

"A tale was told in Devon, England of a farmer who returned late one night from Widecombe Fair, somewhat the worse for the ale he had drunk, but able to guide his mare along the muddy lanes that led to his village. Wind raged in the trees around him, and flashes of lightning bleached the rattling branches. When rain began to fall, he pulled his hat down to protect his face and neck.

At length, he found his horse knee-deep in yelping hounds. The dogs danced impatiently at his stirrups. He looked up: A black-clad huntsman stood motionless before him, astride a gleaming black horse. The huntsman’s own broad-brimmed hat hid his face in the shadow. There were bodies – of what animals the farmer could not tell – slung across the huntsman’s saddle.

The farmer noted the great lord’s booty and, in his distinctly bibulous state, cackled with laughter. “Huntsman, share your spoils,” said he.

The huntsman looked down at him and shrugged and laughed in his turn. He tossed a parcel at the farmer, wheeled his horse and disappeared into the night, taking his hounds with him.

With rain-slicked hands, the farmer fumbled at the parcel. The wrappings fell away, and the man started violently. The parcel held the body of his small son, blue and stiff. Yet when the farmer blinked and looked again, all he saw were his own wet hands. He kicked his mare and sped home as fast as the beast could travel. His wife awaited him, wailing. The infant boy she held in her arms was dead."

The version I know relates to the Gabriel Ratchets, the belief that the strange barking sound of skeins of geese flying overhead in autumn is in fact the hounds of the Wild Hunt. A peasant was sitting by his fire and heard them fly over, and like a fool he shouted "Huntsman, share your spoils!" There was a loud crashing noise as something fell down the chimney - it was half a human torso. For some reason I prefer that version, although the other is arguably darker.

I have never found my version anywhere, and nor can I find the book I quoted the Devon story from. So if you do go down that rabbit hole, let me know if you find either. 

Playing At Butcher

Gilles de Rais was not Bluebeard. There is no dispute about this whatsoever. The idea was first mooted by a few nineteenth century French and Breton writers, most notably the Abbé Bossard. There was never any traditional link between Gilles and Bluebeard before that time; in fact, he was seen as a kind of saint. Bossard was as ignorant of folklore as he was of history and had no idea that there were similar stories of an uxoricidal lover or spouse in other cultures. He knew of the legend of Comorre the Cursed, which was both similar to Perrault's conte and disturbingly local, but he dismissed it out of hand. 

Yet people in the 21st century still assert that Gilles de Rais was Bluebeard, and it is difficult to see why. There is no similarity between a man who kills curious wives and one who allegedly murders children, except the basic subject matter of killing. Nor is it likely that his story would have been watered down so that he “only” killed wives. Fairy tales were originally intended for adults and there was no taboo on gruesome subject matter: the Pied Piper abducted children to an unknown fate, the Erl-King's daughter (or the Erl-King himself in Goethe's ballad) snatched them, a wicked witch fattened young Hansel for her table, and the ogre who meant to kill Petit Poucet mistakenly cut the throats of his own daughters.

Illustration by Gustave Doré

The following little-known story was garnered by the Grimms from the wilder shores of the oral tradition. It is short, sharp and definitely unsuitable for children. It negates the silly idea that folklore could not have handled the story of Gilles de Rais without bowdlerising it. 

How Some Children Played At Butcher

There once was a father who slaughtered a pig, and his children saw that. In the afternoon, when they began playing, one child said to the other, "You be the little pig, and I'll be the butcher." He then took a shiny knife and slit his little brother's throat.

Their mother was upstairs in a room bathing another child, and when she heard the cries of her son, she immediately ran downstairs. Upon seeing what had happened, she took the knife out of her son's throat and was so enraged that she stabbed the heart of the other boy, who had been playing the butcher. Then she quickly ran back to the room to tend to her child in the bathtub, but while she was gone, he had drowned in the tub. Now the woman became so frightened and desperate that she did not allow the neighbours to comfort her and finally hanged herself. When her husband came back from the fields and saw everything, he became so despondent that he died soon after.

Grimm brothers 

Illustration taken from this blog, where there is also an alternative version of the story.