Liebesfreude!

Lavendel, Myrt' und Thymian
Das waechst in meinen Garten;
Wie lang bleibt doch der Freiersmann?
Ich kann es kaum erwarten.

Sie hat gesponnen sieben Jahr
Den goldnen Flachs am Rocken;
Die Schleier sind wie Spinnweb klar,
Und gruen der Kranz der Locken.

Und als der schmucke Freier kam,
War'n sieben Jahr verronnen:
Und weil sie der Herzliebste nahm
Hat sie den Kranz gewonnen."

The bridegroom receives a buttonhole, but no one sings him a song. In
the opera he is not on the stage during the bridesmaids' chorus. I
have not been able to find out whether the quaint pretty verses are by
Friedrich Kind, who founded the libretto of the opera on a story by
August Apel, or whether he borrowed them from an older source. German
brides wore myrtle and their friends wove a wedding wreath for them
long before 1820, when _Der Freischuetz_ appeared.

CHAPTER X

MARRIAGES

"He was a pompous, stiff-jointed man," said my friends, "an official
in a small town, who would go to the stake rather than break the
letter of the law. But when he came to Berlin to attend a niece's
marriage he thought he would have some fun. He arrived late on
_Polterabend_, and he brought with him an enormous earthenware crock.
Instead of ringing he hurled the crock against the outside door of the
flat, so that it smashed to atoms with a noise like thunder. The
inhabitants of that flat came forth like a swarm of bees, but they
were not laughing at the fun, because it was not their _Polterabend_."
He had broken crockery on the wrong floor.

In cities this ancient German custom of breaking crockery at the
bride's door on _Polterabend_ (the night before the wedding) has died
out, but it has not long been dead. I have talked with people who
remembered it in full force when they were young. I believe that the
idea was to appease the _Poltergeist_, who would otherwise vex and
disturb the young couple. My dictionary, the one that has 2412 pages,
says that a _Poltergeist_ is a "racketing spectre," probably what we
who are not dictionary makers would call a hobgoblin. In Brands'
_Antiquities_ I find reference to this old custom at the marriage of a
Duke of York in Germany, when great quantities of glass and china were
smashed at the palace doors the night before the wedding.

Polterabend is still celebrated by Germans, although they no longer
consider it polite to smash crockery. There is