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years, to the youthful portrait, which belongs, as I have said, to the school of Kranach, whereas the second figure portrays unmistakably the school of Rubens. It is a fearfully char

acteristic painting, and no imagination could conceive a contrast more shudderingly awful. The Sorceress is arrayed in her death garments-white with black stripes; and round her thin white locks is bound a narrow band of black velvet spotted with gold. In her hand is a kind of a work-basket, but of the simplest workmanship and form.

Of the other portraits I cannot speak from my own personal inspection; but to judge by the drawings taken from them to which I have had access, they appear to differ completely, not only in costume, but in the character of the countenance, from the one I have described, which there is no doubt must be the original, not only because it bears all the characteristics of that school of painting which approached nearest to the age in which Sidonia lived—namely, from 1540 to 1620—but also by the fact that a sheet of paper bearing an inscription was found behind the painting, betraying evident marks of age in its blackened colour, the form of the letters, and the expressions employed. The inscription is as follows:

"This Sidonia von Bork was in her youth the most beautiful and the richest of the maidens of Pomerania. She inherited many estates from her parents, and thus was in her own right a possessor almost of a county. So her pride increased, and many noble gentlemen who sought her in marriage were rejected with disdain, as she considered that a count or prince alone could be worthy of her hand. For these reasons she attended the Duke's court frequently, in the hopes of winning over one of the seven young princes to her love. At length she was successful; Duke Ernest Louis von Wolgast, aged about twenty, and the handsomest youth in Pomerania, became her lover, and even promised her his hand in marriage. This promise he would faithfully have kept if the Stettin princes, who were displeased at the pros

pect of this unequal alliance, had not induced him to abandon Sidonia, by means of the portrait of the Princess Hedwig of Brunswick, the most beautiful princess in all Germany. Sidonia thereupon fell into such despair, that she resolved to renounce marriage for ever, and bury the remainder of her life in the convent of Marienfliess, and thus she did. But the wrong done to her by the Stettin princes lay heavy upon her heart, and the desire for revenge increased with years; besides, in place of reading the Bible, her private hours were passed studying the Amadis, wherein she found many examples of how forsaken maidens have avenged themselves upon their false lovers by means of magic. So she at last yielded to the temptations of Satan, and after some years learned the secrets of witchcraft from an old woman. By means of this unholy knowledge, along with several other evil deeds, she so bewitched the whole princely race that the six young princes, who were each wedded to a young wife, remained childless ; but no public notice was taken until Duke Francis succeeded to the duchy in 1618. He was a ruthless enemy to witches; all in the land were sought out with great diligence and burned, and as they unanimously named the Abbess of Marienfliess* upon the rack, she was brought to Stettin by command of the Duke, where she freely confessed all the evil wrought by her sorceries upon the princely race.

"The Duke promised her life and pardon if she would free the other princes from the ban; but her answer was that she had enclosed the spell in a padlock, and flung it into the sea, and having asked the devil if he could restore the padlock again to her, he replied, 'No; that was forbidden to him;' by which every one can perceive that the destiny of God was in the matter.

"And so it was that, notwithstanding the intercession of

* Sidonia never attained this dignity, though Micraelius and others gave her the title.

all the neighbouring courts, Sidonia was brought to the scaffold at Stettin, there beheaded, and afterwards burned.

"Before her death the Prince ordered her portrait to be painted, in her old age and prison garb, behind that which represented her in the prime of youth. After his death, Bogislaff XIV., the last Duke, gave this picture to my grandmother, whose husband had also been killed by the Sorceress. My father received it from her, and I from him, along with the story which is here written down.*

"HENRY GUSTAVUS SCHWALENnberg."

* The style of this "Inscription" proves it to have been written in the beginning of the preceding century, but it is first noticed by Dähnert. I have had his version compared with the original in Stargord -through the kindness of a friend, who assures me that the transcription is perfectly correct, and yet can he be mistaken? for Horst (Magic Library, vol. ii. p. 246), gives the conclusion thus : "From whom my father received it, and I from him, along with the story precisely as given here by H. G. Schwalenberg." By this reading, which must have escaped my friend, a different sense given to the passage; by the last reading it would appear that the "I" was a Bork, who had taken the tale from Schwalenberg's history of the Pomeranian Dukes, a work which exists only in manuscript, and to which I have had no access; but if we admit the first reading, then the writer must be a Schwalenberg. Even the "grandmother" will not clear up the matter, for Sidonia, when put to the torture, confessed, at the seventh question, that she had caused the death of Doctor Schwalenberg (he was counsellor in Stettin then), and at the eleventh question, that her brother's son, Otto Bork, had died also by her means. Who then is this "I"? Even

Sidonia's picture, we see, utters mysteries.

In my opinion the writer was Schwalenberg, and Horst seems to have taken his version from Paulis's "General History of Pomerania,” vol. iv. p. 396, and not from the original of Dähnert.

For the picture at that early period was not in the possession of a Bork, but belonged to the Count von Mellin in Schillersdorf, as passages from many authors can testify. This is confirmed by another paper found along with that containing the tradition, but of much more modern appearance, which states that the picture was removed by successive

inheritors, first from Schillersdorf to Stargord, from thence to Heinrichsberg (there are three towns in Pomerania of this name), and finally from Heinrichsberg, in the year 1834, was a second time removed to Stargord by the last inheritor.

This Schillersdorf lies between Gartz and Stettin on the Oder.

WILLIAM MEINHOLD.

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