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The arguments by which my wife induced me to banish the Christmas Man and Knecht Ruprecht seem still more cogent, now that I think I understand the hearts of children.
Usually the Christmas Man brought a companion, who followed him in the guise of Knecht Ruprecht with his own bag of presents, and mingled with his jests threats against naughty children.
The arguments by which my wife induced me to banish the Christmas Man and Knecht Ruprecht seem still more cogent, now that I think I understand the hearts of children.
My mother's permission that Knecht Ruprecht should visit us was contrary to her principle never to allow us to be frightened by images of horror. Nay, if she heard that the servants threatened us with the Black Man and other hobgoblins of Berlin nursery tales, she was always very angry.
Probably, however, it is only our old friend Robin Goodfellow, whose namesake Knecht Ruprecht makes such a figure in the German fairy mythology.
The black servant who now always accompanies St. Nicholas is an importation from America, for the Pilgrim Fathers carried their St. Nicholas festival with them to the New Country, and some of their descendants who came to live in Holland brought 'Knecht Ruprecht' with them, and so added another feature to the St. Nicholas festivity.
"I don't know. It seems so funny those Huns, those Boches, already smeared from hair to feet with blood pausing in their wholesale butchery to devise a plan to murder ME!" His face altered; he raised himself on one elbow: "The swine have turned all Europe into a bloody wallow. They're belly-deep in it Kaiser and knecht! But that's only part of it.
Usually the Christmas Man brought a companion, who followed him in the guise of Knecht Ruprecht with his own bag of presents, and mingled with his jests threats against naughty children.
My mother's permission that Knecht Ruprecht should visit us was contrary to her principle never to allow us to be frightened by images of horror. Nay, if she heard that the servants threatened us with the Black Man and other hobgoblins of Berlin nursery tales, she was always very angry.
It is M. Knecht who tells us about the visit to General Foch at Nancy, in the spring of 1914, of three British generals whose presence there Foch utilized for two purposes: He showed them what he was doing to strengthen Nancy's defensibility, and thereby urged upon them France's conviction that an attack by Germany was imminent and unavoidable; and he utilized the occasion to show the Lorrainers his warm friendliness for England which Lorraine was inclined still to blame for the death of Joan of Arc.
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