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852 DEATH.
Kaisersberg calls Death holz-meier, wood-mower. He wrote a,
book, De arbore humana (Strasb. 1521 fol.), wherein easily and
to the glory of God ye may learn to await blithely the woodcutter
Death. Then, p. 118b : So is death called a village-mower or
wood-mower, and justly hath he the name, for he hath in him the
properties of a wood-cutter, as, please God, ye shall hear. The
first property of the village-mower is communitas, he being pos
sessed in common by all such as be in the village, and being to
serve them all alike. So is the wood-cutter likewise common to
all the trees, he overlooketh no tree, but heweth them down all. 1
Here Death is regarded as a forester, a ranger, who has a right
to fell any of the forest-trees. It is said that in some places the
gravedigger
In the Deutsche Schlemmer, a drama of the 16th cent.,
is called holzmeier.
Death is called the pale Streckefass or Streckebein (leg-stretcher),
as Gryphius too (Kirchhofsged. 36) names him Streckfuss, because
he stretches out the limbs of the dying, loosens them (Xycr^eX^?) ;
and before that, the twice quoted Meister-song of the 14th
cent, has : er hat kein ru, er hab gestrecket mir das fell (my
skin)/ Hag. mus. 2, 188. In Chr. Weise s Drei erzn. 314 I find
Streckebein and Bleckezahn, bleak (i.e. bared) teeth; and else
where Diirrbein, Klapperbein, names for a skeleton. The allusion
in kupferbickel (Ackerm. aus B. p. 34) remains obscure (see
Suppl.).
It remains for me to mention certain more fully developed
myths respecting
remote antiquity.
Death, which have survived from assuredly a
H. Sachs (1, 102 b
), speaking of Death s arrival, says he twitclies
or jerks the stool from under man, tips it over, so that he tumbles
to the ground. He takes from him his seat and standing amcwig
the living : I suspect there was a fuller story at the back of this.
More commonly the same thing is expressed by Death has
blown the man s candle out (as Berhta blew out the lights of the
eyes, p. 277), for the notions of light, life and sojourn among the
living, run into one another. 2 The living principle was linked
1 The earlier editions in Latin (1514, 115b - c b - c
and , 1519, 105 have in ) paren
theses der dorfmeyger and der holzmeyger.
2 Wh. 416, 14 : bi liehter sunnen da verlasch (went out) manegem Sarrazin
sin lieht. Lohengr. 133 : er sluoc in, daz im muose daz lieht erliidien.