Wenceslas was a 10th century king of Bohemia, in what is now the Czech Republic. When he was just 13 his father died. Wenceslas assumed the throne but his grandmother was the power behind it. This did not go down well with Wenceslas’ mother who arranged for grandma to be killed — she was strangled with her own veil — whereupon mummy became the power behind the throne.
This in turn did not go down well with the Bohemian nobility who eventually forced mummy into exile. Thus Wenceslas, at the age of 18, finally became king in his own right. He lasted 10 years, then was killed by his younger brother who fancied a bit of being king himself.
After his death Wenceslas was considered the model of what a good king should be. Myths of his goodness arose and he was declared a saint, thought there is no evidence of any saintliness when he was alive.
‘‘Hither, page, and stand by me, if thou knowst it telling, yonder peasant who is he, where and what his dwelling?’’
If Wenceslas were as good and caring as his reputation suggests, you would have thought that he might be more familiar with his local peasantry, rather than depending on his page. But still, ‘‘Bring me flesh and bring me wine, bring me pine logs hither,’’ declares Wenceslas, thereby involving the page in a lot of extra work while doing none himself.
‘‘You and I will see him dine, when we take them thither.’’ One can’t help thinking Wenceslas hasn’t thought this one through. Imagine the peasant answering a knock at the door to find the king there, who then insists on coming in, sitting down and watching him eat. It’s hard to imagine a more socially awkward scenario: it would be a brave peasant who managed to get any food down.
Regardless, ‘‘page and monarch forth they went, forth they went together,’’ but what we aren’t told is how the goods were being transported. There is no mention of a beast of burden or a sled, so we have to assume that everything was being carried by one or the other of them. And given Wenceslas’ laziness so far, one would guess that the burden fell on the poor young page.
Furthermore the order of the words and the well-known subsequent events suggest that when they set out into the rude wind’s wild lament and the bitter wea-e-ther, Wenceslas was happy for the heavily burdened page to lead the way, carving a path through the snow and taking the brunt of the wind. All of which casts further doubt on Wenceslas’ goodness.
(It also casts doubt on the initial weather report. The cruel frost and the bright moon of the opening verse do not tally with a rude wind.)
Unsurprisingly the page soon buckles. ‘‘Fails my heart, I know not how, I can go no longer.’’ Only now realising that he has all but killed his servant, Wenceslas grudgingly agrees to lead the way. But it never crosses his mind to send the suffering lad back to the nice warm castle, nor does Wenceslas offer to take over the burden of flesh, wine and logs.
Having no other choice, the uncomplaining page accepts the fractionally improved conditions of employment. ‘‘In his master’s steps he trod, where the snow lay dinted. Heat was in the very sod, that the saint had printed.’’
Now we come to a mystery. We know the snow was a) deep, b) crisp and c) even, so the king’s footstep would only compress the snow beneath it. Hence the word dinted. The text suggests not only that the saint’s feet had melted the snow down to the sod beneath but also that they had left behind residual heat that the page was somehow able to absorb through his heavy winter footwear despite only momentary contact.
And there, remarkably the story ends. No blazing fire and joyous roast dinner for peasant or page. Just a few hot footprints in the snow and a moral tacked on to the end introduced by a wildly irrational ‘‘therefore’’.
‘‘Therefore, Christian men, be sure, wealth or rank possessing, ye who now shall bless the poor, shall yourselves find blessing.’’
Which translates as: ‘‘if you rich people remember just once a year that you are neighbour to a peasant so poor that he has to collect firewood by night, and if you then order your servant to supply that peasant with a few consumer goods, you will have feet so hot they can melt snow.’’
■Joe Bennett is a Lyttelton writer.
