- Ludwigslied
The "Ludwigslied" (in English, "Lay" or "Song of Ludwig") is an
Old High German poem of 59 rhyming couplets, celebrating the victory of the Frankish army, led byLouis III of France , over Danish (Viking ) raiders at theBattle of Saucourt-en-Vimeu on3 August 881 .The poem is thoroughly
Christian in ethos. It presents the Viking raids as a punishment from God: "He" caused the Northmen to come across the see to remind the Frankish people of their sins, and inspired Louis to ride to the aid of his people. Louis praises God both before and after the battle.Although the poem is Christian in content, and the use of rhyme reflects Christian rather than Germanic poetic tradition, it is not without Germanic elements. It belongs to the genre of "Preislied", a song in praise of a warrior, of a type which must have been common in Germanic
oral tradition .The poem is preserved in over four pages in a single 9th century manuscript formerly in the monastery of
Saint-Amand , now in the Bibliothèque municipale,Valenciennes (Codex 150, f. 141v-143r). In the same manuscript, and written by the same scribe, is theOld French Sequence of Saint Eulalia .The poem speaks of Louis in the present tense: it opens, "I know a king called Ludwig who willingly serves God. I know he will reward him for it". Since Louis died in August the next year, the poem must have been written within a year of the battle. However, in the manuscript, the poem is headed "Ritmus teutonicus de piae memoriae Hluduice rege" ("German song to the beloved memory of King Louis"), which means it must be a copy of an earlier text.
The dialect of the poem generally regarded as
Rhine Franconian , though there are some peculiarities which have received a variety of explanations. It is assumed that the manuscript was written by a bilingual scribe in Saint-Amand and we have no other example of an OHG text from this area. Some regard it as the sole textual example of the otherwise little knownWest Franconian dialect, which is assumed to have been the language of the Carolingian court.External links
* [http://www-01.valenciennes.fr/bib/decouverte/histoire/rithmus.asp Le Rithmus teutonicus ou Ludwigslied] - facsimile and bibliography from the Bibliothèque Municipale, Valenciennes (in French)
* [http://www-01.valenciennes.fr/bib/decouverte/histoire/rithmustrad.asp OHG text with modern French translation]
* [http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/Marmaria/ohg/ohg_primer_ludwigslied.htm OHG text]
* [http://www.fh-augsburg.de/~harsch/germanica/Chronologie/09Jh/Ludwigslied/lud_manu.html High quality facsimile of all four sheets] (Biliotheca Augustana)
* [http://www.fh-augsburg.de/~harsch/germanica/Chronologie/09Jh/Ludwigslied/lud_text.html Transcription of the text] (Biliotheca Augustana)Further reading
* "Althochdeutches Lesebuch", ed. W.Braune, K.Helm, E.A.Ebbinghaus, 17th edn, Tübingen 1994. ISBN 3-484-10707-3. Includes the standard edition of the text.
*Bostock, J. K. "A Handbook on Old High German Literature Second Edition". Revised by K. C. King and D. R. McLintock.Oxford :Clarendon Press ,1976 . Contains an English translation.
*Wolf, Alois. "Medieval Heroic Traditions and Their Transitions from Orality to Literacy". In "Vox Intexta: Orality and Textuality in the Middle Ages", ed. A. N. Doane and C. B. Pasternack, 67-88. Madison:University of Wisconsin Press ,1991 .
*Schwarz, W. [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0026-7937%28194710%2942%3A4%3C467%3AT%22ANP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-G "The "Ludwigslied", a Ninth-Century Poem."] "The Modern Language Review", Vol. 42, No. 4. (Oct., 1947), pp 467-473.
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