With thy young bride so wan and pale This tragic wedding, the death of the bride, the slaughter of Earl Frederick by her father, and the roses and lilies that grew out of the graves of the two lovers, form a popular subject with the peasantry in different parts of Germany, and many various versions of the ballad are current. The celebrated ballad of Leonora, by Bürger, has sometimes been traced to the English ballad, called, "the Suffolk Miracle; or a relation of a young man, who, a month after his death, appeared to his sweetheart, and carried her on horseback, behind him, for forty miles, in two hours, and was never seen after but in his grave;" but Dr. Althof, the intimate friend and biographer of Bürger, has satisfactorily shown that he could not possibly have been acquainted with the English ballad, as it is not to be found in the Göttingen library, the only place where Bürger could have seen it and he has pointed out at the same time the true source of the German composition.-Bürger, one moonlight night, heard a peasant girl sing an old German song, of which three lines remained engraven on his memory; but, notwithstanding all his efforts, he was unable afterwards to obtain any trace of it. There is a complete copy of this curious ditty in the Wunderhorn,-of which the following is a close translation: Yonder, in Hungary Land, The little stars us light, The moon it shines so bright, There is an old Norse ballad, bearing a close resemblance to the above, from which Oehlenschlager, in his Palnatoke, has taken the following three lines: The moon it shines, The dead man grins, O be thou not so red! Some curious German ballads have been preserved by John Henry Jung, who was born in 1740,-a man of a very singular character, who gave to the world an account of his own remarkable life, under the title of Henry Stilling's Biography. This individual was intended to be a charcoal burner, but chose rather to be a tailor. Having a strong love of knowledge, he instructed himself in his hours of leisure, and became candidate for the place of preceptor of a school. Failing in his attempt, he was obliged to return to his trade, from which, however, he was occasionally called to act as a private teacher in families. He became afterwards a physician, and professor, and died a privy councellor of Baden !-He was a man of a most amiable and sincere character; and his account of his own life is supposed to be one of the most veridical works of the kind ever composed. His piety was of a fervent, but at the same time of a visionary cast. He believed in the intercourse of departed spirits with the living, and his peculiar doctrines on this subject were espoused by many people in different parts of Germany. The following ballad, among others, is given by Jung, in his biography. A peasant, he says, told him the following story respecting it: "A little down there, you see the castle of Geisenberg; straight behind it there is a high mountain, with three heads, of which the middle one is still called the Kindelsberg. There, in old times, stood a castle of that name, in which dwelt knights who were very ungodly people.God became, at length, weary of them; and there arrived late, one evening, a white little man at the castle, who announced to them that they should all die within three days: as a sign, he told them that the same night on which he spake, a cow would produce two lambs. This accordingly happened; but no one minded the prophecy, except the youngest son, the knight Siegmund, and a daughter, who was a very beautiful maiden: these two prayed day and night. The others all died of the plague, and these two were saved. Now here, on the Geisenberg, there was also a bold young knight, who constantly rode a large black horse; on which account he was always called the knight with the black horse. He was a wicked man, who was always robbing and murdering. This knight fell in love with the maiden, on the Kindelsberg, and was determined to have her; but the thing had a bad ending; I know an old song on this story. (Here he sung the song.) The affecting melody, (continues Jung) and the story itself, produced such an effect on Stilling, (Jung) that he often visited the old peasant, who sung the song to him, till he got it by heart."' At Kindelsberg, on the castle high, There stands a stem, both broad and tall, There sleeps a maiden the mournful sleep, With her brother to a distant land They parted with many a tear: To give vent to her sorrow and pain. 4 The maiden said, "thou shalst, I vow, My heart to thee will I give!" The lime-tree still was high and young, In search of a lime so large and so high, Then out he went, in the moonshine bright, The maiden up in the morning rose, Sat down with sorrow and pain, The maiden answer'd, in distress, And saw, in sorrowful mood, For a bed of rest for his bride, And a great stone he also placed, Which by the wind cannot shaken be ;— There sleeps the maiden in peaceful rest, In the shade of the green lime tree. The following passage is closely translated from the ballad of Maria and the Knight St. George, in a collection of old popular songs, in the dialect of the Kuhländchen," published in 1817. It's up in the mountain, the wind it doth Kyri-eleeison : If better to preach he were only inclined; Kyrieleeison: With his cook maid he does better as well you do know; Juch Juch he, Kyri Kyrie— Glory be to Krispel and to Salome! The following is also from the same collection. The Death of Basle," has reference to a painting of death, by Holbein, at the church of Basle. When I a blithe young fellow was, 1 married an old wife; But ere three days were past and gone, I hied me then to the church yard, O kind good death of Basle, And when back to the house I came, I to the waggon yoked the horse, And drove my wife away. And when I to the church yard came, O softly tread ye benrers, Come shovel, shovel, shovel up, My old and wicked wife; For while she lived I wot she was, The plague of my young life! Having deposited his old wife in the earth, he hastens home and gets a young one, who beats him from morning to night, and soon makes him regret her predecessor. The Danes have the richest collection of old ballads of all the Teutonic nations. These ballads, long known under the name of the Kimpe Viser, were, to the number of one hundred, first printed by Anders Sorensön Vedel, in 1591, at the request of the Queen of Denmark. Others were added in subsequent editions, of which several appeared, both in Denmark and Norway. A volume of Tragica, or old Danish historical Love Songs, was published in 1657 ; and a hundred ballads collection, in 1695. A New Edition, were added, by Peter Syv, to Vedel's enriched by several ballads from old manuscript collections, of which, to the honour of the fair sex, there had been many made in former days in Denmark, has lately been published in Copenhagen, with the old tunes to which they were sung. This curious collection of ballads, in a language so very like the north country English, ought to be in the hands of every amateur of this species of literature. It is divided into ballads relating to the old mythical period,supernatural and miraculous ballads, historical ballads,-and fictitious ballads. With respect to their age, it cannot be exactly determined; but it has been affirmed, by good judges, that, with the exception of five, in the historical class, all the rest are the composition of the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries. The subjects to which the historical ballads relate, are many of them of a very ancient date; the language is often full of archaisms not to be found in the monuments even of the 15th century; and several of them are referred to by name in the old Chronicles. Some of these ballads have been introduced with considerable effect, by Oehlenschläger, in his Dramas. In his Tragedy of Axel and Valborg, which is itself founded on a popular ballad, he introduces that of the To be had from Mr. Bohte, London. Knight Aage in the following man ner Valborg. My Axel oft has told me with what skill You touch the harp William. Oft times its tones Have soothed my troubled senses to repose: Valborg. Well then, dear William, seat thee in that nook, Where, by my mother's grave a harp is hung. How many a sleepless night has Valborg's voice Accompanied its tones among these graves! How many a time with it has she begun The song of the Knight Aage! Never sung She it to end; her feeble voice was drowned By scalding tears; but you, my noble William, Received, from God a nature more robust: Take you the golden harp, and seat your self Down by the Royal pillar, facing Axel, And sing, with tuneful string, your song to end, Whilst Valborg kneels beside her Axel's corse And do not, prithee, rise till all is o'erTill Else has her Aage joined in death. It was the Knight Sir Aage, He betrothed Lady Else, All with the gold so red, But on the Monday after He in the earth was laid; It was the Lady Else, And she did wail and weep, The Knight, Sir Aage heard her, Under the earth so deep; Uprose the Knight, Sir Aage, Took his coffin up behind," With the coffin he knock'd upon the door, "O rise up Lady Else And let thy Aage in!" Then answered Lady Else, Till thou repeat Christ Jesus' name, "O rise up little Else, And open thou thy door; I can the name of Jesus name, As I could do before." Then up rose the proud Else, The tears fast down did flow, And in she let dear Aage, For whom she felt such woe; And then she took her golden comb, She dropt a bitter tear. How was it under the black earth All round with rose leaves clad; "But every time thou grievest, And in thy mind art sad, My coffin then it seems to be All filled with clotted blood. "But now the red cock croweth, I can no longer stay, "And now the black cock croweth, And now the Lady Else, Her heart it was right sad, She went on with her Aage, All through the darksome wood; She went with him all through the wood, And into the church yard, And then the Knight, Sir Aage, Lost the hue of his yellow hair; And as he came to leave the yard, Lost the hue of his cheeks so red; "Now hear thou little Else proud Hear me my dearest dear, And cast thine eye to heaven up, And thou wilt thereby come to know, She cast her eye to heaven up And to each little star; Into the earth the dead man slipped, * In old times, ghosts were supposed to take their coffins with them-See the wooden cuts in the Helden-buch, &c. Now home went Lady Else, She lay in the dark clay. This affecting ballad was taken from a manuscript collection, which belonged to Christiana, daughter of King Christian IV, and in which she wrote her name, with the date, 24th June, 1660. The number of ballads closely resembling it, dispersed throughout the various Teutonic countries, is very great indeed; and it is hardly going too far to affirm, that something like it is to be found in almost every one of their provinces. The Suffolk Miracle, the original of Bürger's Leonora, and a Norse song, all of similar construction, have already been noticed. The strongest likeness to it, however, is to be found in the famous Scots ballad of William and Margaret, which we believe was first published in Allan Ramsay's Tea Table Miscellany. But, though in all these the resemblance is very great, it does not seem certain that any one country was indebted for the subject to another. The belief in ghosts follows naturally, from the belief that we do not wholly die; and the most that the reason of an enlightened age can say on the subject, is, that allowing a continuation of our existence, in some shape or other, we know not whether the nature of that existence does or does not allow of an intercourse between it and the mortal life. There is a difficulty in supposing an identity of being, without an identity of affections; and men in a rude age, naturally cling with fondness to the idea, that, as the old affection is con tinued, the disembodied spirit will not be subjected to a restraint, debarring it irrevocably, from all means of communicating with the object of its regard. Those who witness the separation of two lovers by the hand of death, can hardly avoid picturing to themselves a renewal of the intercourse so sadly disturbed; and hence the idea of such ballads as we have last noticed, must be almost perpetually floating in the mind, and as extensively diffused as human feeling. It must be allowed, at the same time, that the resemblance between William and Margaret, and the Knight Aage, extends even to the details. Compare the following verses from the former, with what we have just given above. My bones are buried in yon kirk-yard, Hae, there's your faith and troth, Willie A piece below her knee, The dead corpse followed she: Or any room at your side Willie ; There's no room at my head, Margaret; There's no room at my feet; And up then crew the gray, THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES. "Are these sentiments which any man, who is born a Briton, need be afraid No. I. DIFFICULTY OF POLITICS AS A SUBJECT; UNCERTAINTY OF POLITICAL PRINCIPLES; REMARKS ON THE DIVISIONS OF POLITICAL SENTIMENT IN THE COUNTRY. We adventure on a very serious and hazardous undertaking in commencing this series of Articles; and we have now put its title on paper, for the first time, with a trembling hand. The prospect before us is not a cheerful one; the roads we must traverse are doubtful and unsafe ;we dare not affirm that we know exactly what we ought to recommend, |