THESE Verses are a literal translation of an ancient Swiss ballad upon the battle of Sempach, fought 9th July, 1386, being the victory by which the Swiss cantons established their independence; the author, Albert Tchuli, denominated the Souter, from his profession of a shoemaker. He was a citizen of Lucerne, esteemed highly among his countrymen, both for his powers as a MeisterSinger, or minstrel, and his courage as a soldier; so that he might share the praise conferred by Collins on Eschylus, that Not alone he nursed the poet's flame, But reach'd from Virtue's hand the patriot steel. The circumstance of their being written by a poet returning from the well-fought field he describes, and in which his country's fortune was secured, may confer on Tchudi's verses an interest which they are not entitled to claim from their poetical merit. But ballad poetry, the more literally it is translated, the more it loses its simplicity, without acquiring either grace or strength; and, therefore, some of the faults of the verses must be imputed to the translator's feeling it a duty to keep as closely as possible to his original. The various puns, rude attempts at pleasantry, and disproportioned episodes, must be set down to Tchudi's account, or to the taste of his age. The military antiquary will derive some amusement from the minute particulars which the martial poet has recorded. The mode in which the Austrian men-at-arms received the charge of the Swiss, was by forming a phalanx, which they defended with their long lances. The gallant Winkelreid, who sacrificed his own life by rushing among the spears, clasping in his arms as many as he could grasp, and thus opening a gap in those iron battalions, is celebrated in Swiss history. When fairly mingled together, the unwieldy length of their weapons, and cumbrous weight of their de fensive armor, rendered the Austrian men-at-arms a very unequal match for the light-armed mountaineers. The victories obtained by the Swiss over the German chivalry, hitherto deemed as formidable on foot as on horseback, led to important changes in the art of war. The poet describes the Austrian knights and squires as cutting the peaks from their boots ere they could act upon foot, in allusion to an inconvenient piece of foppery, often mentioned in the middle ages. Leopold III, Archduke of Austria, called "The handsome manat-arms," was slain in the Battle of Sempach, with the flower of his chivalry. THE BATTLE OF SEMPACH.' "Twas when among our linden-trees The bees had housed in swarms (And gray-hair'd peasants say that these Betoken foreign arms), Then look'd we down to Willisow, 1 This translation first appeared in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine for February, 1818.-ED. III. Then out and spoke that Lady bright, sore troub led in her cheer, "Now tell me true, thou noble knight, what order takest thou here; And who shall lead thy vassal band, and hold thy lordly sway, away ?" stated to have peen extracted from a manuscript Chronicle of Nicolaus Thomann, chaplain to Saint Leonard in Weisenhorn, which bears the date 1538; and the song is stated by the author to have been generally sung in the neighborhood at that early period. Thomann, as quoted by the German Editor, seems faithfully to have believed the event he narrates. He quotes tombstones and obituaries | And be thy lady's guardian true when thou art far to prove the existence of the personages of the ballad, and discovers that there actually died, on the 11th May, 1349, a Lady Von Neuffen, Countess of Marstetten, who was, by birth, of the house Out spoke the noble Moringer, "Of that have thou of Moringer. This lady he supposes to have been Moringer's daughter, mentioned in the ballad. He quotes the same authority for the death of Berckhold Von Neuffen, in the same year. The editors, on the whole, seem to embrace the opinion of Professor Smith of Ulm, who, from the language of the ballad, ascribes its date to the 15th century. no care, living fair; IV. There's many a valiant gentleman of me holds [my state, The trustiest shall rule my land, my vassals and And be a guardian tried and true to thee, my lovely mate. V. "As Christian-man, I needs must keep the vow which I have plight, The legend itself turns on an incident not peculiar to Germany, and which, perhaps, was not unlikely to happen in more instances than one, when crusaders abode long in the Holy Land, and their disconsolate dames received no tidings of their fate. A story, very similar in circumstances, but And without the miraculous machinery of Saint Thom When I am far in foreign land, remember thy true knight; cease, my dearest dame, to grieve, for vain were sorrow now, as, is told of one of the ancient Lords of Haigh-hall But grant thy Moringer his leave, since God hath |