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victory by which the Swiss cantons established their independence; the author, Albert Tchudi, 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 Meister-Singer, or minstrel, and his courage as a soldier; so that he might share the praise conferred by Collins on Aeschylus, 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 Winkelried, 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 defensive armour, 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 man-at-arms,' was slain in the battle of Sempach, with the flower of his chivalry.

THE NOBLE MORINGER.
P. 644.

The original of these verses occurs in a collection of German popular songs, entitled Sammlung Deutschen Volkslieder,' Berlin, 1807, published by Messrs. Busching and Von der Hagen, both, and more especially the last, distinguished for their ac quaintance with the ancient popular poetry and legendary history of Germany.

In the German editor's notice of the ballad, it is stated to have been extracted from a manuscript Chronicle of Nicolaus Thomann, chaplain to Saint Leonard in Weisenhorn, which bears the date 1533; and the song is stated by the author to have been generally sung in the neighbourhood 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 to prove the existence of the personages of the ballad, and discovers that there actually died, on the 11th of May, 1349, a Lady Von Neuffen, Countess of Marstetten, who was, by birth, of the house of Moringer. This lady he supposes to have been Moringer's daughter, mentioned in the ballad. 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.

He

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 without the miraculous machinery of Saint Thomas, is told of one of the ancient Lords of Haighhall in Lancashire, the patrimonial inheritance of the late Countess of Balcarras; and the particulars are represented on stained glass upon a window in that ancient manorhouse.

THE ERL-KING. P. 648.

The Erl-King is a goblin that haunts the Black Forest in Thuringia. To be read by a candle particularly long in the snuff.

Imitations of the Ancient Gallad.

(CONTRIBUTED TO 'THE MINSTRELSY OF THE SCOTTISH BORDER.')

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Syne they came on to a garden green, And she pu'd an apple frae a tree— 'Take this for thy wages, true Thomas; It will give thee the tongue that can never lie.'

'My tongue is mine ain,' true Thomas said;

'A gudely gift ye wad gie to me! I neither dought to buy nor sell,

At fair or tryst where I may be.

'I dought neither speak to prince or peer,

Nor ask of grace from fair ladye.' 'Now hold thy peace!' the lady said, 'For as I say, so must it be.'

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Some uncouth ferlies show to me.' Says Christ thee save, Corspatrick brave!

Thrice welcome, good Dunbar, to me!

'Light down, light down, Corspatrick brave!

And I will show thee curses three, Shall gar fair Scotland greetand grane, And change the green to the black livery.

'A storm shall roar this very hour, From Ross's hills to Solway sea.' 'Ye lied, ye lied, ye warlock hoar! For the sun shines sweet on fauld

and lee.'

He put his hand on the Earlie's head;

Heshow'd him a rock beside the sea, Where a king lay stiff beneath his

steed,

And steel-dight nobles wiped their

ee.

The neist curse lights on Branxton hills:

By Flodden's high and heathery side, Shall wave a banner red as blude, And chieftains throng wi' meikle pride.

'A Scottish King shall come full keen, The ruddy lion beareth he; A feather'd arrow sharp, I ween,

Shall make him wink and warre to

see.

'When he is bloody, and all to-bledde,

Thus to his men he still shall say— "For God's sake, turn ye back again,

And give yon southern folk a fray! Why should I lose? the right is mine!

My doom is not to die this day.”

'Yet turn ye to the eastern hand,

And woe and wonder ye sall see; How forty thousand spearmen stand,

Where yon rank river meets the sea.

'There shall the lion lose the gylte,

And the libbards bear it clean away; At Pinkyn Cleuch there shall be spilt Much gentil bluid that day.'

'Enough, enough, of curse and ban;

Some blessings show thou now to me, Or, by the faith o' my bodie,' Corspatrick said,

'Ye shall rue the day ye e'er saw me!'

'The first of blessings I shall thee show,

Is by a burn that's call'd of bread; Where Saxon men shall tine the bow, And find their arrows lack the head.

1 Bannock-burn.

Beside that brigg, out-ower that burn, Where the water bickereth bright and sheen,

Shall many a fallen courser spurn,

And knights shall die in battle keen.

'Beside a headless cross of stone,

The libbards there shall lose thegree: The raven shall come, the erne shall go,

And drink the Saxon bluid sae free. The cross of stone they shall not know, So thick the corses there shall be.' 'But tell me now,' said brave Dunbar, 'True Thomas, tell now unto me, What man shall rule the isle Britain, Even from the north to the southern

sea?'

'A French Queen shall bear the son, Shall rule all Britain to the sea; He of the Bruce's blood shall come, As near as in the ninth degree. 'The waters worship shall his race; Likewise the waves of the farthest

sea;

For they shall ride over ocean wide, With hempen bridles, and horse of tree.'

PART III. (MODERN.)

WHEN seven years more were come and gone,

Was war through Scotland spread, And Ruberslaw show'd high Dunyon His beacon blazing red.

Then all by bonny Coldingknow,

Pitch'd palliouns took their room, And crested helms, and spears a-rowe,

Glanced gaily through the broom.

The Leader, rolling to the Tweed,
Resounds the ensenzie;

They roused the deer from Caddenhead,

To distant Torwoodlee.

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