DESCRIPTIONS OF NATURE BY THE MINNESINGERS. 401 



Minnesingers. The Crusaders had little connection with the 

 Saracens, and differences ever reigned amongst the various 

 nations who were fighting for one common cause. One of the 

 most ancient of the lyric poets was Friedrich von Hanson, who 

 perished in the army of Barbarossa. His songs contain many 

 allusions to the Crusades, but they simply express religious 

 views, or the pain of being separated from the beloved of his 

 heart. Neither he, nor any of those who took part in the 

 crusades, as Rcinmar the elder, Rubin, Neidhardt, and Ulrieh 

 von Lichtenstein, ever take occasion to speak of the country 

 surrounding them. Reinmar came to Syria as a pilgrim, and 

 as it would appear, in the retinue of Duke Leopold VI. of 

 Austria. He laments that he cannot shake off the thoughts 

 of home, which draw his mind away from God. The date-tree 

 is occasionally mentioned when reference is made to the palm- 

 branches which the pilgrims should bear on their shoulders. I 

 do not remember an instance in which the noble scenery of 

 Italy seems to have excited the imaginative fancy of the 

 Minnesingers who crossed the Alps. Walther von der Vogel- 

 weide, who had made distant travels, had, however, not 

 journeyed further into Italy than to the Po ; but Freidank* had 

 been in Rome, and yet he merely remarks that grass grows 

 on the palaces of those who once held sway there." 



The German Animal epos, which must not be confounded 

 with the " animal fables"' of the East, has arisen from a habit 

 of social familiarity with animals, and not from any special 

 purpose of giving a representation of them. This kind of 

 epos, of which Jacob Grimm has treated in so masterly a 

 manner in the introduction to his edition of Reinhart Fuchs, 

 manifests a genuine delight in nature. The animals, not 

 chained to the ground, passionately excited, and supposed to 



* VridanJces Besclieidenlieit, by Wilhelm Grimm, 1834, s. 1. and 

 cxxviii. I have taken all that refers to the German national epos, and 

 the Minnesingers from a letter f Wilhelm Grimm to myself, dated 

 October, 1845. In a very old Anglo-Saxon poem on the names of the 

 Runes, first made known by Hickes, we find the following character- 

 istic description of the birch-tree: " Beorc is beautiful in its branches : 

 it rustles sweetly in its leafy summit, moved to and fro by the breath of 

 heaven." The greeting of the day is simple and noble : " The day is the 

 messenger of the Lord, dear to man, the glorious light of God, a joy and 

 trusting comfort to rich and poor, beneficent to all ! " See also Wilhelm 

 Grimm, Ueber deutsche Runen, 1821, s. 94, 225, and 234. 



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