IDYLLIC LITKHATUUE IN CKRMANV BKI'OHIO Tin-; TIMIC OF OIMTZ. 15 



ter of the south; and the cuckoo as harbinger of spring also be- 

 longs to Germany. ^ This idyll is of impoi'tance, too, as being the 

 origin of the Streitgedichte,^ so popular during the Middle Ages, 

 and which may be traced down even to Hans Sachs. 



In the history of the development of Germany, the Dorf occu- 

 pies a very prominent position. Around this cluster- the first be- 

 ginnmgs of the Dorfgeschichte (Tales of Country 

 Idyllic Litera- Life). The Latin poem Ruodlieb^' m one of the 

 ture in the Mid- first to contam elements of this nature. We find 

 die Ages in these elements, too, in such works as Gudrun* 



Germany. and Parzival,'-' and more especially in the lyrics of 



Neidbart von ReuentbaJ.'^ But the oldest Ger- 

 man Dorfgescbicbte is Meyer HelmbrecbV by Wemher der Gar- 

 tenaere. It is a social tragedy — a warnmg to peasant sons not to 

 leave their sphere. 



During the followmg centuries contempt for peasant life as- 



1 See article by Adolf Ebert: Naso, Avgilbert und der ConSictus Veris et 

 Hiemis in Zeitscbrilt fiir deut. Alt XXII., pp. 328-835. 



8 See W. Seherer: Geschicbte der deut. Lit. (1884), p. 53. Also Adolph 

 Ebert, ZfdA, Vol. XXII., p. 333. 



3 Ruodlieb, a rhymed Latin poem of the eleventh century, is really a romance 

 of chivalry; the third and fourth fi'agments, however, describe the arrival and 

 stay of Euodlieb in a small village, and his intercourse with the shepherds. 



* Especially Horant's song (See p. 86, ff., in Martin's Kudrun. Halle 1872). 



5 In the third book of Parzival, Wolfram sets over against the world of chiv- 

 alry the life of Herzeloyd in the wilderness Soltane; in this idyllic world Parzival's 

 childhood is spent. 



6 His summer and winter songs, dances, etc., describe the peasant world in a 

 realistic manner. See E. T. McLaughlin's Studies in Medieval Life and Litera- 

 ture, p. 71. 



"^ Written before 1250. It describes a peasant's son, who, despising his father's 

 occupation, enters the service of a robber-knight. After a year he returns home, 

 and by his swaggering manners, grieves his father, who laments the decay of 

 court life. The wayward son induces his sister to run away with him and become 

 the wife of one of his companions. At the wedding the rest of the robbers are 

 caught, but he escapes, though maimed. .\t home he is disowned by his father, 

 and later hanged by peasants whom he had robbed. Cf. Studies of Mediseval 

 Life and Literature (N. Y. 1894) by E. T. McLaughlin, who speaks at length of 

 this work (p. 102) . 



