HOW BALLADS SPREAD 75 de la Salle about 1420. An apocryphal poem detailing a conversa- tion between the poet and Venus has served to cement this association; the poem is recorded in a manuscript of the year 1453. Therefore, we can affirm that the ballad was made by a High German in the fifteenth century, and (since the opening is in the style of an 'aubade') one who was familiar with the processes of the courtly lyric. There is external evidence of its passage into Low German territory in the eighties of that century. Danhuser leads to the Flemish Herr Daniel on the one hand, and to the Danyser which appears in Denmark in 1684. The reasons for believing The Castle in Austria to be a fifteenth-century piece are of a more general nature, but equally satisfying. It is one of many ballads on the theme of the guiltless prisoner, who has set his love too high and must suffer for it, and it goes back to a common source, in all probability, in which the prisoner was a poor student of the Uni- versity of Paris. However, it represents a new start and has a history of its own. The ballad is easily recognizable by its first lines : There lies a castle in Austria that is so nobly founded, with silver and the red, red gold and marble stone surrounded. The verse is recognizable even when, for devout reasons, the Eastern realm (Oosterrijk) is allegorically understood. Starting in High Germany the ballad descends to Low Germany and spreads westwards into the Netherlands and northwards into Denmark and Sweden. The oldest German tune belongs to the year 1480 and is unconnected with the rest (40412). What is called the 'old wise' is a tune recorded from the middle years of the sixteenth century, first in the Low Countries. In 1540 its intervals are 73 G, but there are many variations, and from Rostock Erk and Bohme reported one in EzizC which is virtually that of the Danish ballad (B^BC).1 The ballad entered Denmark from the Low German territory, possibly from Mecklenburg; the date must lie between 1 Souterliedekens, 1540. Rostock Danish 73G B2I2C B25BC i flat U4 i flat 32 U4 2 flats 68 U4 d:dda.a:c.cf.r a./a. .ag./a. .ab./c.. .c./a... a/a(.a)ga.J/