248 NORDIC BALLADS

moral into such pieces; but the earlier ones are more objective.
They relate some incidents of wild audacity together with the final
scenes of arrest and execution, so that the general impression is the
more gallant. Fine examples are Epple von Gailingen, whose head
was 'put between his legs' in 1381, Lindensckmid (c. 1490),
Schiittensam (1466), and Fritsche Grad (1430) (Erk-Bohme 230,
246-7, 242). Thijsken van den Schilde (Fallersleben 23, Erk-
Bohme 249) is a ballad of the same sort, from the Low Countries,
but with rather less valiant tone. The robber-baron was a concept
so purely German that there is nothing quite similar in other
balladries. The Lusatian Handrias and Rajsenberk (Haupt and
Schmaler, i, 14) is evidence of the almost complete Germanism of
these Slavic ballads. The tune of Lindensckmid was new, and served
to shape the stanzas of many new ballads.

In the fourteenth century the state of Denmark was much per-
plexed. Valdemar IV had launched an attack on the Hanseatic
towns and made the seas unsafe, and the succession of his daughter
Margaret was disputed. The uncertainty of trade favoured the rise
of piracy, especially when Margaret saw in the freebooters a pos-
sible source of strength against the Hansa. The proclamation of
peace in 1383 let loose a flood of marauders upon the commerce of
Hamburg, Liibeck, and other trading towns; and in 1395 a re-
conciliation between Sweden and Denmark set adrift the marauders
who had made Wismar and Rostock their lairs. Three bands
were organized for the systematic pillage of the Russian coasts,
Friesland, and the Spanish sea. The leaders were Godeke Michel,
Wichmann, Wigbold, and Claus Stortebecker. The expedition
organized from Hamburg against the last of these in 1402, and its
success, were recorded in a most vigorous Low German ballad,
Stortebecker (Erk-Bohme 233):

Stortebecker and Michael Godecke,
they were two robbers equally,

by water and not by land, sirs,
till God was angered grievously,

and brought them bitter shame, sirs.

They took them to a paynim lord,
and with the heathen traffic hold,

his daughter will they marry,
they rend and scream, like bears so bold,

and Hamburg's beer drink gladly.