GERMANY AND THE LOW COUNTRIES 265

leaven. A heavy debt for entertainment has been contracted by

Germans in France. But the truly German manner is different.
It is simpler, more immediate; the sentiments are fewer but deeper,
and the lines are warmed by human kindliness. Neither is adultery
a model nor are husbands ridiculous; on the contrary, faithlessness
leads to sorrow, tragedy, and crime. Thus the German ballads
form a spectrum extending from the rosy idylls of the one extreme
to the blood-stained sordidness of the other.

The Ransom (Erk-Bohrne 78) is a simple history, which is found
in Rumania, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Sweden, the Faeroes,
Lusatia, Esthonia, and Finland. The German version is geo-
graphically central, whether it be original or not. A young girl,
captured by a pirate, appeals to father, mother, sister, and brother,
but only her true-love is willing to pay the price for her. Her peril
is not always the same: in the Ukraine and Bulgaria she is repre-
sented as swimming for her life in the Danube or another river.
In the Rumanian Girl and Cuckoo, she has lost her way; the cuckoo
will save her, not to become her honorary cousin or brother, but
only to be her lover. The ransomed Slave (Erk-Bohme 79) is quite
modem. It is a tale of love at first sight. There is something
pathetic and childish about the Swiss Dursli and Babeli (Erk-
Bohme 80), though Dursli is old enough to join a regiment. It is
thus a soldiers' poem, despite its appealing simplicity. The
landsknecht was glad to represent himself as true in love, and so
much to be preferred to the rich townsman. That is the moral
of Two Companiom (Erk-Bohme 70). It was a theme easily parodied
4 a lo divino', and such parodies exist from the fifteenth century.

A number of ballads are no more than tableaux (Erk-Bohme
71-5). There is a girl and a clerk or ensign or shipman or soldier,
and that is all. Usually maidens are not unduly coy, though there
was one Incorruptible (Erk-Bohme 74); and consequently there
are many ballads of maidens betrayed (Erk-Bohme 112-35).
They make haste to elope with tipplers who pawn their clothes, or
with landsknechts, ferrymen, officers, fiddlers. These songs are
often connected with some particular rustic ploy, such as cutting
grass or corn.

When the history is of bride-stealing or elopement, there is
often a more pronounced narrative element. There was The
Lady of Kerenstein (Erk-Bohme 34), for instance. She ran away
to her lover, with the connivance of the watchman; her father

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