[Two anonymous folk lyrics from the nineteenth century. Image is Van Gogh’s Two Women in the Moor 1883]
Anonymous Swabian Lyric (nineteenth century)
My mother doesn’t love me
and no sweetheart do I have,
hey, why don’t I just die?
What am I doing here?
Yesterday was the fair,
I sure wasn’t seen there
because I’m hurting so.
And I can’t dance.
Let those three roses be,
those over there by the cross!
Did you know the girl
that lies below them?
Anonymous (nineteenth century)
If I were a wild falcon
I would take wing
and land again
before a noble duke’s house.
And would with strong wing
beat at my sweetheart’s door,
that the bolt should break
and my sweetheart appear.
‘Hear you the rattling of the keys?
Your mother is not far;
so come fly hence with me
over wide dale and heath!’
And I would seize at her neck
her golden plaits with my
fierce beak, and carry her
to this high place.
Yea, to this high place,
here a fine nest it would be! –
Yet what has happened to me
that I be so pinned down!
Yea, if I carried her off in flight,
the duke would not shoot me dead,
his little daughter, for a curse,
would fall to her death instead.
But as it is, my wings
are all quite paralysed,
and however finely I sing to her,
my love is ashamed of me.
Passing on the Flame 