Jüngeres Hildebrandslied
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Jüngeres Hildebrandslied (the younger lay of Hildebrand) or Das Lied von dem alten Hildebrand (the song of old Hildebrand) is an anonymous Early New High German heroic ballad, first attested in the fifteenth century. A late attestation of Germanic heroic legend, the ballad features the same basic story as the much older Hildebrandslied, but was composed without knowledge of that text. Rather, it reworks the oral legend of the warrior Hildebrand and his fight against his son (here Alebrand) in accordance with late medieval and early modern taste. It is highly sentimentalized and focuses on Hildebrand's return home rather than the tragic conflict of the older tradition.
The Jüngeres Hildebrandslied was an extremely popular ballad in the age of print, and continued to be reprinted into the eighteenth century. Its melody was well known and the poem has given its name to its metrical form, the so-called "Hildebrandston". The Jüngeres Hildebrandslied was translated into Dutch, Yiddish, and Danish several times.[1] In the nineteenth century it was collected as a traditional piece of German folk poetry by the editors of Des Knaben Wunderhorn. Together with another heroic ballad, Das Lied vom Hürnen Seyfrid, it represents the longest lasting element of the heroic tradition in Germany that remained popular outside of learned circles.