So far as imitations prove popularity, he was one of the most popular of mediæval poets. It is easy to understand the pleasure that his verses must have given, striking as they did into a new field, and executed with literary skill, full of verve and humor, and appealing to strong class prejudice. We must think of him as a gentleman fond of society, of refined courtly habits, with an aristocratic contempt for pinchbeck upstarts, yet not unwilling now and then to play the good-natured acquaintance with middle-class people.
Though he ranks as a knight, his tastes were not military. He was lively, quick-witted, and satirical; clever at musical invention; genuinely interested in poetry. Moreover, he gave early evidence of an independent literary taste, that dared to yawn at the methods practised by the great minnesingers of his youth. By his singing he had obtained sufficient favor with the Duke to receive a fief though away among the peasantry; yet rather than relinquish a home of his own, that constant dream of his profession, he made the merriest and the best of the time he needed to spend on his estate.
The feeling for spring is largely an animal sensation, as the lambs in the pasture, or dogs on the green, or little children remind us. The comparison of loving something "as goats love the spring," goes back to Greek literature. It has also been habitually associated with physical sentiment, as the splendid proëmium of Lucretius suggests. With this buoyancy of spirits and emotional susceptibility, serious minds touched with poetry have associated various deep and beautiful moods. But the moral element that enters into such spring poems as Wordsworth's, is not present in mediæval literature. There we find poets feeling spring as animals, as children, as lovers. Those were out-of-door generations; hunting, riding, fighting, and enjoying themselves beneath the open sky, were their chief employments. They found winter travel hard, for they had no beaten roads; it caused a dreary interruption to their principal engagements, and to a large extent confined them in narrow quarters, not too comfortably warmed. In spite of all the amusements that could be provided, the time must have dragged. If Romans could cry out as Ovid did at the significance of spring, what must the season have meant to the castled sons of central Europe. It is not strange then that their nature-worship instituted in early times a festival to the genial conqueror of frost and snow, and that this ceremony, as the old superstitions died away, was continued in graceful traditions of village customs. The first flowers or the earliest boughs in leaf served as the signal for the ceremonial welcome of April or May. With widely varying details, the youth of the parish would stream out to the fields or woods, and come back singing spring catches, and dancing that long, skipping forward step which they practised out-of-doors, carrying with them trophies of the season. Sometimes they fastened the first violet to a pole, and setting it up danced around it; sometimes they danced about the first linden that appeared in leaf. It is the linden that the poets are continually mentioning, whether in the centre of the courtyard or in the field, and the tree suggests the social life of the old times as happily as the pine under which Charlemagne sat, in the great chanson, suggests the imperial master.
Customs related in Herrick's Going a-Maying, such as the decoration of the houses of favorites with early greenery and the processions of girls and young men to the woods and fields, were familiar in Germany long before. Exercises to welcome spring became not only a social but even—so far as the rude country songs went—a literary habit. The earlier ritual dance around some altar or symbol of the summer deity grew into an entertainment from which all sense of its original significance had passed away. These celebrations became the main social feature of the warm months. At one time partners appear to have been taken for the year (a passage in Wilhelm Meister reminds us of this usage), but not in the period before us. A summons to a holiday dance (and the large number of church festivals made holidays frequent) was usually given by a musician playing or singing through the street. The young men and women, and not infrequently their elders, came to the customary field, dressed for the gaiety; as they went along, tossing and catching bright-colored balls. This favorite ball-playing, mentioned by more than one poet of the age as a sign of spring, and especially entered into by girls, often formed a prelude to the dance. For one thing it gave the girls a way of choosing their partners, for the man who caught the ball tossed by a girl, according to some usages, could claim the right to dance with her. An anonymous poet of the thirteenth century gives a lively picture of one of these scenes.
"All the time the young people are passing ball on the street. This is the earliest sport of summer, and as they play they scream. What if the rustic lad gives me a shove? How rude he is as he darts here and there, flying and chasing and playing tricks with the ball. Then two by two they have a hoppaldy dance about the fiddle, as if they wanted to fly."
As one of the fellows holds the ball,
"What pretty speeches the girls make him, how they shriek, how wild they get. While he's hesitating to whom he'll throw, they stretch out their hands; now you're my friend (geveterlin),—throw it down here to me ... Jiutelin and Elsemuot hurry after it. Whoever gets it is the best one. Krumpolt ran, and cried, 'Throw it to me, and I'll throw it back.' In the scrimmage some of the girls get pushed down, and an accident happens to Eppe, the prettiest one in the field. But she picks herself up, and tosses the ball into the air. All scream, 'Catch it! catch it!' No girl can play better than she does; she judges the ball so well, and is such a sure catch."
Another way of choosing partners was by presenting garlands, and one of the prettiest of the spring customs was the walk to the fields and woods after flowers for wreaths, either to give away or to wear. So one of the Latin songs describes young people going out,—
"Juvenes ut flores accipiant
Et se per odores reficiant
Virgines assumant alacriter,
Et eant in prata floribus ornata, communiter."