In Danish A a, b, h, o, B b, two lilies spring from the common grave of the lovers, and embrace or grow together. In E k, l, F b, e, f, and Kristensen, XI, No 46, the lovers are buried apart (she south, he north, of kirk, etc.), a lily springs from each, and the two grow together.
Low and High German, Dutch. A. ‘Brennenberg,’ 12 stanzas, Uhland, I, 158, No 75 A, Niederdeutsches Liederbuch, No 44, conjectured to be of the beginning of the seventeenth century. ‘Der Bremberger,’ Böhme, p. 87, No 23 B (omitting sts 3, 4); Simrock, Die deutschen Volkslieder, p. 14, No 5, Die geschichtlichen deutschen Sagen, p. 325, No 105 (omitting sts 1-4, and turned into High German). B. ‘Ein schöner Bremberger,’ 8 stanzas, flying-sheet, 8°, Nürnberg, Valentin Newber, about 1550-70, Böhme, No 23 A; Wunderhorn, ed. Erk, 1857, IV, 41, modernized. C. ‘Van Brandenborch,’ 6 stanzas, Antwerpener Liederbuch, 1544, ed. Hoffmann, p. 120, No 81; Hoffmann’s Niederländische Volkslieder, 1856, p. 34, No 7 (omitting st. 6); Uhland, No 75 B. D a. Grasliedlin, 1535, one st., Böhme, No 23 a; Uhland, No 75 C. b. The same, heard on the Lower Rhine, 1850, Böhme, No 23 b.
‘Brunenborch,’ Willems, No 53, p. 135, 21 stanzas, purports to be a critical text, constructed partly from copies communicated to the editor (“for the piece is to this day sung in Flanders”), and partly from C, A, D a, and Hoffmann, No 6.[33] It is not entitled to confidence.
All the versions are meagre, and A seems to be corrupted and defective at the beginning.[34]
A youth, B 2, has watched a winter-long night, brought thereto by a fair maid, A 1, 3, B 1, to whom he has devoted his heart and thoughts, and with whom he wishes to make off, A, B. Ill news comes to the maid, B 2, that her lover is a prisoner, and has been thrown into a tower. There Brennenberg (A, der Bremberger, B, Brandenborch, C, der Brandenburger, D a) lay seven years or more, till his head was white and his beard was gray. They laid him on a table and slit him like a fish,[35] cut out his heart, dressed it with pepper, and gave it to the fairest, A, the dame, B, the dearest, C, to eat. ‘What have I eaten that tasted so good?’ ‘Brennenberg’s heart,’ A. ‘If it is his heart, pour wine for me, and give me to drink.’ She set the beaker to her mouth, and drank it to the bottom, B. The first drop she drank, her heart broke into a dozen bits, A, C. (Their love was pure, such as no one could forbid, A 11; the same implied in A 12, C 5.)
The German-Dutch ballad, though printed two hundred years before any known copy of the Swedish-Danish, is much less explicit. The lady is certainly a maid in B, and she is a maid in A if the first stanza is accepted as belonging to the ballad. Then it should be her father who proceeds so cruelly against her. The wine-drinking, followed by speedy death, may come, as it almost certainly does in some of the Scandinavian ballads, from the story of Ghismonda; and therefore the German-Dutch ballads, as they stand, may perhaps be treated as a blending of the first and the ninth tale of Boccaccio’s fourth day. But there is a German meisterlied, printed, like B, C, D a, in the sixteenth century, which has close relation with these ballads, and much more of Boccaccio’s ninth tale in it: ‘Von dem Brembergers end und tod,’ von der Hagen’s Minnesinger, IV, 281, Wunderhorn, 1808, II, 229, epitomized in the Grimms’ Deutsche Sagen, II, 211, No 500. The knight Bremberger has loved another man’s wife. The husband cuts off his head, and gives his heart to the lady to eat. He asks her if she can tell what she has eaten. She would be glad to know, it tasted so good. She is told that it is Bremberger’s heart. She says she will take a drink upon it, and never eat or drink more. The lady hastens from table to her chamber, grieves over Bremberger’s fate, protesting that they had never been too intimate, starves herself, and dies the eleventh day. The husband suffers great pangs for having ‘betrayed’[36] her and her deserving servant, and sticks a knife into his heart.[37]
The incident of a husband giving his wife her lover’s heart to eat occurs in a considerable number of tales and poems in literature, and in all is obviously of the same source.
Ysolt, in the romance of Tristan, twelfth century, sings a lai how Guirun was slain for love of a lady, and his heart given by the count to his wife to eat. (Michel, III, 39, vv. 781-90.)
Ramon de Castel Rossillon (Raimons de Rosillon) cut off the head of Guillems de Cabestaing, lover of his wife, Seremonda (Margarita), took the heart from the body, ‘fetz lo raustir e far pebrada,’ and gave it to his wife to eat. He then told her what she had been eating (showing her Cabestaing’s head), and asked her if it was good. So good, she said, that she would never eat or drink more; hearing which, her husband rushed at her with his sword, and she fled to a balcony, let herself fall (threw herself from a window), and was killed. (Chabaneau, Les Biographies des Troubadours en langue provençale, pp. 99-103, MSS of the thirteenth and the fourteenth century.) Nearly the same story, ‘secondo che raccontano i provenzali,’ in the Decameron, IV, 9, of Messer Guiglielmo Rossiglione and Messer Guiglielmo Guardastagno. The lady says that she liked very much the dish which she had eaten, and the husband, No wonder that you should like when it was dead the thing which you liked best of all when it was living: what you have eaten was Guardastagno’s heart. God forbid, replies the lady, that I should swallow anything else after so noble a repast; then lets herself drop from a high window.
In Konrad von Würzburg, ‘Das Herz,’ ‘Das Herzmäre,’ 1260-70, five or six hundred verses, a knight and a lady are inflamed with a mutual passion (tugendhafter mann, reines weib). The lady’s husband conceives that he may break this up by taking her to the Holy Land. In that case, the knight proposes to follow; but the lady prevails upon him to go before her husband shall take this step, with the object of lulling his jealousy and stopping the world’s talk. The knight goes, and dies of the separation. As his end was approaching, he had ordered his attendant to take out his heart, embalm it, enclose it in a gold box, and carry it to the lady. The husband lights upon the emissary, takes away the box, directs his cook to make a choice dish of the heart, and has this set before his wife for her exclusive enjoyment. He asks her how she finds it, and she declares that she has never eaten anything so delicious. She is then told that she has eaten the knight’s heart, sent her by him as a token. God defend, she exclaims, that any ordinary food should pass my mouth after so precious victual, and thereupon dies (von der Hagen’s Gesammtabenteuer, I, 225). The same story is introduced as an “example” in a sermon-book: ‘Quidam miles tutpiter adamavit uxorem alterius militis.’[38] The lady kills herself.