What I lived through, what I fought for;
Are but flowers in this bouquet:
And the young, the old and ailing,
And each virtue as each failing,
Speak their language in some lay.
The common man in Germany sings as he goes to his labour; he sings while he works, in order to enliven himself, and when he has concluded he naturally sounds forth his song of satisfaction. A pleasure, without the accompaniment of singing, he does not understand. Thus the foreigner, who has a taste for singing, hears, with surprise, a chorus-song resounding from a public-house, or passing along the streets, which might not sustain a very severe criticism, but which does all honour to the uneducated singers. So they establish themselves in the smallest villages into Gesang-vereine (singing companies), and the author recollects with particular pleasure, a serenade, which he heard in returning late one evening from Schriesheim, in the village of Handschuhsheim; and also the delightful choral-song, which a company of peasants and peasantesses, frequently raised in the summer evenings in the castle-gardens at Schwetzingen, and which in the stillness of twilight, when the splashing of the distant fountains were only heard besides, produced an extraordinary effect.
Thus it happens that songs of simple contents and of simple airs, spread themselves rapidly amongst the people, and by no other means in Germany can you so speedily operate on the popular mind as through the medium of such songs. In almost every different place you hear different songs. As an example of these songs, which are current amongst the people, we may here give a very favourite one, which is sung in a sort of half recitative.
[PRINCE EUGENE].[[31]]
Prince Eugene, that noble captain,
For the Emp'ror fain would back win,