This volume contains the greater portion of the poems which constitute the Gaudeamus--'Let us be jolly'--of Joseph Victor Scheffel, who is at present the most popular poet in Germany. Without being presented as such, these ballads, though complete in themselves, form in their connection a droll history of the world and of humanity--advancing from the early outburst of Granite and Basalt, through the boulder of Gneiss to the Ichthyosaurus and Megatherium. Man then appears as a dweller in the pre-historic Swiss-Lacustrine-dwelling on poles, where he bitterly bewails the misfortune of being a pioneer of civilization, and as one born before the invention of modern comforts.

'In stocks I would gladly grow wealthy,

But exchange is not yet understood:

A good glass of beer would be healthy,

But never a drop has been brewed.'

The Early Phœnician is set forth in a droll song (originally published under the title of Jonah) which describes the disasters that befell a guest who could not pay his bill,--presented in arrow-head or cuneiform characters on six tiles. The old Etruscan era and that of the ancient German are also painted in a style which, could the truth be known, would probably be found as genially true to life as it is to the world-old, infinite spirit of Humour, which moved man in the same measure in ancient Egypt as in modern England. In these, as in his serious poems of a more ambitious nature, Joseph Victor Scheffel manifests a remarkable insight into the inner real life of the past. Like a geologist, or poet, he infers from trivial relics the probable feelings and habits of obscure beings or races, or at least imagines them, and assimilates them to modern usages with rare tact. These ballads have been printed, sung, and imitated in Germany of late years to a great extent. Scheffel has in fact founded a school of humorous poetry--that of the burlesque-scientific and historical--which, though by no means pretentious, has at least made the world laugh heartily. I sincerely trust that the following translations will induce the reader to become familiar with the original.

I have omitted a few poems from the Gaudeamus, as deficient in the peculiar spirit of fun which characterises all that are here given; but should the public manifest its approbation of this work, they may be found in another edition. In their place I have given translations of a number of eccentric German-student songs of the new school, nearly all of which have found their way into the popular German song-books of late years.

CHARLES G. LELAND.

London, October, 1871.

[JOSEPH VICTOR SCHEFFEL.]

AN INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR.

Joseph Victor Scheffel was born in the year 1826, at Karlsruhe, in Baden, where his father, a veteran officer, had taken up his residence. He received his first instruction in the 'Lyceum' of his native place, a high school which enjoyed at the time a splendid reputation, and was considered the best in the Grand Duchy of Baden. Whatever may have been said against one or the other of the professors, the majority were remarkable men, knowing how to awaken the mental activity of their pupils. The social life of the 'Lyceists' was free from ordinary constraints; and the merry youths enjoyed many privileges, which at other places were strictly reserved for University students.

Nor did they lack any opportunities for intellectual improvement in the capital of Baden. The theatre was then excellent, and the 'Lyceists' visited it regularly. Eyen politics agitated the mind of this young generation. It must be remembered that thirty years ago Baden was the focus of political life, to which the eyes of every German patriot was directed; and although Mannheim was the seat of the agitation, the chamber united at Karlsruhe a number of men, whose names will ever be held in respect in Baden: Itzstein, Welcker, Bassermann, Hecker, Mathy, Soiron.

Joseph Victor passed with all the honours, and as one of the best pupils, all the classes of the Lyceum, and then devoted himself to the study of law at the University of Heidelberg. There he joined a so-called academical society of progress, without, however, taking part in the Baden revolution, which drove so many of his comrades into exile.

After having passed the Government examination we find our young poet as 'Rechtspractikant' (practitioner of law) in the little town of Säckingen. Well might the little provincial place appear dull to a student coming from the liveliest university of Germany. Still the splendid scenery of the environs of Säckingen compensated for many shortcomings. With the numerous friends he won there, Scheffel made frequent excursions through the valleys which stretch in all directions from the Feldberg and the Rhine. He proved to be a bold and even reckless swimmer, passing many a time through the bridge of Säckingen, saluting the bystanders as he accomplished this daring feat.

In the office of his court, located in an old convent of nuns, Scheffel found a number of old documents and MSS., and there his first poem was written, based on one of them: 'Der Trompeter von Säckingen. Ein Sang vom Oberrhein.'

The success of this first production was complete. It was published at the time when the 'incense perfume of the pious soul,' as Scheffel calls the poems of Oskar von Redwitz, had its firmest hold on the misguided taste of the public. In comparison with this sickly, effeminate poetry, the simple, natural, and yet intensely poetic production of Scheffel afforded something like the enjoyment of fresh mountain air after that of a hot-house. It is true, Scheffel was at first entirely ignored by the Berlin and Leipzig critics who assume to sit in judgment over modern German literature (he has, up to the present day, not even found a place in Brockhaus's Conversations-Lexicon), but the unsophisticated public recognized the kernel of pure poetry in Scheffel's unpretentious verses; and his 'Trompeter' is at present the most popular poem in Germany. Its story is told with extreme simplicity and humour, in blank trochees with interspersed rhymed poems; it leads us to the forest-town of Säckingen during the second half of the 17th century, and into the neighbouring castle of a baron, whose only daughter is wooed and, at last, won by a young musician, a merry youth, who had been expelled from the University of Heidelberg on account of his noisy behaviour.

Nothing can be more humorous than the account of the ex-student's life at Heidelberg, of his duels and his libations beneath the big tun of the castle,

Bei dem Wunder unserer Tage,
Bei dem Kunstwerk deutschen Denkens,
Bei dem Heidelberger Fass,

or the historical episode of the foundation of Säckingen by Saint Fridolin, an Irish apostle, sent by Chlodwig with the following message to convert the Allemannic Germans:

Hatt' sonst nicht die grösste Vorlieb
Für die Kutten, für die Heil'gen,
Aber seit mir die verfluchten
Scharfen Alemannenspiesse
Allzunah um's Ohr gepfiffen,
Seit der schweren Schlacht bei Zülpich,
Bin ich and'rer Ansicht worden,
--Noth lehrt auch die Könige beten.
Schutz drum geb' ich, wo ihr hinzieht.
Und empfehl' hauptsächlich Euch am
Oberrhein die Alemannen.
Diese haben schwere Schädel,
Diese sind noch trotz'ge Heiden,
Macht mir diese fromm und artig--

or the meditations of the cat of the castle, which, as silent witness of the caresses of the two lovers, thus broods over the enigma of the kiss:

Warum küssen sich die Menschen?
S'ist nicht Hass, sie beissen sich nicht,
Hunger nicht, sie fressen sich nicht.
S'kann auch kein zweckloser blinder
Unverstand sein, denn sie sind sonst
Klug und selbstbewusst im Handeln;
Warum, also, frag' umsonst ich,
Warum küssen sich die Menschen?
Warum meistens nur die Jüngern?
Warum diese meist im Frühling?
Ueber diese Punkte werd' ich
Morgen auf des Daches Giebel
Etwas naher meditiren.

In the delineations of the various characters of the 'Trompeter' Scheffel exhibits a gift of true poetical conception, a warmth of feeling, and a power of description, equalled by few of our modern poets; indeed, the characters rise before our mind with such truthfulness, as the idealized types of the people in that corner of Germany, that one might almost believe one had met all of them during one's wanderings in the Black Forest, whether it be Werner, the merry trumpeter, or the crusty old baron, or Anton, the respectable 'Hausknecht.'

Scheffel did not remain long in Säckingen. He quitted the Government service, and, after passing some time in travels in South Germany, settled at Donaueschingen as Keeper of the Archives of Prince Fürstenberg. This town is likewise exceedingly small, the environs are bare and not to be compared with the romantic scenery of the Upper Rhine; but at the court of the refined princes of Fürstenberg there were at all times remarkable men, and the library afforded, in MSS. and documents, ample means for the study of Old German history, language, and literature.

To this study Scheffel now devoted himself, and, in combining his qualities as a poet with that of an historian, created his famous novel Ekkehard. Based chiefly on the Chronicles of the Monastery of St. Gallen, it gives us a faithful picture of the social life in South Western Germany--the most ancient seat and nucleus of German civilization during the tenth century,--in retaining and reproducing all the naïveté, freshness, and simple-minded views which are the charms of these celebrated chronicles, whilst the poet's figures are marked with that distinct individuality which raises the dry chronicle to a skilful and poetical tale of human passions and conflicts. Ekkehard may be compared with the best of Sir Walter Scott's novels. Another fruit of Scheffel's researches in mediæval literature is his charming little volume 'Frau Aventiure,' and likewise, although published much later, 'Juniperus,' the history of a German Crusader, and his most recent work, 'Die Bergpsalmen.' Both these latter works (the last one is written in verse) exhibit the same merits as Ekkehard, but they are laid out on a smaller scale, and are of a more fragmentary character. 'Frau Aventiure' is a collection of songs, partly jocose, partly inspired by the most tender feelings, in the spirit of the poems of the Minnesinger and wandering scholars of the Middle Ages, and is based on a subtle knowledge of mediæval culture and poetry.

But to his second residence in Heidelberg we must trace the origin of his most popular work, the collection of songs known under the title of 'Gaudeamus.' A small circle of friends, who met every Wednesday evening at a supper in the Holländer Hof, near the bridge (and amongst whose most conspicuous members were the celebrated historian Ludwig Haeusser, and the venerable pastor of Ziegelhausen, Fr. Schmezer), kindled those sparks of unequalled humour and merriment--the Rodensteiner, 'Im Schwarzen Wallfisch zu Askalon,' and the geological songs, which delighted readers of every class, and found their way into every student's songbook of Germany. The geological songs owe their origin to a course of lectures on geology which Pastor Schmezer delivered at the time. Scheffel regularly attended these lectures of his friend, and the latter was certain to find as regularly on the following morning of his lecture a poetical resumé of it on his desk, in the form of a humorous poem.

What gives such a high value to these songs, and indeed to all the poetry of Scheffel, is the fact that they, in depicting the joyous vein in human nature, set forth a faithful abstract, a true poetical substratum, of the popular life and thought of South-Western Germany. If any one should fail to comprehend the spirit of Scheffel's poetry let him go to the 'joyful Palatinate,' and to its ancient capital, Heidelberg. There he will find the frank, merry, and humorous characters of Scheffel's poems, and especially the prototypes of that thirsty soul, the Rodensteiner who pawned his three villages during the revelries 'Zu Heidelberg im Hirschen,' and finally bequeathed his thirst to the students. And looking from the ruins of the castle over the beautiful valleys of the Neckar and the Rhine, he will perhaps understand the enthusiasm which our poet has for this blessed spot, in singing:

Und stechen mich die Dornen,
Und wird mir's draus zu kahl;
Geb' ich dem Pferd die Spornen,
Und reit' in's Neckarthal.

[GRANITE.]

In unterirdischer Kammer
Sprach grollend der alte Granit:
'Da droben den wäss'rigen Jammer
Den mach' ich jetzt länger nicht mit.'

In his lair subterranean, grumbling

Old Granite said: 'One thing is sure,

That slopping and slippery tumbling

Up yonder, no more I'll endure.

So wearily wallows the water

His billows of brine o'er the land,

'Stead of prouder and fairer and better

All is turning to slime and to sand.

'That would be a nice limestony cover,

A sweet geological swash,

If the coat of the wide world all over

Were one sedimentary wash.

By and by 'twill be myth and no true thing

What were hills--what was high or was low.

The deuce take their drifting and smoothing;

Hurrah! far eruption I go!'

So he spoke, and to aid him, pro rata,

The brave-hearted Porphyry flew,

The weak-hearted crystalline strata

He scornfully shattered in two.

With flashing and crashing and bellow,

As though the world's end were to dread,

Even Graywack, that decent old fellow,

In terror stood up on his head.

Also Stonecoal and Limestone and Trias

Fast vanished, internally mined.

Loud wailed in the Jura, the Lias,

That the wild fire had scorched him behind.

And Limestone, the marl-plot of chalkers,

Said later, in deep earnest chimes,

'Was there no one, to stop, 'mong you talkers,

This wild revolution betimes?'

But upwards through strata and fountains

Passed the conquering hero with heat,

Until from the sunniest mountains

He gazed on the world at his feet.

Then he shouted with yodling and singing,

'Hurrah! 'Twas courageously done,

Even we can be doing and bringing

What it only needs pluck to be won.'

[THE ICHTHYOSAURUS.]

Es rauscht in den Schachtelhalmen,
Verdächtig leuchtet das Meer,
Da schwimmt mit Thränen im Auge
Ein Ichthyosaurus daher.

The rushes are strangely rustling,

The ocean uncannily gleams,

As with tears in his eyes down gushing,

An Ichthyosaurus swims.

He bewails the frightful corruption

Of his age, for an awful tone

Has lately been noticed by many

In the Lias formation shown.

'The Plesiosaurus, the elder,

Goes roaring about on a spree;

The Plerodactylus even

Comes flying as drunk as can be.

'The Iguanodon, the blackguard,

Deserves to be publicly hissed,

Since he lately in open daylight

The Ichthyosaura kissed.

'The end of the world is coming,

Things can't go on long in this way;

The Lias formation can't stand it,

Is all that I've got to say!'

So the Ichthyosaur went walking

His chalks in an angry mood;[^[1]]

The last of his sighs extinguished

In the roar and the rush of the flood.

And all of the piggish Saurians[^[2]]

Died, too, on that dreadful day;

There were too many chalks against them,

And of course they'd the devil to pay.

And this petrifideal ditty?[^[3]]

Who was it this song did write?

'Twas found as a fossil album leaf

Upon a coprolite.

[THE TAZZELWORM.]

Als noch ein Bergsee klar und gross
In dieser Thäler Tiefen floss,
Hab'ich allhier in grober Pracht
Gelebt, geliebt und auch gedracht

Als Tazzelwurm.

Tazzelworm is a provincial German word for a dragon. This was a song sung at the fête of hanging up the sign of the Fiery Tazzelworm at a little mountain tavern in Rehau, on the road over the Audorfen mountain meadows, in the Tyrol.

When yet a lake from mountains grand
Ran down yon valleys through the land,
Here I a great flash vulgar thing
Lived, loved, and went a-dragoning

As Tazzelworm,

From Pentling unto Wendelstein,
Were rock and air and water mine,
I walked and flew, and kicked and rolled,
And 'stead of hay I slept on gold,

As Tazzelworm.

My scaly skin was all of horn,
And fire I spit since I was born;
Whatever up the mountain came,
I killed and gobbled it for game,

As Tazzelworm.

But when I so forgot God's law,
And ate up shepherd maidens raw,
Came Noah's food, with all its fogs,
And knocked my business to the dogs,

As Tazzelworm.

And now you see me painted, shine
On Schweinesteiger's bran-new sign.
The shepherd maidens laugh in choir,
And not a mortal fears the fire

Of Tazzelworm.

And oft some learned chap will shout
Before my eyes: 'His games played out!
He lived before the flood washed round,
But men of science never found

A Tazzelworm.'

Weak-minded sceptic! enter here,
Mix up Tyróler wine and beer,
But ere you come to Kuffstein--whew!
You'll find that I have breathed on you,

As Tazzelworm.

And Klausen's landlord sad will say,
'By Jove--whence did those fellows stray?
Their legs are loose--their heads arn't firm,
They all have seen the Tazzelworm,

The Tazzelworm.'

[THE MEGATHERIUM.]

Was hängt denn dort bewegungslos
Zum Knaul zusammgeballt
So riesenfaul und riesengross
Im Ururururwald?
Dreifach so wuchtig als ein Stier,
Dreifach so schwer und dumm--
Ein Kletterthier, ein Krallenthier:
Das Megatherium!

Vide Cuvier, Ossemens fossiles, v. 1, p. 174. tab. 61. The Megatherium was a gigantic sloth.

What hangs there like a frozen pig,

Or knot all twisted rude?

So giant lazy, giant big,

In the prim--rim--æval wood?

Thrice bigger than a bull--at least

Thrice heavier, and dumb--

A climbing and a clawing beast,

The Megatherium!

All dreamily it opes its jaws

And glares so lazily,

Then digs with might its cutting claws

In the Embahuba tree.

It eats the fruit, it eats the leaf,

Soft, happy, grunting 'Ai!'

And when they're gone, as if with grief,

Occasionally goes 'Wai!'

But from the tree it never crawls.

It knows a shorter way;

For like a gourd adown it falls,

And will not hence away.

With owly eyes awhile it hums,

Smiles wondrously and deep;

For after good long feeding comes

Its main hard work--to sleep.

Oh, sceptic mortal--brassy, bold,

Wilt thou my words deride?

Go to Madrid and there behold

His bones all petrified.

And if thou hast before them stood,

Remember these my rhymes.

Such laziness held only good

In antdiluvian times.

Thou art no Megatherium,

Thy soul has aims divine,

Then mind your studies, all and some,

And eat not like a swine.

Use well your time--'tis money worth,

Yea, work till death you see.

And should you yield to sloth and mirth,

Do it not sloath--somely![^[4]]

[THE BASALT.]

Mag der basaltene Mohrenstein
Zum Schreck es erzählen im Lande,
Wie er gebrodelt in Flammenschein
Und geschwärzt entstiegen dem Brande:
Brenn's drunten noch Jahr aus Jahr ein
Beim Wein soll uns nicht bange sein,
Nein, nein!
Soll uns nicht bange sein!

F. v. Kobell. Urzeit der Erde, p. 33.

Es war der Basalt ein jüngerer Sohn
Aus altvulcanischem Hause,
Er lebte lang verkannt und gedrückt
In erdtief verborgener Clause.

Sir basalt was a younger son

Of that oldest race, the Vulcanian,

And he lived for ages oppressed and unknown

In a cavern deep subterranean.

So they goaded and jeered the lover forlorn,--

'Art thou yearning for rainy weather?

You will get but a mitten, and the scorn

Of all the formations together.

'Uncle Rocksalt said to the Lime and smiled,

And the billows sneer it higher,

"How can the Ocean's third-born child

Be a bride to this scum of Fire?"'

What happened next was never known;

But at once into madness crashing,

In a fiery blaze he was upwards thrown,

His wild veins glaring and flashing.

Loud raving he sprang to the air in haste,

And scorching all, fast hurried;

Bursting the strata's mountain waste

Beneath which he long was buried.

And she whom he once had worshipped, broke,

And was crushed as a mere obstruction;

He laughed in scorn, and whirling in smoke,

Stormed on to fresh destruction.

And blow on blow--a terrible roar

Of thousands of storms wild crashing;

The earth burst open and trembled all o'er.

With a shaking and breaking and dashing.

Till in majesty the fiery flood

Flew up from the rifts in fountains,

And scattered with ruins land and flood

Bowed down to the columned mountains.

There he stood and gazed on the blue air free,

And the sun with its sweet attraction,

Then heavily sighed--it blew cool from the sea--

And he sank in petrifaction.

Yet still in the rock may be heard in rhyme

A wondrous tuning and ringing,

As though he would from his youthful time

A song of love be singing.

And a gold yellow drop of natrolite

From the dark stone oft comes peeping;

Those are the tears which Sir Basált

For his crushed love ever is weeping.

[THE BOULDER.]

Einst ziert' ich, den Aether durchspähend,
Als Spitze des Urgebirg's Stock,
Ruhm, Hoheit und Stellung verschmähend,
Ward ich zum erratischen Block.

Once high on the mountain-peak rising,

In sunlight I shone like a flame;

But height and position despising,

A wandering boulder became.

They say of a thinker's bold sallies,

He goes where the ice will not bear;

I was beckoned to false hollow valleys,

By snow maids, seductive and fair.

Thus driven by furious fancies,

I went down the hill with a shout;

But atoned for my youthful romances

By a thousand years rolling about.

Cried the Glacier, his teeth sharply showing,

Here, my blade, you'll be polished right well,

GAUDEAMUS

Humorous Poems

TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN OF

JOSEPH VICTOR SCHEFFEL

AND OTHERS.

BY

CHARLES G. LELAND.

LONDON:TRÜBNER & CO., 8 & 60, PATERNOSTER ROW.1872.

[All Rights reserved.]

JOHN CHILDS AND SON, PRINTERS.

CONTENTS.

AN INTRODUCTORY MEMOIR.

LONDON:
TRÜBNER & CO., 8 & 60, PATERNOSTER ROW.
1872.