Abor and the sea woman

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Abor und das Meerweib is a courtly adventure novel , which was possibly written between 1300 and 1350 in Eastern Franconia or in the Upper Palatinate , but has only survived in fragments with 136 verses.

description

The fragment of the text was found by Jacob Grimm on a trip to the north of the country in 1844, where he had copied it from a cut piece of parchment in the library in Copenhagen. The sheet has since been considered lost until it was found in 1974 by Dr. Tue Gad was found in the estate of HO Lange. Today the fragment is in the Royal Library of Copenhagen and bears the signature Ny kgl. Saml. 4843.4 . The fragment consists of a leaf and was made of parchment. The size of the sheet is a total of 237 × 200 mm and the font size is 180 × approx. 155 mm. The scrolling text contains two columns, each consisting of 34 lines. There are 136 verses from the fragment Abor and the Sea Woman, which are separated from one another and have a six-line heading.

Dating

Ludwig Denecke places the time of origin of this courtly adventure novel between around 1300 and 1350. In his opinion, the text was originally written in Eastern Franconia, such as Würzburg , or in the Upper Palatinate. The word quam (v. 22) could be a characteristic of the Bavarian language area . Due to the dialect, the text probably comes from the area of Nuremberg , Regensburg , Passau or Vienna .

content

The content of the fragment can be divided into six scenes.

  • 1st scene (verses 2-16)

A knight named Abor, described as noble and bold, leaves his armor, which had become too heavy for him, and leaves the country.

  • 2nd scene (verses 17-42)

The knight arrives at a nortwalde where he wanders for three more days after a difficult fight. It can be assumed that this fight with a dragon took place, this part of the fragment has not been legibly preserved. Finally Abor comes to a mountain from which a spring rises. This spring is therefore described as a fountain of youth, and anyone who drinks its water immediately becomes strong, healthy and rejuvenated. The fountain is in a clearing where many birds sing their beautiful songs from the trees ( locus amoenus ). The knight is so weakened after all his exertions that he soon begins to sleep in the clearing in the green grass.

  • Title (verses 43-48)

Here the entire course of the story is summarized by means of a rhyming heading.

  • 3rd scene (verses 49-66)

Now a mermaid finds him, who bathes herself in the fountain of youth and in this way constantly rejuvenates.

  • 4th scene (verses 67-86)

The mermaid carries the hero on her burc . There she nurses him back to health and soon afterwards they fall in love.

  • 5th scene (verses 87-118)

The mermaid then flies on a feather arch up an inaccessible mountain, where she digs up a magic root. After Abor had eaten from the root, he could hear the voices of all animals.

  • 6th scene (verses 119-136)

From here the end of the happy love between the fairy and the knight begins. Since the rightful husband of the mermaid comes home from the city of omlatin, the mermaid sends the hero away after six weeks and two days. As a farewell, she gives him an invulnerable bathrobe as armor as well as a quiver and bow with magical powers that he can use to ward off a wild bird.

genus

The fragment may be a late medieval Arthurian novel . According to Ludwig Denecke, the unknown author put together a large number of well-known narrative motifs from predominantly oral tradition into an entertainment poem for a chivalrous audience without higher demands in order to create surprise and tension among the audience. For him, however, a deeper meaning is not to be recognized and the verses are strung together without art using empty phrases and cheap rhymes, although it is possible for Denecke that the author was a trained scribe.

Text output

  • Jacob Grimm : Abor and the sea woman . In: ZfdA , Vol. 5 (1845), pp. 6-10.
  • Heinrich Meyer-Benfey : Middle High German exercise pieces (2nd edition). Halle (Saale): Niemeyer 1920, pp. 180-183.

literature

  • Karl Bartsch: Abor and the sea woman . In: Germania 5 (1860), pp. 105-108.
  • Ludwig Denecke : Abor and the sea woman . In: Kurt Ranke (ed.): Encyclopedia of fairy tales . Concise dictionary for historical and comparative narrative research . Berlin: de Gruyter 1979, col. 21-22.
  • Ludwig Denecke: Abor and the sea woman . In: Kurt Ruh (ed.): The German literature of the Middle Ages. Author Lexicon . Berlin: de Gruyter 1978, Col. 10-11.

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