The giant toy
The giant toy ( French: la légende du Nideck) is an old Alsatian legend that was taken up in literary terms by the Brothers Grimm , Adelbert von Chamisso , Ludwig Bechstein and Emil Strauss , and thus found its way into written tradition. The version by Adelbert von Chamisso is probably the best known. The legend takes place at Nideck Castle in Oberhaslach, Alsace . Even today, the castle ruins and the village are the destination of numerous culturally interested hiking tourists.
action
In all the surviving versions, the legend is about the daughter of the gentlemen of "Niedeck", a giant family that lives in "Burg Niedeck". During an excursion she finds farmers who are tilling the fields, thinks they are toys and takes them to the castle with a wagon, plow and draft animal. There she is reprimanded by her father that the giants are dependent on the farmers and that she therefore has to bring back the supposed pawns.
"The giant toy"
Chamisso
The ballad vom Riesenspielzeug (1831) marked the breakthrough to general recognition as a poet for Adelbert von Chamisso.
The giant toy.
Niedeck Castle is well known in Alsace for legend,
The height, where the castle of the giants once stood;
It itself has now fallen into disrepair, the site is desolate and empty,
you ask about the giants, you can no longer find them.
Once the giant
young lady came out of that castle, did special maintenance and played in front of the gate,
and descended the slope into the valley,
curious to find out what it would be like below.
With a few quick steps she crossed the forest,
soon reached the land of the people against Haslach,
And cities there and villages and the cultivated field
appeared to her eyes even a strange world.
As she now looks down at her feet, she notices
a farmer who is building his field;
The little creature crawls along so strangely,
The plow glitters in the sun so bright and clear.
Egg! good toy! she calls, I'll take that home with me.
She kneels down, nimbly spreads out her handkerchief,
And with her hands sweeps everything that is moving, in
heaps into the handkerchief that she folds up;
And hurried with joyful leaps, you know how children are, up
to the castle and looked for the father quickly: Well,
father, dear father, a wonderful toy!
I have never seen anything so lovely on our heights.
The old man sat at the table and drank the cool wine,
he looks at her comfortably, he asks the little daughter:
What fidgety things are you bringing in your handkerchief?
You are jumping for joy; let's see what it is.
She spreads out the handkerchief and carefully begins to
set up the farmer, the plow and the team;
Like everything on the table she is neatly set up,
so she claps her hands and jumps and cheers loudly.
The old man becomes very serious and cradles his head and says:
What have you done? this is not a toy either!
Where you took it from, carry it back there,
the farmer is not a toy, what comes to mind!
You should fulfill my commandment immediately and without murmuring;
Because if it weren't for the farmer, you would have no bread;
The trunk of the giants sprout from peasant marrow,
the peasant is not a toy, God be before us!
Niedeck Castle is well-known in Alsace from legend,
the height where the castle of the giants once stood,
it itself is now in ruins, the place is desolate and empty,
and if you ask about the giants, you won't find them anymore.
Metric
The ballad consists of 11 stanzas , the first and last being almost identical. Each stanza consists of 4 verses . There is a pair of rhymes . The meter is iambic and the cadences are male. Each verse contains 6 exaltations . If you note the line in Andreas Heusler's system in musical bars instead of in verse, each line begins with an upbeat, the third accentuation fills the whole bar (half a note instead of two fourths), followed by four more bars, the first part of which emphasizes (the whole bar would then be a trochee, seen as a verse), the second part of the last bar is paused, i.e. not realized. In this way, each verse has 7 bars out of 7 exaltations. Chamisso uses a metrically smoothed line and stanza form, which appeared in the 12th century with an early minstrel , the Kürenberger , and in which the Nibelungenlied is also written. See also Nibelungenstrophe .
Example in verse notation (ia = iambic):
Niedeck Castle is well known in Alsace for legend,
The height, where the castle of the giants once stood;
It itself has now fallen into disrepair, the site is desolate and empty,
you ask about the giants, you can no longer find them.
A ia 6 x X x X x X xx X x X x X
B ia 6 x X x X x X xx X x X x X
A ia 6 x X x X x X xx X x X x X
B ia 6 x X x X x X xx X x X x X
reception
In 1934 Emil Strauss published his novel "Das Riesenspielzeug".
Web links
- The giant toy in texts and illustrations