The gold diggers
Die Goldgräber is a ballad by Emanuel Geibel from 1870.
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Three gold diggers are looking for luck and gold. They dig a shaft in a mountain under difficult conditions. After a long time they find the gold and bring it out of the mountain. When the three weighed the gold, they burst into jubilation, because now they are rich. Tom the hunter says they should rest and Sam should get food and wine for a feast. While Sam is doing this, Will says it's a shame that the three of them have to share the gold. Tom and Will agree that they only want to divide the gold by two and decide to throw Sam into a ravine. When Sam comes back, they celebrate. The others ask Sam to have a drink with them, but he says he has already drunk a lot and goes to sleep. Tom and Will take the opportunity and stab him with knives. The dying Sam uses his last words to say that he wanted the gold for himself and that he mixed a deadly poison into the wine for his murderers.
Structure of the ballad
The ballad has sixteen stanzas with four verses each. The rhyme scheme is a continuous pair rhyme (a, a; b, b). The meter is a 4-hebiger iambic . The closing of the ballad is marked by male cadences throughout.