Castle in Austria

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Castle in Austria is a folk ballad with an archaic material from the feudal world. The song addresses the arbitrariness of the aristocratic lord in the class-based society against the lawless "simple" man who can only hope for heavenly vengeance.

Text start of two variants

1. There is a little castle in Austria [East!], It
is well built for us
from silver and red gold,
bricked with marble stone.

2. Inside there lies a young boy
trapped on his neck,
probably forty gapes deep under the earth
with vipers and snakes.

3. His father came from Rosenberg
to go [in front of] the tower:
"Oh sons, dearest sons,
how hard you are trapped."

[...]

16. It was hardly half a year before
death became smelled;
more than three hundred men
were stabbed to death by the boy.

17. Who is who sang this little song to us, sang it
so freely?
That is what three delicate virgins
in Vienna probably did in the city.

17 stanzas [linguistically modernized] based on a song pamphlet without information on the place of printing and printer, but dated 1606

1. There was a castle in Austria, it was
beautifully carved, it was probably
made of marble and precious stone
.
[...]

Recorded with 8 stanzas from oral tradition by Elizabeth Marriage in Baden, printed in 1902

Plot of the folk ballad

Action elements of different variants are in round brackets (compare variability ), explanatory additions are in square brackets. - In the particularly solid castle in Austria ([historically the Rosenburg am Kamp?] Castle Rosenburg , in Prennensberg, in Bohemia, on the Rhine) a young boy is imprisoned. The father (comes from “Rosenberg”) has a “horse saddled” [epic formula], rides in front of [epic formula] the castle (goes to the judge), pleads for him and offers a ransom in vain. The boy would not have stolen the golden chain [the text typically does not reveal the background]. The boy is led to the gallows (cannot be blindfolded) and continues to claim to be innocent (he asks not to avenge him). On the “third day” [typical short period of time] heaven intervenes, angels come, and after half a year many have to die because of this boy (closing formula about the author or singers).

Lore

The first document is with the short text mark "Is leyt eyn schls ..." to the melody in the Glogau song book (around 1480). Further early evidence can be found in Berg-Newber (1540), Forster (around 1550) and handwritten in Hebrew letters around 1600. The song was popular in the 17th century (e.g. Fabricius 1603/08, Friderici: Quodlibet 1622/1635, Venus-Gärtlein , 1656).

We know of printed song pamphlets (compare leaflet ) with this text from Straubing around 1580, Hamburg around 1581, Nuremberg 1609, and this tradition continues into modern times (in Hamburg: printed by Brauer before 1829; in Leipzig: printed Solbrig around 1800 ; in Berlin: printed by Zürngibl and Littfas around 1800; printed in Dresden around 1800). The melody has often been used as a tone indication (melody reference) for other texts.

This folk ballad is very often documented from oral tradition, in High German and Low German (for example "It licht ein Schlot in Osterrik ..." in Alpers, 1960). The song was also translated and distributed in the Scandinavian countries (for example a Danish song pamphlet from 1697; Andersson 1934 Finland-Swedish documents); a Finnish folk ballad is a translation from Swedish (about thirty Finnish records are known, ranging from 1735 to 1914).

The more recent prints begin with “Des Knaben Wunderhorn” of the Romantics (Volume 1, 1806, p. 220) and include all relevant folklore collections (e.g. Hoffmann-Richter in Schlesien 1842, Schlossar in Styria 1881, Uhland in Low German 1883, Böckel in Oberhessen 1885, fresh beer in East Prussia 1893, marriage in Baden 1902, Schünemann with the Russian Germans in 1923 and so on). The song is very common in books of useful songs.

Notes on interpretation

This folk ballad works in strict narrowing of the text with a dramatic change of scene, with a few characters, with stereotypical dialogues and without explanations for the background of the plot. The concentrated construction with epic formulas strung together ( epic formula ) as a typical generic feature shows the ballad-like structure in an excellent way, which gives the text network (texture = fabric structure) a remarkable density, in other words "seal" (compare Holzapfel 1988 and more). In addition to “ There were two royal children ”, the song from “Castle in Austria” is represented in many ballad anthologies as a classic example of the folk ballad.

Overall, the text manages with relatively few, even amazingly few, rhyming words (end rhymes), which, strung together, convey an astonishingly clear picture of what is happening: caught / snakes / gone / die / life / smelled (avenge). Something like that sticks more easily in the memory. There are no secondary characters; even the three main characters father, boy and “the gentlemen” remain nameless. The event cannot be assigned to a specific event, not even the historic Rosenburg and well-known gentlemen there around 1600. The expression “the gentlemen” also reflects a mentality that the ruling power is anonymous and action against it is pointless. You can ask them, but they make the judgment. You can collect arguments against it, but get no answer. Heaven intervenes, but too late and with disproportionate cruelty.

The German folk ballad, like the similar songs of the English (“The Clerk's twa Sons o Owsenford”; song type: Child No. 72) and the French (“Ecoliers pendus”; song type: Doncieux No. 14) folk ballads, with the social Deal with injustice in a feudal system. The lord of the castle has an innocent boy executed because he does not admit a love that is considered improper.

Since 1659 at the latest, but probably only afterwards, the story has been linked to the magnificently situated "Rosenburg" near Horn in Lower Austria. Other localizations are also documented, for example in Carinthia people sang “It was a Gschlössl zu Pragersburg ...” and “It is probably over the Rhine ...” - There are overlaps with other folk ballads; the opening stanza, the "castle strophe", has been adopted from other texts as a typical wandering stanza (song formula).

Literature (selection)

  • Otto Holzapfel : [Article] To the castle in Austria. In: Gunter E. Grimm (Ed.): Poems and interpretations. German ballads (= Reclams Universal Library . No. 8457). Reclam, Stuttgart 1988, ISBN 3-15-008457-1 , pp. 40-56.
  • Otto Holzapfel : The great German folk ballad book , Artemis & Winkler, Düsseldorf 2000, pp. 308-311 (with commentary).
  • Otto Holzapfel : Liedverzeichnis , Volume 1–2, Olms, Hildesheim 2006 (entries on “There is a little castle in Austria ...” and “In Austria there was a proud castle ...”; with further information; ISBN 3-487- 13100-5 ) = Otto Holzapfel: List of songs : The older German-language popular song tradition . Online version since January 2018 on the homepage of the Folk Music Archive of the District of Upper Bavaria (in PDF format; further updates planned), see song file "There is a castle in Austria ..."; see. Lexicon file "Castle in Austria".