LUDWIGSLIED (“Song of Ludwig”). — This is a laudatory song in praise of King Ludwig III of Francia, nephew of Charles the Bald, composed in the Rhenish Franconian dialect toward the end of the twelfth century and certainly, as may be inferred from the context, before the King’s death, which occurred in 882; it represents, one may say, the only poetic monument of historical content in Old High German. The event that occasioned the song was that same battle of Saucourt in Picardy (3 Aug. 881), won by the seventeen-year-old sovereign against the Normans, which developed in France into a heroic legend, giving rise to the poem of Gormond and Jaembart.
The brief composition, preserved in a single manuscript originating from the abbey of St Amand in northern France, first discovered by Mabillon in 1696, subsequently lost, rediscovered in 1837 by Hoffmann von Fallersleben, and now in the Civic Library of Valenciennes, consists of 27 uneven stanzas, of two or three lines, composed of two hemistichs linked to one another, following Otfrid’s example, by rhyme or simple assonance. It presents, within an essentially mystical framework, Ludwig still a child, left fatherless, whose education God himself undertakes; God then tests his virtue by provoking the Norman invasion, calls him to defend his beloved people, the Franks, assists him in battle, and guides him to victory. The song, whose author may reasonably be supposed to have been a cleric, is imbued with religious feeling and vibrant with national pride; it has a rapid movement, vigorous and concentrated expression, and at times evokes the robust simplicity of popular epic poetry.
J. G. Herder composed an almost literal version of it in modern German, inserting it in Book V of his Stimmen der Völker in Liedern (Leipzig 1778–79).