SAUCOURT AND THE LUDWIGSLIED :

SOME OBSERVATIONS ON MEDIEVAL

HISTORICAL POETRY (·)

In spite of the centuries that lie between them there is much to invite comparison between the Old High German Ludwigslied and poems as far removed from each other as the Early Middle High German Rolandslied of Konrad the Priest, the Scots ballad of The Battle of Harlaw and even Alfred Lord Tennyson's Charge of the Light Brigade. All of these — basically at least — are literary representations of events the historicity of which is attested elsewhere, in official documentation and in chronicles. As such, they may all be termed "historical literature", a classification which begs, however, a number of questions. One recalls the dictum that "art history is the study neither of history nor of art", and wonders whether the generic proposition for these poems does not similarly damn them as literature and as history. Critical writings on the Ludwigslied and the Rolandslied in particular have seemed to deny implicitly the viability of such a combination, and have not infrequently been at pains to demonstrate that the works fall either into the one category or the other.

But is not all history, once it finds its way onto paper, to be deemed literature? Clio, George Macaulay Trevelyan reminded us in a famous essay in 1913, is a muse('). and it is to be thought self-evident, perhaps, that the songs of Saucourt, Roncesvalles, Harlaw or Balaclava should fall into her province as much as chronicles. With regard to the first two poems, the choice of metrical form does not, for the Middle Ages, betoken an exclusively aesthetic intent, and for the Harlaw ballad, too, the form may perhaps be seen as a popular type of general history. It is the aim of this paper to consider the Ludwigslied in particular, and the other poems to a lesser extent, as historical literature, not with a view to the