DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.3825#0130
120 GERMANY.
literary cultivation of such materials in the furthest
North to the influence of early German example*.
But the opportunity may be here taken of remarking
that there are very early proofs of the original pre-
valence of poetic taste even among the most roving
tribes of the North ; and the song of Harald the
Hardy, of the middle of the 11th century, precedes
in date any of our specimens, either of Troubadour
or German minstrelsy. Perhaps it would have found a
more appropriate place in our notice of the Northern
French poetry; for the reader will recollect that it
belongs to the parent stock of those Normans who
were then domesticated in France; and he will easily
see that though they were about commencing there a
new school of the art in a tongue adopted from their
conquered subjects, yet the taste was one anterior to
their migrations, only now transplanted into a more
fruitful soil, and placed under the more genial in-
fluences of increasing civilization. While Harald was
roaming on adventures that almost identify him with
the Vikingr, and echoing the strains of a Scald, part
of the same parent stock, " refined without being
corrupted in a warmer climate," was, under Robert
Guiscard, founding an active and enlightened domi-
* See a paper by F. H. von der Hagen in the second volume
of the "Museum f iir Altdeutsche Literatur;" see also Schle-
gel's Lectures, and the " Illustrations of Northern Antiqui.
ties."
literary cultivation of such materials in the furthest
North to the influence of early German example*.
But the opportunity may be here taken of remarking
that there are very early proofs of the original pre-
valence of poetic taste even among the most roving
tribes of the North ; and the song of Harald the
Hardy, of the middle of the 11th century, precedes
in date any of our specimens, either of Troubadour
or German minstrelsy. Perhaps it would have found a
more appropriate place in our notice of the Northern
French poetry; for the reader will recollect that it
belongs to the parent stock of those Normans who
were then domesticated in France; and he will easily
see that though they were about commencing there a
new school of the art in a tongue adopted from their
conquered subjects, yet the taste was one anterior to
their migrations, only now transplanted into a more
fruitful soil, and placed under the more genial in-
fluences of increasing civilization. While Harald was
roaming on adventures that almost identify him with
the Vikingr, and echoing the strains of a Scald, part
of the same parent stock, " refined without being
corrupted in a warmer climate," was, under Robert
Guiscard, founding an active and enlightened domi-
* See a paper by F. H. von der Hagen in the second volume
of the "Museum f iir Altdeutsche Literatur;" see also Schle-
gel's Lectures, and the " Illustrations of Northern Antiqui.
ties."