Песнь Людвига: Древневерхненемецкая поэма о битве при Сокуре

Old High German poem

The Ludwigslied (in English, Lay or Song of Ludwig) is an Old High German (OHG) poem of 59 rhyming couplets, celebrating the victory of the Frankish army, led by Louis III of France, over Danish (Viking) raiders at the Battle of Saucourt en Vimeu on 3 August 881. The poem is thoroughly Christian in ethos. It presents the Viking raids as a punishment from God: He caused the Northmen to come across the sea to remind the Frankish people of their sins, and inspired Louis to ride to the aid of his people. Louis praises God both before and after the battle. The poem is preserved over four pages in a single 9th century manuscript formerly in the abbey of Saint Amand, now in the Bibliothèque municipale, Valenciennes (Codex 150, f. 141v–143r). In the same manuscript, and written by the same scribe, is the Old French Sequence of Saint Eulalia. The poem speaks of Louis in the present tense: it opens, "I know a king called Ludwig who willingly serves God. I know he will reward him for it". Since Louis died in August the next year, the poem must have been written within a year of the battle. However, in the manuscript, the poem is headed by the Latin rubric Rithmus teutonicus de piae memoriae Hluduico rege filio Hluduici aeq; regis ("German song to the beloved memory of King Louis, son of Louis, also king"), which means it must be a copy of an earlier text.

Although the poem is Christian in content, and the use of rhyme reflects Christian rather than pagan Germanic poetry, it is often assigned to the genre of Preislied, a song in praise of a warrior, of a type which is presumed to have been common in Germanic oral tradition and is well attested in attested in Old Norse verse. Not all scholars agree, however. Other Carolingian era Latin encomia are known for King Pippin of Italy (796) and the Emperor Louis II (871), and the rhyming form may have been inspired by the same form in Otfrid of Weissenburg's Evangelienbuch (Gospel Book), finished before 871.

The Ludwigslied is preserved over four pages in a single 9th century manuscript formerly in the monastery of Saint Amand, now in the Bibliothèque Municipale, Valenciennes (Codex 150, fol. 141v 143r). The codex itself dates from the early 9th century and originally contained only works by Gregory of Nazianzus in the Latin translation by Tyrannius Rufinus (fol. 1v 140r). The blank leaves at the end of the codex contain later additions in four different hands:
Dominus celi rex et conditor, a sequence in Latin (fol. 140v to 141r)
Cantica uirginis eulalie, a 14 line sequence about Saint Eulalia in Latin (fol. 141r)
the Sequence of Saint Eulalia in Old French (fol. 141v)
the Ludwigslied (fol. 141v to 143r)
Uis fidei tanta est quae germine prodit amoris, 15 couplets in Latin (fol. 143r to 143v). The Sequence of Saint Eulalia and the Ludwigslied are written in the same hand. A Carolingian minuscule with rustic capitals for the rubric and first letter of each line, it differs from the other hands in the manuscript. The text of the Ludwigslied is presumed to be a copy made after August 882 as the poem describes a living king, while the rubric refers to Ludwig as being "of blessed memory" .

In 1672 the manuscript was discovered in St Amand by the Benedictine monk Jean Mabillon, who commissioned a transcription, though, unfamiliar with Old High German, he was unable to appreciate its shortcomings (Willems later counted 125 errors). He forwarded this to the Strassburg jurist and antiquarian Johann Schilter. WHen he asked for a better transcription, the manuscript could no longer be found, presumably having gone astray when the abbey was hit by an earthquake in 1692. Schilter published the transcription in 1696 with a Latin translation, "together with an expression of his misgivings". (Mabillon published his own version in 1706.) Subsequent editions by Herder (1779), Bodmer (1780), and Lachmann (1825) were necessarily based on Mabillon's text, though attempts were made to identify and correct likely errors. In 1837 Hoffman von Fallersleben set out to trace the fate of the manuscript, which he discovered, uncatalogued, in the Valenciennes library. He immediately made and published a new transcription, along with the first transcription of the Sequence of Saint Eulalia, with a commentary by Jan Frans Willems. It was Jacob Grimm who in 1856 gave it the title of Ludwigslied.

The standard edition of the text.