280
NOTES AND QUERIES.
[9 th S. I. APRIL 2, '98.
4 N. & Q.' are in sympathy. A curious bit of folk-
lore, new to us, is quoted, p. 185, from Thiers's
' Trait6 de Superstitions,' as belonging to Spain :
"When a woman is about to be delivered they
take her girdle, go to the church, tie up the bell with this girdle, and ring it three times, in order that the woman in question may be happily de- livered." The Archdeacon of Pampeluna is then quoted as saying that "this superstition is largely- observed throughout the whole of his country. ' An attractive portion of the volume consists of poetical allusions to bells. These, of course, are numerous, and Mr. Tyack has made a happy selection. We wish, however, he had included the famous lines beginning
Hark! the merry Christchurch bells, and we will give him an extract from Hood's * Ode to Rae Wilson, Esquire,' which we commend for his second edition :
How sweet the sounds of village bells
When on the undulating air they swing!
Now loud as welcomes, faint now as farewells- lines that in their observation recall Tennyson's
Low on the sand and loud on the stone
The last wheel echoes away.
Some few plates adorn a handsome volume which will be prized by the antiquary and can be perused with delight and advantage by the general reader.
Heinrich Heine's Lieder und Gedichte. Selected and arranged, with Notes and a Literary Intro- duction, by C. A. Buchheim, Ph.D. (Macmillan &Co.)
HEINE himself was fully conscious of his position in German poetical literature
Ich bin ein deutscher Dichter, Bekannt im deutschen Land; Nennt man die beaten Namen, So wird auch der meine genannt; but he probably did not foresee the recognition that awaited him in England and in the chief countries of Europe. Dr. Buchheim, who has often been helpful to English students of German, has just issued an expurgated edition of the ' Lieder und Gedichte.' Heine is a poet; he possessed undoubted poetical gifts of a high order, though these were at times tainted and disfigured with the results of a temperamental depravity so pronounced that his poetical endowment is lost in erotic slime. "He gains by the process of elimination," says Dr. Buch- heim, who expresses regret that "certain of his poems were ever written." To omit such poems is a gain for modesty and decency, though the omission neglects much which, if highly objectionable, is yet very characteristic of the poet; and there are doubtless many persons who will prefer their Heine bowdlerized. T?he Doctor leaves out Heine's dramas, and "also his purely satirical poems with their special reference to the Zeitverhaltnisse." The reader has only to do with Heine's better part with those songs and poems which include his nobler and purer poetic work. And in his " better part " Heine is a true, a great, a magical poet. He never strains after startling metre or seeks fantastic words or novel forms of art. He has the gift of expressing the deepest meaning or the tenderest sentiment in the simplest words, and this fine quality he shares with greater Goethe nay, he may have learnt it from Goethe himself. For a specimen of his magical
line take only for we have not space to quote
much
I weiss nicht, was soil es bedeuten,
Dass ich so traurig bin;
Ein Mahrchen aus alten Zeiten,
Das kommt mir nicht aus dem Sinn.
Die Luft ist kiihl und es dunkelt,
Und ruhig fliesst der Rhein;
Der Gipfel des Berges funkelt
Im Abendsonnenschein.
We often find these wonderful lines, in virtue of their own glory, rising up in haunted memory. No. 7 in the ' Heimkehr ' will occur to many memo- ries :
Du schones Fischermiidchen, &c.; and who forgets No. 30,
Mein Kind, wir waren Kinder, or the 'Wallfahrt nach Kevlaar'? Heine was not a " Ritter von dem HeiPgen Geist," but he is Germany's chief champion as a poet who has humour, wit, satire, and his good work may well be loved in England. Dr. Buchheim will help to make it loved as it deserves to be. The Doctor's notes will be found useful, and his undertaking should become popular. He gives us a Heine free from the poet's demoniacal possession.
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notices :
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WE cannot undertake to answer queries privately.
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RUDOLPH.
Evil is wrought by want of thought.
Hood, 'The Lady's Dream.' R. HEDGER WALLACE ("Auctioning Land"): H. ANDREWS ("Sale by Candle"). See 'N. & Q.,' 4 th S. xi. 276, 371; 5 th S. vi. 288, 435, 523; ix. 306; xii. 446; 8 th S. ii. 363.
CORRIGENDUM. P. 27, col. 2, 1. 11, for "parlis mentaire " read parlementaire.
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