8
QUEEN’S COURT MANUSCRIPT.
BENES HERMANOW.[1]
O tell me, Sun, thou gentle Sun,
Why thou dost mourning go?
And wherefore thou dost shine on us,
A people full of woe?
Where, where’s our prince, our army? He
To Otto’s court is gone;—
Who from the foe our land shall free
Thus orphan’d and alone?
- ↑ With this poem begins in the Queen’s Court Manuscript “the 26th Chapter of the Third Book, of the Overthrow of the Saxons.” This overthrow of the Saxons, accomplished by Benes, the son of Hermann, took place in the year 1203, when, during the absence of King Przemysl Otakar I. at the Court of the Emperor Otho IV., an army belonging to the Margrave of Meissen entered Bohemia, to avenge the repudiation of Queen Adela or Adelheid.This Benes, son of Hermann, who appears in old Bohemian records between 1197 and 1220, was Castellan of Budisin (from 1217 to 1220).From him or his brother Markwart descends the still flourishing Bohemian family of the present Counts of Waldstein.
