Both the victors, knight and lady,
Fell long since by Death's cold hand;
So the gray and withered scytheman
Lays the mightiest in the sand.

After proceeding a little distance, I met with a traveling journeyman
who came from Brunswick, and who related to me that it was generally
believed in that city that their young Duke had been taken prisoner by
the Turks during his tour in the Holy Land, and could be ransomed only
by an enormous sum. The extensive travels of the Duke probably
originated this tale. The people at large still preserve that
traditional fable-loving train of ideas which is so pleasantly shown in
their "Duke Ernest." The narrator of this news was a tailor, a neat
little youth, but so thin that the stars might have shone through him as
through Ossian's misty ghosts. Altogether, he was made up of that
eccentric mixture of humor and melancholy peculiar to the German people.
This was especially expressed in the droll and affecting manner in which
he sang that extraordinary popular ballad, "A beetle sat upon the hedge,
_summ, summ!_" There is one fine thing about us Germans--no one is so
crazy but that he may find a crazier comrade who will understand him.
Only a German _can_ appreciate that song, and in the same breath laugh
and cry himself to death over it. On this occasion I also remarked the
depth to which the words of Goethe have penetrated the national life. My
lean comrade trilled occasionally as he went along--"Joyful and
sorrowful, thoughts are free!" Such a corruption of text is usual among
the multitude. He also sang a song in which "Lottie by the grave of
Werther" wept. The tailor ran over with sentimentalism in the words--

"Sadly by the rose-beds now I weep,
Where the late moon found us oft alone!