Page:History of the German people at the close of the Middle Ages vol1.djvu/273

 POPULAR POETRY 261 how the young nobles in Westphalia were regularly trained to become freebooters. While riding in the field they would sing in their native patois : Ruten, roven, det en is gheyn schande, Dat doynt die besten van dem lande. To ride and to rob is no shame ; The best on the land do the same. To which the peasants answered in their turn : Hangen, raden, koppen, stecken, en is gheyn sun. Wer dat nicht, wy en behelden neit in dem munde. Let us hang, root out, cut, shut up ; 'tis no sin. He who will not do it will have nothing left. Innumerable folk-songs of a severe, satiric, and denunciatory nature were directed against the heretical innovators who attacked the unity of the Church, and also against the Swiss who showed a desire to serve under the French against the Emperor. 1 Song was the popular passion. The people sang because ' There is nothing that can rejoice the soul like a refrain sung from the heart.' They said : ' It is well .at all gay gatherings and pastimes to sing good German songs in order to prevent gossip and drinking.' We find in a prayer-book written in 1509, ' Where two or three are gathered together let there be singing. Sing during your work in house and field, at your seasons of prayer and devotion, in times of joy and in times of sorrow. Good songs are agreeable to God ; bad ones are sinful, and must be avoided. Singing to the honour of God and His saints — singing such as is heard in Christian churches on Sundays and feast-days — the sing- ing of servants and children collected before the worthy 1 Wimpheling gives this as a proof of the general religious excitement and of the popular dislike to the Hussites.