XXIX. MEYER HELMBRECHT

A metrical novelette written about 1250 by a man who calls himself Wernher the Gardner. The locus of the story, which is interesting as a picture of the times, is the region about the junction of the Inn and the Salzach. Its hero is a depraved young peasant, who gets the idea that the life of a robber knight would be preferable to hard work upon his father’s farm. So he dresses himself in fine clothes to ape the gentry, becomes a robber and commits all manner of outrages until one day he is caught and hanged by a party of his victims. In the course of his career he revisits his former home and compares notes with his father. The selection is from Bötticher’s translation in Part II of Bötticher and Kinzel’s Denkmäler.