"The Place of the Song "Der Traum des Baume(s)

on a recently recorded German song deserves every attention. It proves again that many songs from the Old World are still in circulation in the US and some are known to persons reared and born here, often without coming to the notice of folklorists. I presume that the Volksliedarchiv in Freiburg i. Br. has many versions of this song. Two of them are printed by Wackernagel2 and Uhland;3 the first contains i6, the second 14 stanzas. Wackernagel refers to two seventeenth-century songbooks (I63I and I660, respectively) both of which are, however, from the Catholic tradition area. According to Uhland, they were still reprinted in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Bruinier calls this song . .. inniges Lied, genannt ein alter Ruf, wenn man zu Unser Lieben Frauen kirchfahrten tut4 (a pilgrim's song) and suggests that its initial motif (Jesus growing under the heart of Mary, and Christianity symbolized by a tree spreading its branches over the world) can be compared with a passage of Herodotus (Historia I, Io8; the dream of Mandane, daughter of Astyages and mother of Cyrus5) which was also included in the late medieval Speculum humanae salvationis and depicted on stained glass windows.6 The American version is much shorter than those printed by Uhland and Wackernagel and its wording is entirely different; still, it is easy to recognize its affinity with the forementioned versions. They, however, do not contain the last stanza (Und wer das Liedlein); it is probably on account of this stanza that Jacoby (col. I686) relates this song to a widespread popular charm, called Maria Traum (ein volkstiimliches Gebet, das zur Segenund Schutzformel umgebildet und so gegen allerlei Unheil und Schaden gebraucht wurde). This latter charm has many German, Irish, French, and other versions7 which all end on a similar note as the song printed by Professor Lumpkin. Thus the late medieval and popular roots of the American-German song recorded at Windsor, Colorado, in I963 are sufficiently well demonstrated

Art · Christianity · Dream · Faith · German · Linguistics · Literature · Love song · Pilgrim · Poetry · Stanza · Theology · German Literature and Culture Studies · Historical, Literary, and Cultural Studies · History · Musicology and Musical Analysis · Philosophy · Psychology