Translations & Imitations of German Ballads

Five narrative poems transplanted from German forests and castle ruins into English verse of uncanny power. Walter Scott, the master of Romantic antiquarianism, found in these continental ballads something his native Scottish tradition shared: a love of the supernatural, of judgments both divine and moral, of passions that survive the grave. The Chase follows a noble huntsman whose cruelty invites a divine test conducted by messengers who execute judgment in precise proportion to his responses. William and Helen tells of a crusader who returns from the dead to claim his bride, leading her on horseback toward a church that reveals itself, too late, as something other than holy ground. These are ballads where love and terror intertwine, where the past arrives unbidden, where the dead have unfinished business with the living. Scott renders them in rolling, muscular meter that feels both ancient and startlingly fresh, as if the original German ghosts have merely changed their language. For readers who thrill to Gothic shadows, to Romantic longing, to the idea that translation is a form of literary theft that enriches the thief.