Wild Huntsman - A Legend of the Hartz

About this book

Julius Wolff, the great singer of poetic myth and weird folk-tale, was the youngest and last of the German romantic poets. In an ever-changing variety of story and spirit, constant only in a fervent and lofty patriotism, he wrote Tannhäuser, The Ratcatcher of Hamelin, The Wild Huntsman, The Lorelei, The Flying Dutchman, Till Eulenspiegel Redivivus, and The Pappenheimer. The Wild Huntsman has far surpassed all Wolff's other poems in popularity. He made his Wild Huntsman a vivid reality in a historical setting of the waning Middle Ages. His weird story and the mystery and horror of Woden's spectral host he interwove with an idyll of woodland love, the gossip of peasants, dainty tales of the old mythology, and some of the finest nature passages in German poetry. (Summary from the translator's note, extracted by Fritz)