Der Ritter und die Magd

"Der Ritter und die Magd" (The Knight and the Maid) is a traditional German folk song.

It was included by Clemens Brentano and Achim von Arnim in their 1806 collection of German folk songs and poems, Des Knaben Wunderhorn.

[3] Another version of the song, published in Die deutschen Volkslieder mit ihren Singweisen (1843) was recorded from an oral source near Cottbus.

He offers her five hundred thaler and to give her in marriage to his servant, but she refuses and returns to her mother in Augsburg.

[4] One source points out that Goethe ends his 1774 play Clavigo in the same way: the repentant hero appears too late, his dead lover's already carried by pallbearers.