Eckenlied
Das Eckenlied or Ecken Ausfahrt (The Song of Ecke or Ecke's Quest) is an anonymous 13th-century Middle High German poem about the legendary hero Dietrich von Bern, the counterpart of the historical Ostrogothic king Theodoric the Great in Germanic heroic legend.
It is one of the so-called fantastical (aventiurehaft) Dietrich poems, so called because it more closely resembles a courtly romance than a heroic epic.
A fragmentary text known as Dietrich und Fasold may represent another version of the Eckenlied, but differences in meter and content make this uncertain.
Ebenrot counters that Dietrich's reputation is a lie: the hero treacherously slew the giants Hilde and Grim while they were asleep to steal their armor.
Meanwhile, three queens are on the mountain of Jochgrimm: one of them, Seburg wishes very much to see Dietrich, and hearing of Ecke's interest, asks him to bring the hero to her.
The giant decides not to fight the still gravely wounded Dietrich, apparently not recognizing his brother's armor or seeing Ecke's head.
At the memory of Witige's treachery, Dietrich is enraged and finally overcomes Fasold, sparing him only at the insistence of the maiden.
At this point the three texts diverge – in all, Fasold treacherously leads Dietrich to members of his family in hopes that they will kill him, taking him to the giant Eckenot (whose name may be a corruption of Ebenrot or vice versa)[2] and then to two or three giantesses, variously Ecke's mother, aunt, or sisters.
[8] The oldest attestation, E1, a single stanza in the Codex Buranus, appear to show that the poem existed in a much shorter version, beginning with Ecke's encounter with Dietrich in the forest.
[15] The fragmentary Dietrich und Fasold is transmitted on three small strips of a manuscript from around 1300 that were used as bookbinding in Niedersächsische Landesbibliothek Hanover MS VII 626.
[16] The Eckenlied is often interpreted as a critique of courtly love service: Ecke foolishly rides out on behalf of Seburg, which results in his death and extreme hardship for Dietrich.
[19] Victor Millet sees in this criticism a disavowal of the knightly battles on behalf of women commonly portrayed in courtly romance.
[23] Older scholarship believed that the Eckenlied had been heavily influenced by an Old French Arthurian romance "Le Chevalier du Papagau," in which Arthur fights against a similar giant antagonist.
[27] The poem is composed in a stanza form known as the "Berner Ton," which consists of 13 lines in the following rhyme scheme: aabccbdedefxf.
[16] The Eckenlied, together with Sigenot are the only attestations of a story-possibly a lost poem-about the giants Hilde and Grim, from whom Dietrich won his helmet, named "Hildegrim."
[31] It is also possible that there may never have been a written poem about Hilde and Grim; the tale may have been a purely oral one and well known to the Eckenlied's and Sigenot's audience.
[37] Heinzle, however, dismisses the weather prayer: its source is unclear and neither is it clear that "ffasolt" is the same as the Fasolt found in the Eckenlied[39] Fasolt may also be a sort of reversal of versions of a legend in which Dietrich von Bern is leader of the Wild Hunt and hunts women in the forest: Dietrich instead fights against an opponent with this characteristic, as he also does in the Wunderer and Virginal.
[40] Further evidence for an oral version of the tale might be provided by the Ekka episode Thidrekssaga, which differs in crucial details in both its treatment of Ecke and Fasold.
[8] Particularly because of the version found in the Thidrekssaga, Victor Millet believes that it is highly likely that there were oral tales circulating about Ecke.
[26] Heinzle, however, is doubtful that any such oral tradition exists: he suggests rather that the Ekka episode was altered by the compiler of the Thidrekssaga.
