Old High German lullaby

The discovery of an Old High German lullaby (Althochdeutsches Schlummerlied) was announced in 1859 by Georg Zappert (1806–1859) of Vienna, a private scholar and collector of medieval literature.

Zappert reports that, once the strip was recovered, it turned out it bore an Old High German poem, apparently a lullaby, in five lines, in a hand of the 9th or 10th century: Zappert reads this as seven alliterating verses, as follows: translated: "(1) Docke, sleep speedily / leave off crying // (2) Triuwa forcefully / fends off the murdering wolf // (3) May you sleep until morning / dear man's son // (4) Ostara for the child leaves / honey and sweet eggs // (5) Hera for the child breaks / flowers blue and red // (6) Zanfana on the morrow sends // white little sheep // (7) and One-Eye, herra hurt, swift, hard spears."

Preceding the Old High German text is a line in Hebrew, קשת רוח רגל רגע רגש רצון רחץ, a list of seven words from a glossary.

On the back of the parchment is another line in Hebrew, חכמה ואדם יפיק תבונה לך אל, a fragment of two verses of Proverbs (the end of 3:13 and the beginning of 6:6).

Based on this Zappert surmises (p. 12) that the manuscript is due to an early German Jew, perhaps a rabbi or physician, recording a lullaby he may have heard from a wetnurse employed in his house.