The Low German text in the "book" above has been modernized to make it more readable. Click here to read the original text.
Such is the name of the song that I mean: |
When the friends also get the goods [they] care little about what body and soul do. If the Devil gets the soul to keep - yes, he gave it not away for all gold. In order that his will should not be done each should take care of himself. Learn to die well and be prepared(2) To die well surpasses all arts. To die well is so great art, by this you obtain God's favour. Oh Christ - we are redeemed through your death, Be you always our eternal consolation Amen. In the year of the Lord 1520 Lübeck.
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Death mentions 3 "songs": bitter death, the toiling of bells and being forgotten by friends. This text is similar to the introduction in Berlin's dance of death.
Death then mentions another trio: worms, friends and the Devil, who are fighting for the corpse, the inheritance and the soul. Meyer has found the same text in an even older version in Danish. This book is Herr Michaels om Iomffrw Marie Rosenkrantz, och dess Brødersckaff (i.e.: about the virgin Mary's rosary and its brotherhood). This book is from 1514/1515, but according to the words of the publisher, the Copenhagen version was a reprint of a publication from 1496.
The text is under the heading "the third stone" i.e. the third of those larger beads that separate the smaller beads of the rosary into decades. I'll attempt a translation:
Tha giffuer sig siælen wack och wee |
Then the soul complains, alas and alack |
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The book ends with 4 shields. The first shield shows the double eagle of Lübeck. In the bottom, left corner there's 3 poppy fruits, and it is because of this symbol that the printery today is called Mohnkopf (the High German word for poppy fruit). The last shield is also typical for the Mohnkopf printery and shows the letter T (or Tau) with a cross.
The same 4 shields - in smaller versions - appear on the last page of Des dodes dantz. You might take a look at the little shields in the frame around Christ on the cross.
Footnotes: (1) (2)
The description of Death's 3 "songs" is almost verbatim the same in the introduction to Berlin's dance of death.
A special medieval genre of books was the "ars moriendi" or "artes [bene] moriendi" = the art of dying [well] - books telling Christians how to prepare for death.