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Todt zum Apt: |
Death to The Abbot Mr. Abbot, I'm pulling your cap off. Therefore your staff no longer avails you. Have you been a good shepherd for your sheep here, [then] the honour will be yours. |
Der Apt: |
The Abbot. I have raised myself [above the crowd] as an abbot and lived long in high honour. And there was nobody who opposed me. Yet I'm Death's equal. |
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Death uses the word "Yfflen". The cap kan be spelled yfelen, ynfel, infel, inful etc., and the word goes back to Latin, "infula".
By the way, the verb "Infeln" means to put on a cap - i.e. to install a bishop/abbot in his office. Death is in the process of doing the exact opposite.
The strange part is that according to Merian's copperplates (above) Death himself wears a bishop's mitra. Death wasn't wearing a mitra in Kleinbasel (picture to the left), and he didn't do it in Basel when Büchel made his watercolours in 1773 (picture to the right).
The bishop's mitra was evidently a product of Merian's imagination.
English translation from Beck, 1852 | |
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Death to the Abbot. | The Abbot's reply. |
Abbot, your mitre I must loose, |
I rose to Abbot's high estate |
Translation from Hess, 1841 | |
Death to the Abbot. |
Answer of the Abbot. |
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