'Des Sängers Fluch'

‘Des Sängers Fluch’, a ballad written by L. Uhland in 1814 and published in Uhland's Gedichte (1815). Its first line runs, ‘Es stand in alten Zeiten ein Schloß, so hoch und hehr’. It tells of the brutal murder, by a king, of the younger of a pair of minstrels and of the curse pronounced by the surviving older minstrel. Its source is a Scots ballad published by Herder in his Volkslieder.