Die schöne Magelone

schöne Magelone, Die, a legend which is the subject of a chap-book (see Volksbuch) and occurs also in later adaptations. Magelone is the daughter of a king of Naples. She is already promised in marriage when she meets Peter, Count of Provence, with whom she immediately falls in love. The couple elope, but become separated when Peter sets out to pursue a bird which has made off with the rings of the sleeping Magelone, and he eventually falls into Turkish slavery. Magelone settles in Provence and tends the sick until she and Peter are eventually reunited.

This story of fidelity rewarded, derived from a French prose romance of 1457, was given a German version by Veit Warbeck, whose book was written in 1527 and published posthumously in 1535. It bore the title Die sehr lustige Histori vonn der schönen Magelona … und von einem Ritter genannt Peter mit den silberin schlüsseln. An earlier German version is lost. In 1797 Tieck published, in Volksmärchen herausgegeben von Peter Leberecht (his pseudonym), a highly sentimentalized retelling of the story, with the title Die wundersame Liebesgeschichte der schönen Magelone und des Grafen Peter aus der Provence; the poems included in this were set by Brahms (Romanzen aus der ‘schönen Magelone’, Op. 33). The story was also told by Gustav Schwab in Deutsche Volksbücher (1836-7) and by Karl Simrock in Deutsche Volksbücher (1845-66). The origins of the legend are in part oriental.