In this dilemma, it occurred to us that the common, rude form of the English language, as it is spoken by the uneducated everywhere, without reference to provincial idioms, might possibly be the best medium.  It offers, at least, the advantage of simplicity, of a directness of expression which overlooks grammatical rules, of natural pathos, even,—­and therefore, so far as these traits go, may reproduce them without detracting seriously from the original.  Those other qualities of the poems which spring from the character of the people of whom and for whom they were written must depend, for their recognition, on the sympathetic insight of the reader.  We can only promise him the utmost fidelity in the translation, having taken no other liberty than the substitution of common idiomatic phrases, peculiar to our language, for corresponding phrases in the other.  The original metre, in every instance, has been strictly adhered to.

The poems, only fifty-nine in number, consist principally of short songs or pastorals, and narratives.  The latter are written in hexameter, but by no means classic in form.  It is a rough, irregular metre, in which the trochees preponderate over the dactyls:  many of the lines, in fact, would not bear a critical scansion.  We have not scrupled to imitate this irregularity, as not inconsistent with the plain, ungrammatical speech of the characters introduced, and the homely air of even the most imaginative passages.  The opening poem is a charmingly wayward idyl, called “The Meadow,” (Die Wiese,) the name of a mountain-stream, which, rising in the Feldberg, the highest peak of the Black Forest, flows past Hausen, Hebel’s early home, on its way to the Rhine.  An extract from it will illustrate what Jean Paul calls the “hazardous boldness” of Hebel’s personifications:—­

  Beautiful “Meadow,” daughter o’ Feldberg, I
    welcome and greet you. 
  Listen:  I’m goin’ to sing a song, and all in
    y’r honor,
  Makin’ a music beside ye, follerin’ wherever
    you wander. 
  Born unbeknown in the rocky, hidden heart
    o’ the mountain,
  Suckled o’ clouds and fogs, and weaned by
    the waters o’ heaven,
  There you slep’ like a babblin’ baby, a-kep’
    in the bed-room,
  Secret, and tenderly cared-for:  and eye o’
    man never saw you,—­
  Never peeked through a key-hole and saw
    my little girl sleepin’
  Sound in her chamber o’ crystal, rocked in
    her cradle o’ silver. 
  Neither an ear o’ man ever listened to hear
    her a-breathin’,
  No, nor her voice all alone to herself
    a-laughin’ or cryin’. 
  Only the close little spirits that know every
    passage and entrance,
  In and out dodgin’, they brought ye up and
    teached ye to toddle,
  Gev’ you a cheerful natur’, and larnt you
    how to be useful: 
  Yes, and their words didn’t go into one ear
    and out at the t’other.