Note 1 — From the Low German ‘Reinke de Vos,’ Book 2: Reinke under the Pope’s ban; Martin the Ape offers to assist him.

Pfeiffer’s edition of Berthold von Regensburg, Vienna, 1862, vol. ii, page 174.

2. The ‘thing,’ as explained further on, is die Tugend.

3. Pfeiffer’s edition of Meister Eckhart, Leipzig, 1857, page 401.

4. Kürschners Deutsche National-Litteratur, Vol. 12², page 210.

5. Kürschners Deutsche National-Litteratur, Vol. 12², page 145, with comparison of Knieschek’s edition, Prag, 1877. The work consists of thirty-two chapters in which, alternately, the widower complains and Death replies. Then God, as judge, decides in favor of Death: the body must die that the soul may live. The whole ends with a fervid and eloquent prayer for the repose of the dead wife’s soul.

6. It is conjectured that the author was a schoolmaster who chose to call himself symbolically an Ackermann, that is, a ‘sower of seed.’ Hence he says that his ‘plow’ comes from the birds; in other words, it is a pen.

7. The letter M with which the dead wife’s name (Margareta) began.

8. Kürschners Deutsche National-Litteratur, Vol. 12², page 265.