"Under der linden An der heide, da unser zweier bette was, da muget ir vinden schone beide gebrochen bluomen unde gras. Vor dem walde in einem tal, tandaradei! schone sanc diu nahtegal."[114] [Footnote 114: Walther's ninth _Lied_, opening stanza.] At last we are free from the tyranny of the iambic, and have variety beyond the comparative freedom of the trochee. The blessed liberty of trisyllabic feet not merely comes like music, but is for the first time complete music, to the ear. [Sidenote: _The pioneers. Heinrich von Veldeke._] Historians arrange the process of borrowing from the French and adjusting prosody to the loans in, roughly speaking, three stages. The first of these is represented by Lamprecht's _Alexander_ and Conrad's _Roland_; while the second and far more important has for chief exponents an anonymous rendering of the universally popular _Flore et Blanchefleur_,[115] the capital example of a pure love-story in which love triumphs over luck and fate, and differences of nation and religion. Of this only fragments survive, and the before-mentioned first German version of the Tristan story by Eilhart von Oberge exists only in a much altered form of the fifteenth century. But both, as well as the work in lyric and narrative of Heinrich von Veldeke, date well within the twelfth century, and the earliest of them may not be much younger than its middle. It was Heinrich who seems to have been the chief master in form of the greater poets mentioned above, and now to be noticed as far as it is possible to us. We do not know, personally speaking, very much about them, though the endless industry of their commentators, availing itself of not a little sheer guesswork, has succeeded in spinning various stories concerning them; and the curious incident of the _Wartburg-krieg_ or minstrels' tournament, though reported much later, very likely has sound traditional foundations. But it is not very necessary to believe, for instance, that Gottfried von Strasburg makes an attack on Wolfram von Eschenbach. And generally the best attitude is that of an editor of the said Gottfried (who himself rather fails to reck his own salutary rede by proceeding to redistribute the ordinary attribution of poems), "Ich bekenne dass ich in diesen Dingen skeptischer Natur bin." [Footnote 115: Found in every language, but _originally_ French.] [Sidenote: _Gottfried of Strasburg._]