The Yolanda Poems
There are two poems which relate the life of Yolanda:
- Yolanda von Vianden by Friar Hermann of Veldenz who wrote the story of her life in 1290 after her death in 1283. The work consists of 5,963 lines of rhyming couplets in Moselle Franconian with close similarities to today's Luxembourgish. Brother Hermann's epic appears to have lain in the Marienthal monastery for almost four centuries after he wrote it. In 1655 the then lost original was copied on paper by the Belgian Jesuit, Alexander von Wiltheim. At the same time, Wiltheim wrote a life of Yolanda in Latin based on Brother Hermann's Middle High German. Then in November 1999, the Luxembourg linguist Guy Berg discovered the original manuscript, now known as the Codex Mariendalensis, in Amsembourg Castle, a short distance from Marienthal. This was a very important discovery as it is considered to be the oldest manuscript in Luxembourgish.
- A second poem about Yolanda, by an anonymous English author, has also recently come to light. Entitled Iölanda, A Tale of the Duchy of Luxembourg, it was published in 1832. The author, who was told about Yolanda on a visit to the castle in Vianden, was apparently aware of Friar Hermann's account as he explains in his introduction that, for romantic reasons, he has changed the story so that it concludes with Iölanda's marriage.
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“Some poems are for holidays only. They are polished and sweet, but it is the sweetness of sugar, and not such as toil gives to sour bread. The breath with which the poet utters his verse must be that by which he lives.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)