ABSTRACT
Christian legend had it that the witches and demons chose the feast of St Walburga for their revels in an attempt to defile the chastity of the virgin saint. Goethe's poem implies the reverse, namely that the Christians made the day sacred to her in an attempt to obliterate all memory of a pagan rite which celebrated sexuality and fertility in nature as in human life. Goethe escaped the enforcement of a kind of chastity by fleeing to Italy, and the Romische Elegien were one small part of what was subsequently achieved. If the Prinzessin of Torquato Tasso is minded to dismiss the golden age as a mere fiction of poets, this poem overturns that judgement, for not only is the poet the bearer of a memory of the golden world, he is also the agent of its restoration. Goethe knew precisely what he was about in these poems more than the position of 'Ballade' in his poetic works.
