From Dr. Bill [wwh] in response to Bingley's link to
Bronze Age Britain: The Beaker People*

EDIT: In the German the 'goblet' was called a 'Becher'.

THE KING OF THULE.* [Der Koenig von Thule]
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

(* This ballad is also introduced in Faust, where it is sung by Margaret.)

[Alternative Translation below this Translation]

IN Thule lived a monarch,

Still faithful to the grave,
To whom his dying mistress

A golden goblet gave.

Beyond all price he deem'd it,

He quaff'd it at each feast;
And, when he drain'd that goblet,

His tears to flow ne'er ceas'd.

And when he felt death near him,

His cities o'er he told,
And to his heir left all things,

But not that cup of gold.

A regal banquet held he

In his ancestral ball,
In yonder sea-wash'd castle,

'Mongst his great nobles all.

There stood the aged reveller,

And drank his last life's-glow,--
Then hurl'd the holy goblet

Into the flood below.

He saw it falling, filling,

And sinking 'neath the main,
His eyes then closed for ever,

He never drank again.

Alternative Translation:

THE KING OF THULE
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

There was a king in Thule,
Was faithful to the grave,
Whom she that loved him truly
In dying a goblet gave.

He found no prize more appealing,
Each feast he drained the cup;
To his eyes the tears came stealing
Whenever he held it up.

And when he came to dying,
The towns in his realm he enrolled,
His heir no prize denying,
Except that cup of gold.

And at a royal wassail
With all his knights sat he
In the hall of his father's castle
That faces toward the sea.

The old carouser slowly
Stood up, drank life's last glow,
And flung the cup so holy
Into the flood below.

He saw it plunging, drinking
As deep in the sea it sank.
His eyes the while were sinking,
Not a drop again he drank.


* "The emergence of the Beaker People in Britain gave rise to what is now termed as the "Wessex Culture". This is the name given to a number of very rich grave goods under round barrows in Southern Britain. The grave goods include well-made stone battle axes, metal daggers, with elaborately decorated hilts and precious ornaments of gold and amber. Some of the loveliest prehistoric objects to be found in Britain come from the Wessex Culture graves. Some of the golden cups found in the graves were so like those of the Mycenae that it used to be quoted to prove the existence of trade between Wessex and Greece."