ESL Blogs

We have a German folk song with the title "The thoughts are free". First was this song published as text like a poem ... already in 1780.

It's based on written texts from the early 13th Century but the basic philosophy is already known from ancient times.

The last version of that poem got a melody and became a folk song with the time.

Just some lines from the early text from 1229:

The band can not find anyone,
Which binds my thoughts.
One catches woman and man,
Thoughts nobody can catch.

I publish the text of the song as a blog here on my page as so as I know it as folk song and how it is sung until now.


Human are able to fly to the moon and we are able to construct artificial intelligence but nothing is so complex as our mind... nobody is able to read it and nothing can replace it. Our mind is that what makes us to human. Thoughts have the power to help us to survive in almost impossible situations. Thoughts can be our weaknesses and our strengths at the same time.

Here is the lyric of the folk song:

The thoughts are free,
who can guess them?
They flee by
like nightly shadows.
No man can know them,
no hunter can shhot them.
It remains thereby:
The thoughts are free.

I think what I want
and what makes me happy,
but everything in silence,
and with good behave.
My wishes and my longing,
no one can deny them
It remains thereby:
The thoughts are free.

I love the wine,
and my girl before all,
She wants only to me
best fallen.
I'm not alone
at my glass of wine,
My girl is with me:
The thoughts are free.

And if I'm locked up
in the dark dungeon,
Everything is just
and only in vain works;
because my thoughts
will tear the barriers
and walls asunder:
The thoughts are free.

Therefore, I will forever
to renounce the worries.
And will never want me
with grilling more plague.
You can be in the heart
always laugh and joke
And think:
The thoughts are free!