Carry the straw to bed: Uncut sheet of prints to give to your friends.

[Uncut sheet]. Ich trage um die Wette, Mir dieses Stroh ins Bette. Wie bin ich doch so härzlich froh, Daß ich ins Bett hab dieses Stroh. Solches Stroh ins Bett zu legen, Ist fast täglich bestreben. Manches Mädchen ist herzlich froh, Wen Sie im Bett hat solches Stroh. Dieses Stroh ist der Mieh wehrt, weil es mir jetzt angehört. S.l. [German-speaking lands]: s.n., s.a. [early 19th century.]. [24.9 x 20.6 cm], [1] f. etching, with contemporary hand-color. Only minor edge wear, colors fresh.

Uncut sheet of 10 German etchings—here enhanced with vibrant, cotemporary hand-color—depicting roughly the same subject, namely a woman carrying on her back a young man inside a bundle of straw, sometimes framed by a floral wreath, sometimes in a country landscape.

The captions are rhyming couplets that vary in wording, but not in sentiment, being all about how nice it is to have straw in your bed: “I’m racing to get this straw into bed,” “How heartily glad I am to have this straw in my bed,” “To put such straw in the bed is almost a daily endeavor,” “Many a girl is heartily glad to have such straw in her bed.”

These pictures were meant to be cut out and given as little gifts, enclosed in a letter, pasted into an album, etc. A personalized note could be written on the verso.

The fad for exchanging such prints extended across Europe, but it was perhaps strongest in German lands. Uncut sheets of the sort offered here are rarely encountered today.

OCLC and KVK do not locate any examples of these prints, but two of the prints are illustrated in U. Rautenberg, ed., Über die Ehe: Von der Sachehe zur Liebesheirat. Eine Literaturausstellung, pp. 202-3, no. 96, and the entry cites a complete sheet in the Sammlung Pachinger at the Germanisches Nationalmuseum (Nuremberg).