¹The miniature ‘portraits’ of the poets in the Weingartner, as well as the Große Heidelberger Liederhandschrift  are merely typifications and do not represent realistic portraits.  For accuracy’s sake it ought to be mentioned that manuscript A also contains illustrations, though no individual portrait of Oswald.
²Prussia, Lithuania, Turkey, Sweden, Denmark, the Low Countries, France, Spain, England, Scottland, and as far away as Arabia and Persia, to name a few.
³the Greeks (Greek Orthodox)
⁴Falber:  a reddish-brown horse
⁵Laufbursch:  messenger
⁶King Ruprecht (1400-1410) from the Palatinate in whose ill-fated Italian campaign of 1401 Oswald supposedly participated;  Oswald served King Sigismund (1410-1437) on diplomatic missions to various countries, including England and Scotland.
⁷ladinisch:  Ladin, a distinct Romance dialect spoken in southeastern Switzerland, northern Italy and the Tyrol.
⁸An indication that Oswald at least occasionally accompanied himself
⁹Brigantine:  two-masted ship
¹⁰Russian
¹¹Queen Margareta of Aragon, born in the Catalan town of Prades, the young widow of King Martin I of Aragon
¹²‘do not ever untie it’
¹³city in southern France where King Sigismund was supposed to meet  King Ferdinand I of Castile and Aragon and the schismatic Pope Benedict XIII (Peter of Luna)
¹⁴halber Laienbruder:  a Beghard, that is a member of a lay brotherhood dating to the thirteenth century;  Oswald may be alluding here to his pilgrimage to the Holy Land (c.1409).
¹⁵Quentchen:  slighest amount of
¹⁶that is, she insisted that he dress in monastic garb ("Kutte" means cowl, a cloak with a hood;  here, the grey attire of pilgrims).
¹⁷Schüttelfrost:  chills
¹⁸Greek Island whose male population is at sea most of the year
¹⁹that is, the one who loaded this all-too-heavy burden on his shoulders
²⁰ringen:  to wring
²¹wüstes Treiben:  riotous, dissolute living
²²Zerknirschung:  contrition
²³im Raffen bin ich unersättlich:  my rapacious disposition knows no limits
²⁴Hoffart:  excessive pride
²⁵Habgier:  greed
²⁶Prassen:  carousing
²⁷eselsträge:  lazy as a donkey;  hundescharf:  envious like a dog
²⁸schaff Gelegenheiten:  encourage others to commit sins.
²⁹This may  well be an allusion to the so-called «Gravamina» which were, among others, complaints by the peasants about the many kinds of abuse suffered at the hands of noblemen. Note, however, that the original text has "armen" and not "gepawren."
³⁰Inbrunst:  religious ardor, piety
³¹das Sakrament:  holy communion;  Ölung:  extreme unction
³²This clearly corroborates what was said above in the introduction to this poem.
³³Hussiten:  the followers of the Czech reformer and first president of the University of Prague Jan Hus.  Hus had condemned the practice of indulgences, private confession, the hierarchy of the Church, monasticism, and the influence of German professors at Czech universities and demanded communion under both species («Laienkelch»).  He was burned at the stake at the Council of Constance in 1415.
³⁴die vier himmelschreienden Sünden:  the four most heinous sins mentioned in ll. 33-36:  to spill innocent blood, to suppress the peasants, to commit homosexual acts, and to cheat people.
³⁵that is, the burden
³⁶arpeggierend:  ‘notes of a chord played in quick succession instead of simultaneously’
³⁷Wirkungskraft der Edelsteine:  magic/potency of precious stones
³⁸Ostermacht:  Easter mystery
³⁹läßlich:  pleasing
⁴⁰sacht:  ever so gently
⁴¹Banta points out that "in medieval poetry we are not told whether the beloved’s eyes are blue or green, large or widely set, mischievous or creaming, but only that they are ‘luminous’" (JEGP  66, 62).
⁴²All the descriptive adjectives employed her by Oswald to express erotic talk ("schmuslich":  ‘nuzzling’; "koslich":  ‘caressing’) are practically all hapax legomena, that is, words that only appear once.  The same holds true of the adjectives used to describe the lady’s sensuous lips in l. 23.  Kühn’s translation superbly captures this mood.
⁴³sehnsuchtsschwer:  describes the pain of yearning for one’s lover
⁴⁴Ösilein:  affectionate diminutive for ‘Oswald’
⁴⁵gurren:  to coo, ‘purr’
⁴⁶das gibt dem Affen Zucker:  ‘that makes me be wild about you ’