Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 5.djvu/62

82 WORKMEN AND HEROES " Here," says the poem, " has the tale an end. These were the sorrows of the Nibelungs." In this " Iliad of the Germans," which dates from the end of the twelfth cen- tury, the Siegfried story is given as a finished epic. But its originally heathen Teutonic character is overlaid there with admixtures of Christian chivalry. In the Edda and other Scandinavian sources, the tale appears in fragmentary and lyrical shape, but in a purer version, without additions from the new faith or from mediaeval chivalry. It is in the Sigurd-, Fafnir-, Brynhild-, Gudrun-, Odd- run-, Atli-, and Hamdir Lays of the Norse Scripture that the original nature of the older German songs, which must have preceded the epic, can best be guessed. Rhapsodic lays, referring to Siegfried, were, in all probability, part of the collec- tion which Karl the Great, the Prankish Kaiser, ordered to be made. Monkish fanaticism afterward destroyed the valuable relics. Fortunately, Northmen trav- elling in Germany had gathered some of those tale-treasures, which then were treated by Scandinavian and Icelandic bards in the form of heroic lyrics. Hence the Eddie lays in question form now a link between our lost Siegfried " Lieder " and our national epic. Even as in the " Nibelungen Lied " so also in the " Edda," Sigurd (abbrevi- ation for Siegfried) is not a Scandinavian, but a Southern, a Rhenish, a German hero. The whole scene of the tragic events is laid in the Rhinelands, where the killing of the Worm also takes place. On a hill in Frank-land Sigurd frees Brynhild from the magic slumber into which Odin had thrown her on a rock of punishment, because she, as a Valkyr, or shield-maiden of his, had brought about the death of a Gothic king to whom the god of battle had promised victory. In the south, on the Rhine, Sigurd is murdered. In the Rhine, Hogni (Hagen) hides the Nibelung treasure. Many German tribes Franks, Saxons, Burgun- dians, Goths, even a Svava-land, or Suabian land, are mentioned in the " Edda." The " Drama of Revenge," after Sigurd's death, though motives of the act some- what different from those stated in the " Nibelungen Lied " are assigned, is also localized on the Lower Rhine, in the Hall of Atli, the King of the Hunes. In the "Nibelungen Lied," that name appears as Etzel (Attila), King of the Hunns. In the "Edda" and in the " Vilkina Saga," Germans are referred to as sources for some details of the Sigurd story. So strong was. in Scandinavia, the tra- dition of the Teutonic origin of the tale, down to the twelfth century, that, in a geographical work written in Norse by the Abbot Nicolaus, the Gnita Heath, where Sigurd was said to have killed the Dragon, was still placed half-way be- tween Paderborn and Mainz. Thus it was from Germany that this grand saga spread all over the North, including the Farber. In the " Hvenic Chronicle," in Danish songs, we even find Siegfried as " Sigfred ; " Kriemhild as " Gremild ; " and she is married to him at Worms, as in the " Nibelungen Lied," while in the " Edda " Sigurd's wife is called Gudrun, and the remembrance of Worms is lost. The scene of the Norse poems is wholly on Rhenish ground. Now, in that neighborhood, in the northwest of Germany, a Teutonic tribe once dwelt, called Hunes, which is also traceable in Scandinavia. Sigurd him-