land “holding in a pair of tongs the head of one of Nithhad’s sons over an anvil,”—making a drinking-cup of the skull. In front of Wayland is Beaduhild, King Nithhad’s daughter, who went to the captive smith to have her ring mended. Wayland’s brother Egil is shooting birds; with wings made of their feathers, Wayland is to escape. Now this scene, which answers to the story of Wayland in a Norse saga, is also indicated by Deor’s allusions. Wayland is taken into bondage by the crafty King Nithhad, fettered (by some accounts, hamstrung), and robbed of the ring which gave him power to fly. But Beaduhild, daughter of his captor, and the sons as well, come to him; he mends the rings for the daughter and so recovers his own ring, and his old power—or, by more prosaic accounts, constructs wonderful pinions that enable him to escape. First, however, he kills the king’s sons, and puts the daughter to shame. Here are two “cases” for the bard,—first Wayland, and then Beaduhild herself. The next case is extremely difficult; but Hild, if the name shall stand, was unhappy, and so were the exiles, whether Goths or whatever else ingenuity can suggest.[1] Theodric is Theodoric the Goth, “Dietrich of Bern”; for traditions of Germanic verse knew that he was banished to the court of Attila for the thirty winters named by Deor’s song. But the allusion here is too vague for precise inference, and the text is evidently marred. Eormanric, again, is the typical tyrant, cruel and remorseless king, of the same traditions; led astray by evil counsel, he puts his only
- ↑ Grein’s explanation still seems the best. Hild is really the Odila of the story told in a Norse saga, and Eormanric was the author of her disgrace; “heroes of Geat” would be Gothic subjects who suffered in the consequent turmoil. Others read “Mæthhilde” as the woman’s name, and in the next verse “the love of Geats.”
