THE NIBELUNGEN HOARD.
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wearer the strength of twelve men, and enabled him to go where he would unseen, and which was the great prize among the treasures of the dwarfs;[1] who is there that does not see the broken fragments of that old Eastern story of the heirs struggling for their inheritance, and calling in the aid of some one of better wit or strength, who ends by making the very prize for which they fight his own?
And now to return for a moment to Calila and Dimna, and "The Seven Sages." Since we have seen that there are other stories, and many of them, for this is by no means the only resemblance to be found in Somadeva's book,[2] which are common to the Eastern and
- ↑ The account in the Nibelungen respecting the tarnhnt is confused, and the text probably corrupt; but so much is plain, that Siegfried got it from Elberich in the struggle which ensued with Schilbung and Niblung, after he had shared the Hoard.
- ↑ Thus we find in it the originals or the parallels of Grendel in Beowulf, of Rumpelstiltskin, of the recovery of the Bride by the ring dropped into the cup, as related in Soria Moria Castle, and other tales; of the "wishing ram," which in the Indian story becomes a "wishing cow," and thus reminds us of the bull in one of these Norse Tales, out of whose ear came a "wishing cloth"; of the lucky child, who finds a purse of gold under his pillow every morning; and of the red lappet sown on the sleeping lover, as on Siegfried in the Nibelungen. The devices of Upakosa, the faithful wife, remind us at once of "The Mastermaid," and the whole of the stories of Saktideva and the Golden City, and of Viduschaka, King Adityaseria's daughter, are the same in groundwork and in many of their incidents as "East o' the Sun, and West o'
