The Nibelungenlied Part 1

The Nibelungenlied.

by Unknown.

SPECIAL INTRODUCTION

The "Nibelungenlied," as the great national epic of Germany, is not only one of the most important literary monuments that the German mind has produced in all periods of its history, but, in reality beyond this, it is also in its matter and its manner one of the world's great cla.s.sics.

It is this inherently because of the universal intelligibility of its story, for the broad human sympathy which must be felt with its characters and their motives of action, and for the sustained poetic treatment of the whole in the long poem. In all these respects the "Nibelungenlied," although German in its spirit and its environment, rises inevitably above the confines of nationality, and becomes, like other works that are in a true sense great, by virtue of its universality an integral part of that cosmopolitan body that we call the literature of the world.

Like the "Iliad," or any other popular epic whatever, the "Nibelungenlied" is, however, first and foremost a picture of the national life and the national soul. Its characters in this way are, consequently, both fundamentally and of necessity a part of their own special environment into which each, according to his individuality, fits; and the manners and customs, the religion and ethics, are first of all essentially German in order to embody them and to motive their actions to the public for which the poem was originally intended. What we are given in the "Nibelungenlied" is primarily then, at least in its exterior, a picture of German life in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The customs are those of the courts and castles of the place and time, the men and women are the knights and ladies who inhabit them; and if the real mainsprings of motive and action sometimes go back beyond the poet's own day and generation for reasons that shall presently be told, the thoughts and feelings of the characters under his hand betray on the surface no trace of it.

To an English reader there is astonis.h.i.+ngly little in the "Nibelungenlied" in motive that is unintelligible or hopelessly remote.

It is not that its manners of thought are our manners of thought, or its ethics our ethics. Its deeds, since the real story is an ancient inheritance, are tragic with battle, murder, and sudden death; but, in spite of all this, there is in us an innate appreciation of it and of its spirit that it is utterly impossible to feel in much literature that is not our own. This of course arises from the fact that it is, in a sense, our own, as, in part, at the beginning in very truth it was. The difference in its whole environment from us is still, in reality, not great, and we realize, consciously or unconsciously, that it is in many ways our own ancient past that is chronicled in the German poem.

For all these reasons it comes readily about that, in the light of the poet's master touch, the characters of the "Nibelungenlied" that he has left in such actuality in his verses are to us neither vague nor shadowy, but are real persons who live and act before us. This is in fact truer of the "Nibelungenlied" than of almost any other great poem of the kind, whatever its time and place of origin. Siegfried and Kriemhild, Hagen and Rudeger are not the mere creations and impersonations of a poet's imagination; they are to us real men and women who lived their lives and died their deaths as the poet has described them. That he has told his tale with wonderful literary skill as a whole and at times with marvellous appreciation of the value of the moment, is also to be stated. Because no doubt in part from the way in which the poem has come down to us, there is at times superfluous material that had better been left away, but in this fact, too, the poem differs but little from other popular epics.

As a whole, the "Nibelungenlied" is characterized by a literary unity of treatment by no means inconsiderable, and greater, in point of fact, than its origin would ordinarily promise. Its unity, however, is dramatic, rather than epic in the ordinary sense. This character it never loses throughout the whole long action. Deed follows deed, stroke upon stroke, until the final catastrophe is inevitably reached and the story is ended.

That this story in its origin is not narrowly German, but is Germanic property, should be borne in mind by its reader, since many of its episodes acquire thereby a broader significance, and the whole poem a.s.sumes a wider interest.

The earliest versions of the story of the Volsungs and Nibelungs, the Germanic "tale of Troy," that have come down to us are not from German territory, but from the Scandinavian North, although here, too, the scene of the princ.i.p.al action is on the Rhine and in the land of the Huns, which is vaguely conceived to be a part of the German country.

Sigmund, the father of Sigurd, is a King in the land of the Franks; Sigurd is slain to the south of the Rhine, and in the Rhine is forever hidden the fateful h.o.a.rd of the Nibelungs. The story in reality wandered out twice into the North from its original home in Germany: once apparently in the Viking age when the Northmen for the first time came into close contact with the other Germanic people on the continent and in the British Islands, a period long antecedent to the "Nibelungenlied;" and again five hundred years later, after the German poem had arisen, since it can be readily shown that this has been used as a source of a part of the material.

The very first of these Northern versions is that contained in the "Elder Edda," a collection of mythological and legendary poems in the Old Norse language, of unknown authors.h.i.+p, whose time and place of origin are alike matters of varying supposition. The subject was the theme of poets for centuries in the North. The oldest of the poems in the "Edda" that has to do with the story of the "Nibelungenlied," from internal evidence, was made as early as the year 900; the latest is from a time not far from 1200. These poems and fragments of poems, some of them even in prose rescript and most of them interspersed here and there with bits of prose, do not make in any sense a connected story. Their unknown collector arranged them as well as might be in connected sequence, but even then their action is not consecutive; they overlap each other, parts of the story are told and retold and not seldom with an inconsistency of detail. There is, accordingly, in the "Elder Edda"

no thought of an epic either in matter or manner. There is the material for an epic in the rough, but without an idea in the mind of any poet of the time of actual epical treatment.

The story as contained in the Old Norse poems is by no means identical with the "Nibelungenlied." First and foremost, it is infinitely older in its whole conception, and much more nearly approaches original conditions as they existed in the mode of thought and in the manner of living of the early Germanic people. It is a story, here, of the days when the world was young; when the G.o.ds still walked the earth and mixed themselves in with human affairs in which they had an active interest; when motives were clearer and action was more direct; when human pa.s.sions burned even fiercer than in the "Nibelungenlied," and love and hate together knew no boundaries until they had worked themselves out in the utter destruction of their object. Of the first of these conditions, the "Nibelungenlied" in its character of an epic of the Middle Ages has not kept a trace. In the Eddic poems it is the ring cursed by the G.o.ds to all its possessors that motives the entire action; that leads with the certainty of fate to the death of Sigurd, the Siegfried of the "Edda," to all the woes that follow, and to the ultimate utter destruction of the entire race of the Nibelungs.

As most critics have pointed out, the fundamental difference in the treatment of the story consists in the fact that the princ.i.p.al epic interest in the Eddic poems is the relation of Sigurd to Brynhild, the Valkyrie, who is here a heroic figure, who rises immeasurably not only above the other women of the tale, but above most of the other characters in importance of personality. In the "Nibelungenlied" it is Kriemhild, Gudrun in the "Edda," and Hagen who are the princ.i.p.al figures in the action. In the Northern version, Gudrun does not avenge herself upon her brothers as does Kriemhild in the "Nibelungenlied," but Atli, her husband after Sigurd, slays them, and Gudrun then takes vengeance upon him. In the "Edda," too, other saga cycles are brought into connection with this, viz., the Northern legend of Helgi, at the beginning, and the Gothic legend of Ermanrich, at the end.

The Eddic poems are not the only versions in Old Norse literature. An epitome of the story based upon the poems is contained in the "Snorra Edda," a work written by the Icelander Snorri Sturluson, who lived from 1178 to 1241, to serve as a handbook for poets and which contains in this way the myths and legends of the North.

Next to the Eddic songs the most important of the Northern versions, however, is the long "Volsunga Saga" from the second half of the thirteenth century, which, again, is based upon the Eddic poems and upon others in addition that have now been lost. Like most of the Old Norse sagas, it is prose with the occasional inclusion of verse cited to justify or to embellish its statements. It gives with extraordinary wealth of detail the whole old story in connected form and desires to be called, as it has been called, a prose epic. William Morris, in his superb translation, has deservedly characterized it as "the most complete and dramatic form of the Great Epic of the North." The story is further contained, in some of its details only, in the strange tale of "Nornagest," which has again made use of the Eddic songs and quotes one of them entire.

The Old Norse story is so important for its bearing on the intelligibility of the "Nibelungenlied" that it is absolutely necessary to take it actively into consideration in any discussion of the German poem. The epitome contained in the "Snorra Edda," since it gives the whole story from beginning to end in a form as short as may be, is here given in its entirety:

"Three G.o.ds, Odin, Hnir, and Loki, once went out to explore the whole world. They came to a certain river, and went along the river to a waterfall, and at the waterfall there was an otter that had taken a salmon out of the fall and ate it, half asleep. Then Loki took up a stone and cast it at the otter and struck him in the head. Loki thereupon boasted of his catch that he had got at a blow both the otter and the salmon. They took the salmon and the otter and carried them along with them until they came to a farmstead, where they went in. The head of the household that dwelt there was named Hreidmar; he was a mighty man and much skilled in magic. He invited the G.o.ds to lodge there for the night, and they told him that they had with them provisions in plenty and showed him their booty. But when Hreidmar saw the otter he called his sons Fafnir and Regin and said that Otter, their brother, had been killed, and told them who had done it. Thereupon, the father and his sons fell upon the G.o.ds and took them and bound them, saying that the otter was the son of Hreidmar. The G.o.ds offered as a ransom as much money as Hreidmar himself should determine, and that was agreed upon as a reconciliation and was bound with oaths.

"Then the otter was flayed, and Hreidmar took the otter's skin and said that they should fill it with red gold and should then cover it wholly up with gold, and that should be their atonement. Odin then sent Loki into the land of the black elves and he came to the dwarf who is called Andvari; he was a fish in the water, and Loki took him and laid upon him as a ransom all the gold that he had in his stone. And when they came into the stone where he dwelt, the dwarf brought out all the gold that he owned and that was a very great treasure. Then the dwarf slipped under his hand a little gold ring. That Loki, however, saw and bade him produce the ring. The dwarf begged him not to take the ring from him, and said that he could breed treasure out of it if he kept it. Loki told him that he should not keep back a penny, and took the ring from him andwent out. The dwarf said that the ring should be the death of everyone who owned it. Loki replied that that suited him well, and that the condition should be held good, since he would bring it to the ears of them who might get possession of it. He then went away to Hreidmar's and showed Odin the gold; but when he saw the ring, it seemed to him very beautiful and he took it out of the treasure, but paid over to Hreidmar the gold.

"Then Hreidmar filled the otter's skin as full as he could and set it up on its feet when it was full; Odin then went up to cover the skin with gold and said to Hreidmar that he should see whether the skin were wholly covered. Hreidmar looked at it and considered it carefully and saw a whisker, and bade him cover that, also, or else their atonement were at an end. Then Odin brought out the ring and covered the whisker and said that they now were freed from the otter ransom. When, however, Odin had taken his spear and Loki his shoes, and they needed no longer to fear, then said Loki that what Andvari had spoken, that the ring should be the death of him who owned it, should hold good, and it did hold good thereafter.

"Hreidmar took the gold as ransom for his son, but Fafnir and Regin demanded some of it as a ransom for their brother. Hreidmar, however, would not grant them a single penny of the gold. That was the ill-advised deed of the brothers that they killed their father for the gold. Then Regin demanded that Fafnir divide the gold in halves between them. Fafnir replied that there was little chance that he would share the gold with his brother when he had killed his father for the sake of it, and bade Regin to begone or he would fare as had Hreidmar. Fafnir had then taken the helmet which Hreidmar had owned, which was called the Helmet of Awe and which all living things feared that saw it, and set it upon his head, and he took the sword which is called Hrotti. Regin had the sword that is called Refil and he fled away; but Fafnir went up upon the Glittering Heath and made him there a lair, and he took upon himself the shape of a serpent and lay upon the gold.

"Regin then went to King Hjalprek, at Thy, in Denmark, and there set up a smithy, and he took to foster Sigurd, the son of Sigmund (the son of Volsung) and of Hjordis, the daughter of Eylimi. Sigurd was the most glorious of all war kings in lineage and strength. Regin told him where Fafnir lay upon the gold, and egged him on to seek it. Then Regin made the sword that is called Gram, which was so sharp that Sigurd thrust it in the water and it cut asunder a lock of wool that drove before the current against the edge of the sword. Afterward, Sigurd clove in two Regin's anvil down to the stock with the sword. After that, Sigurd and Regin went out upon the Glittering Heath. Then Sigurd dug a pit in Fafnir's path and got into it; and when Fafnir crept to the water and came over the pit, then Sigurd thrust the sword up against him and that was his death. Regin then came up and said that Sigurd had killed his brother and offered him as a reconciliation that he should take the heart of Fafnir and roast it at the fire; but Regin himself got down and drank the blood of Fafnir and then lay down to sleep. And when Sigurd had roasted the heart and thought that it must be done, he touched it with his finger to see how hard it was. And when the juice ran out of the heart upon his finger, he burnt himself and thrust his finger into his mouth. And when the heart's blood came upon his tongue, then he knew the speech of birds and understood what the nuthatches said that sat in the tree above him.

"Then said one:

'There sits Sigurd blood besprinkled, the heart of Fafnir at the fire roasting; wise methinks were the ring despoiler, if he the gleaming heart were eating.'

"Then said the other:

'There lies Regin with himself communing; he will beguile the youth who is trusting in him; in rage he brings now ill words together; the evil-worker will avenge his brother.'

"Then Sigurd went up to Regin and killed him, and took his horse, which was named Grani, and rode until he came to the lair of Fafnir. There he took the gold and bound it up in packs and laid it on the back of Grani, and then mounted and rode on his way. Sigurd rode until he found a house upon the fell. Within it slept a woman who had on a helmet and a coat of mail. He drew his sword and cut her coat of mail off her. Then she awoke and named herself Hild. She is called Brynhild and was a Valkyrie.

Sigurd rode thence and came to the King who is named Gjuki; his wife is named Grimhild; their children were Gunnar, Hogni, Gudrun, Gudny; Gotthorm was a step-son of Gjuki. There Sigurd dwelt for a long time; and he took to wife Gudrun, the daughter of Gjuki, and Gunnar and Hogni swore with him oaths of brotherhood. Afterward, Sigurd and the sons of Gjuki went to Atli, the son of Budli, to ask as a wife for Gunnar Brynhild, his sister. She dwelt upon Hind Fell, and about her hall was a flaming fire, and she had made a vow to have as a husband that man, only, who dared to ride through the flame.

"Then Sigurd and the Gjukings (who are also called Niflungs) rode up upon the fell, and Gunnar was minded to ride through the flame. He had the horse that was named Goti, but the horse did not dare to leap into the fire. Then Sigurd and Gunnar changed their shapes and also their names, since Grani would not go under any man except Sigurd. Then Sigurd leaped upon Grani and rode through the flaming fire. That night he held a wedding with Brynhild, and when they came to bed he drew the sword Gram out of its scabbard and laid it between them. And in the morning, when he awoke and dressed himself, then he gave Brynhild as a bridal gift the gold ring which he had taken on the Glittering Heath, and Loki had taken from Andvari, and he took from her another ring as a remembrance. Sigurd then leaped upon his horse and rode to his companions; Gunnar and he again changed their shapes and they went back to Gjuki with Brynhild. Sigurd had two children with Gudrun: Sigmund and Swanhild.

"It was once upon a time that Brynhild and Gudrun went to the water to bleach their hair. When they came to the river, Brynhild waded out into the water away from the land and said that she would not have on her head the water that ran out of Gudrun's hair, since she had the more n.o.ble husband. Then Gudrun went out into the river after Brynhild and said that she should wash her hair in the river above, because she had the husband who was braver than anyone else in the world, since he slew Fafnir and Regin and gained the inheritance of them both. Then Brynhild replied: 'It was of still greater renown that Gunnar rode the flaming fire and Sigurd dared not.' Then Gudrun laughed and said: 'Do you think that Gunnar rode through the flaming fire? Him I deem to have gone to bed with you, who gave me this gold ring. But the ring that you have on your hand, and that you received as a bridal gift, that is called the Ring of Andvari, and I deem that it was not Gunnar who sought it on the Glittering Heath.' Then Brynhild was silent and went home. After that she egged on Gunnar and Hogni to kill Sigurd, but because they had sworn oaths with him they egged on Gotthorm, their brother, to kill him.

Gotthorm laid sword on him while he slept, and when he felt the wound he hurled the sword Gram after his slayer so that it cut the man asunder.

Then Sigurd fell and his three-year old son, who was named Sigmund, whom they killed. After that, Brynhild turned sword upon herself and she was burned with Sigurd. And Gunnar and Hogni took the treasure of Fafnir and the Ring of Andvari and ruled all the land.

"King Atli, the son of Budli, the brother of Brynhild, then took to wife Gudrun, whom Sigurd had had, and they had children together. King Atli bade Gunnar and Hogni to visit him, and they went at his invitation, but before they went away from home they hid the gold, the Treasure of Andvari, in the river Rhine, and it has never since been found. And King Atli had a.s.sembled a great force and fought with Gunnar and Hogni and they were taken prisoners. And Atli had the heart cut out of Hogni while he lived, and that was his death. Gunnar he caused to be cast into a serpent pit, and a harp was brought to him secretly and he struck it with his toes, since his hands were bound, so that all the serpents slept except one adder, which sprang at him, and struck in through his breast so that she thrust in her head and hung upon his liver until he died. Gunnar and Hogni are called Niflungs and Gjukungs, and for this reason the gold is called the Treasure of the Niflungs, or their inheritance. A little while after, Gudrun killed her two sons, and with gold and silver had beakers made out of their skulls and then was celebrated the funeral feast of the Niflungs.

"At this banquet Gudrun had King Atli served with mead from the beakers, and there was mixed with it the blood of the boys, and their hearts she caused to be roasted and brought to the King to eat. And when that was done she told him these things herself with many ugly words. There was no lack there of intoxicating mead, so that most people slept where they sat. And in the night she went to the King where he was sleeping, and with her the son of Hogni, and they fell upon him, and that was his death. Then they hurled fire into the hall and the people were burned that were within. After that she went to the sea and leaped in and wished to destroy herself, but she drifted over the fjord and came to the land of King Jonakr. And when he saw her, he took her to him and wedded her. They had three sons, who were called Sorli, Hamdir, and Erp; they were all as black as ravens in the color of their hair, like Gunnar and Hogni and the other Niflungs.

"There grew up Swanhild, the daughter of Sigurd; she was the most beautiful of all women. That Jormunrek the Mighty learned and sent his son Randver to ask her hand. And when he came to Jonakr, Swanhild was given over to him that he might bring her to Jormunrek. Then said Bikki that it had fallen out better if Randver had Swanhild, since he was young, as were they both, and Jormunrek was old. This counsel pleased the young people well; and thereupon Bikki told it to the King. Then Jormunrek had his son taken and brought to the gallows, but Randver took his falcon and plucked off the feathers and bade that it be sent to his father; then he was hanged. But when King Jormunrek saw the falcon, it came into his mind that just as the falcon was incapable of flight and featherless, so was also his kingdom disabled, since he was old and without a son.

"It was once upon a time when King Jormunrek rode out of the forest from hunting with his men that Swanhild the Queen sat bleaching her hair.

Then they rode upon her and trod her to death under the horses' hoofs.

And when Gudrun learned this, she egged on her sons to avenge Swanhild.

And when they made ready for the journey, she got them mail, and helmets so strong that iron would not take hold upon it. She said the plan for them to follow was that when they came to King Jormunrek they should fall upon him at night while he slept; Sorli and Hamdir should then hew off his hands and feet, and Erp his head. When, however, they came on the way, they asked Erp what a.s.sistance they might have of him if they met King Jormunrek. He replied that he would give them such aid as the hand gave the foot. They replied that naught at all did the foot depend upon the hand. They were so angry at their mother that she had led them out with words of hatred, that they desired to do that which should be the worst thing of all to her and they killed Erp, since she loved him most. A little while after, as Sorli walked along he slipped with both feet, but held himself up with his hand. Then he said: 'The hand does now help the foot; better it were that Erp were alive!' And when they came to King Jormunrek's at night, and went in where he slept and hewed off his hands and feet, he awoke and called upon his men and bade them awaken. Then said Hamdir: 'Off were now his head, if Erp were alive!'

Then the men-at-arms arose and attacked them, but could not overcome them with weapons. Jormunrek then called out that stones should be hurled at them, and this was done. Then Sorli and Hamdir fell, and then were dead all the race and descendants of the Gjukings."

The Eddic poems and the "Volsunga Saga" give us even much more fully in detail than does this epitome the deeds of Sigurd's youth of which the "Nibelungenlied" knows so little. The latter, too, has forgotten the early relations.h.i.+p of Sigurd to Brynhild and her whole early history, although her superhuman character is still remembered and obscure reference is made to their previous acquaintance. There is no longer a reason why Siegfried and Brunhild should die together, as in the "Edda."

That the ultimate catastrophe falls out differently in the two versions of the story is due to this very fact of the loss of original detail. In that her brothers who had murdered Sigurd live in triumph afterward and no true reconciliation can be possible between them, Kriemhild must of necessity avenge herself upon them, instead of upon Atli, as in the earlier form of the story. And, as has already been remarked, the real significance to the action of the fateful "Ring of the Nibelungs" and the accursed h.o.a.rd has wholly vanished to give place to reasons that have much more affinity with human motives of conduct.

The "Nibelungenlied," like the Northern poems before it, is legendary, with only here and there a historical fact as a nucleus about which has gathered in the course of the centuries material for many times and places. The destruction of the Burgundians, under their King Gunther, by the Huns, which occurred in the year 437, has undoubtedly furnished the ultimate catastrophe. It is not known, however, that Attila, the Atli of the "Edda" and the Etzel of the "Nibelungenlied," was the leader of the Huns on this occasion, although the event did take place during his lifetime. Attila's brother Bleda appears in the poem as Bldelin.

Giselher, the brother of Gunther, is also mentioned in the old Burgundian law-code, the _Lex Burgundionum_. Of Siegfried and Brunhild history knows no trace, although an attempt has been made to connect the one with Arminius and the other with Brunehild of Austrasia. The appearance in the poem of Dietrich of Bern, Theodoric the Great, the Ostrogothic conqueror of Italy, who lived from 475 to 526, is an example of the absorption of material from another cycle into the original legend, material which, in its turn, cl.u.s.ters about a historical character. The Bishop Pilgrin, of Pa.s.sau, represented in the poem as the uncle of the Burgundian kings and of Kriemhild, has a historical prototype in an actual Pilgrin who held the see of Pa.s.sau from 971 to 991 and has, it may be, been here introduced by the poet to honor him.

As for the rest, facts that may have been ultimately historical have been freely used by the poet of the "Nibelungenlied" and his predecessors until it is no longer possible to tell where legend begins and history ends.

That Siegfried and Brunhild are at the end mythical, rather than at all historical, has been surmised, rather than proved. It has been attempted, in point of fact, to show that the whole story has arisen in its earliest form through a union of an old myth of Siegfried with the historical materials that have been indicated and others whose real significance has subsequently been obliterated and lost. The believers of this theory have pointed to the thoroughly mythical character of the version of the story in the "Edda" and particularly of its earliest part as plausible evidence, and they would see in the whole the union of a Frankish myth of Siegfried, originally independent, with a Burgundian historical narrative. Siegfried and Brunhild, in this way, have been thought to embody, at the beginning, the nature-myth of the awakening earth-G.o.ddess from the sleep of winter at the reanimating touch of summer. Lachmann makes the fundamental fact at the outset a myth of the death of Balder, and Wilhelm Muller a myth of Freyr, both light-G.o.ds of the old mythology. It is, nevertheless, impossible to follow the upholders of these theories into the details of their interpretation, and the whole main a.s.sumption of a mythical origin is a matter of doubt. That Siegfried and Brunhild, however, have mythical characteristics that they have retained after all memory of the ancient mythology as such has been absolutely forgotten, no reader of the story can deny, and in this respect the "Nibelungenlied" is no different from the legendary literature of all the nations of the world.

Early German poems on the story of the Nibelungs, although it is altogether likely that they once existed, have not been preserved. The "Nibelungenlied" itself it is not possible to follow back of the twelfth century, by the middle of which it seems to have already had the form in which it has come down to us. The internal evidence of metre, rhyme, and language shows, too, beyond a doubt, that it could not have arisen at a much earlier time.

The author of the poem is unknown. The most plausible hypothesis as to his actual personality makes him an Austrian knight of about 1140, possibly a member of the Kurenberg family, who lived in the neighborhood of Linz, on the Danube. A Kurenberg of the twelfth century is the oldest court poet who used in his lyrics the same strophic form that is characteristic of the "Nibelungenlied," but that the two poets are identical is by no manner of means a certainty. In the same way, the place of origin of the poem is a matter of supposition. In all probability, however, it arose in southeastern German territory in Austria. Although the poet knows the region on the Rhine about Worms, he has an infinitely wider acquaintance with Austrian localities of which he makes specific mention. It was in Austria, too, at this time that the beginnings arose of the court lyric poetry, that Minnesangs Fruhling, as the Germans strikingly characterize the period, that presently blossomed out into one of the fullest expressions in all its history of German life and thought.

Bartsch, in the introduction to his edition of the "Nibelungenlied," has most admirably summarized this whole matter. According to him, it was an Austrian poet who, before the middle of the twelfth century, united songs sung at his time and oral tradition, known to him as well as to everybody else, into a single whole. How far folk-song and tradition had antic.i.p.ated him in this is no longer to be ascertained, but it may be inferred from the Northern form of the legend that it had long since taken place. It remained to him, however, to arrange the whole in its details of sequence of action, to fill out the gaps left by popular song and story, and to give it the impress of his own day, which it so unmistakably bears. That this is not in accord with other ideas of authors.h.i.+p and origin must nevertheless be stated. Karl Lachmann, one of the most astute, if not one of the most mistaken, critics of the poem, taking Wolf's Prolegomena to Homer for his model, set up the theory that has since played an important part in the discussion of the genesis of the "Nibelungenlied."

According to the Lachmann theory, the poem consists of no less than twenty distinct lays, each differing inherently from the rest, and each, with the exception of the Eighth and Ninth, by different authors. To arrive at this result, more than a third of the entire number of stanzas has, for one reason or another, been rejected as not genuine. As Lettsom has cleverly put it in the original preface to his translation, where this whole matter is presented with some detail: "He [Lachmann] has in fact put every stanza and every verse on its trial. Some have been condemned by him to italics, as interpolations; others to brackets, as continuations by different hands; others again, which he supposes to be the latest additions, so far from being pitied for their youth, have been visited with both kinds of punishment. He has not, however, sentenced any of the delinquents to transportation from the text; or, perhaps it would be more correct to say that he has sentenced them, but has not carried the sentence into execution. The result of the whole a.s.size has been that out of the 2,316 stanzas 1,437 have been honorably acquitted; the rest have been italicised, bracketed, or both.... The twenty lays," he continues, "which had already suffered from the interpolations and corruptions incident to oral tradition, were first collected, committed to writing, and patched together into one poem about the year 1210 by some unknown compiler, whose handiwork was afterward corrected or depraved by two separate but equally unknown revisers. It is his opinion that scarcely a stanza of what we possess is older than 1190, while even the latest additions are not more recent than 1225. The whole poem, therefore, is, according to Professor Lachmann, the work of contemporary authors, whether we call their compositions spurious or genuine; and the task undertaken is neither more nor less than to distribute a ma.s.s of unowned literary property among nineteen or twenty poets and an indefinite number of poetasters, of whom nothing, not even their existence, is known except by conjecture, and of whose distinguis.h.i.+ng characteristics we are of course completely ignorant, except as far as we may guess at them from the internal evidence, real or imagined, of the poem itself."

Lachmann's theory of separate authors.h.i.+p of portions of the poem has not maintained itself against the critics. That there are contradictions in its statements and different values in its parts cannot be denied, but they are not explained on the grounds here set forth. The attempted restoration of the poem by elimination and rearrangement has not left twenty or any number of lays that have actually the air of being separate poems. "It is just here," continues Lettsom, "that the failure of the hypothesis is most conspicuous.... Some of the lays are not ill-adapted, from the nature of their contents, to form separate poems, but they are by no means out of place as episodes in a long work, and are, besides, connected with the rest, while the latter, from the insignificance of their contents alone, from their reference to one another, from their allusions to the past and antic.i.p.ations of the future, from their abrupt commencements and still more abrupt conclusions, and from their general fragmentary nature, could never have been independent lays.... The dream of Kriemhild forms a strange opening for a lay that just brings Siegfried to Worms, and there leaves him.

n.o.body, in fact, would have composed a separate poem on so insignificant a matter. The dream, however, is beyond all doubt the introduction, the fit and appropriate introduction, to a poem that must go on at least to the marriage of Kriemhild and the death of her husband.

"Professor Lachmann himself seems to be in doubt whether this First Lay be complete; he talks of 'this lay, or what has been preserved of it;'

he tells us that 'it several times indicates a continuation, and might have deserved a better than that which follows;' but though he expresses a doubt, he gives no reasons for entertaining one. It certainly would require far less ingenuity to a.s.sign cogent reasons for a doubt, and indeed for much more than a doubt, on this point; the lay, as it stands, is a 'pa.s.sage that leads to nothing,' a mountain in labor that does not produce even so much as a mouse; but it is not singular in this respect; its brethren for the most part keep it in countenance; or, if they contain matter of interest, they too often try the temper of the reader by disappointing his expectations at the most critical moment, and coming to an abrupt conclusion in the midst of an action. Thus the Eighteenth Lay ends just after the battle between Huns and Burgundians has begun; the Nineteenth stops short just at the moment when Etzel has brought up 20,000 fresh men and commenced another attack on Gunther and his followers.