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Rh erected in 1556 and restored in 1798. On the south side of the church is a lady chapel dating from the end of the reign of Edward II. or the beginning of that of Edward III., containing some good Decorated work, with a crypt below. Of the monastic buildings there remain only a bridge and gateway and other slight fragments. Bishop Hall became curate of Waltham in 1612, and Thomas Fuller was curate from 1648 to 1658. At Waltham Cross, about 1 m. W. of Waltham in Hertfordshire, is the beautiful cross erected (1291-1294) by Edward I. at one of the resting-places of the corpse of Queen Eleanor on its way to burial in Westminster Abbey. It is of Caen stone and is supposed to have been designed by Pietro Cavallini, a Roman sculptor. It is hexagonal in plan and consists of three stages, decreasing towards the top, which is finished by a crocketed spirelet and cross. The lower stage is divided into compartments enclosing the arms of England, Castile and Leon, and Ponthieu. Its restoration has not been wholly satisfactory. The royal gunpowder factory is in the immediate vicinity; government works were built in 1890 at Quinton Hill, ½ m. W. of the town, for the manufacture of cordite; and the town possesses gun-cotton and percussion-cap factories, flour-mills, malt kilns and breweries. Watercresses are largely grown in the neighbourhood, and there are extensive market gardens and nurseries.

The town probably grew up round the church, which was built early in the 11th century to contain a portion of the true cross. The manor was held by the abbot and convent of the Holy Cross from the reign of Henry I. to that of Henry VIII. The town was never more than a market town until 1894. In 1845 a local board of twelve members was formed to govern it; in 1894, under the Local Government Act, it was brought under an urban district council. The market of Waltham was granted to the abbey by Richard I. and confirmed in 1227 by Henry III., who also conceded two fairs in 1251: one for ten days following the Invention of the Holy Cross, the other on the vigil of the Exaltation of the Cross and for seven days after. The charter from which the present market appears to be derived was granted by Queen Elizabeth in 1560, and gave a Tuesday market for miscellaneous stock. The fairs have died out, although as late as 1792 they were held on the 14th of May and the 25th and 26th of September. The fisheries in the river Lea appear in records from 1086 onwards. At the end of the 17th century a fulling mill is mentioned, and by the year 1721 three powder mills were in existence.  WALTHAMSTOW, a suburb of London in the Walthamstow parliamentary division of Essex, England, a short distance E. of the river Lea, with several stations on a branch of the Great Eastern railway, 6 m. N. of Liverpool Street station. Pop. of urban district (1891) 46,346; (1901) 95,131. It is sheltered on the north and east by low hills formerly included in Epping Forest. The church of St Mary existed at a very early period, but the present building, chiefly of brick, was erected in 1535 by Robert Thorne, a merchant, and Sir George Monoux, lord mayor of London, and has undergone frequent alteration. Besides other old brasses it contains in the north aisle the effigies in brass of Sir George Monoux (d. 1543) and Anne his wife. There are a number of educational institutions, including a school of art; Forest School, founded in 1834 in connexion with King's College, now ranks as one of the well-known English public schools. Brewing is extensively carried on.

In the reign of Edward the Confessor Walthamstow belonged to Waltheof, son of Siward, earl of Northumberland, who married Judith, niece of William the Conqueror, who betrayed him to his death in 1073. The estate subsequently passed in 1309 to Guy de Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, and on the attainder of Earl Thomas in 1396 reverted to the crown. Afterwards it came into the possession of Edmund Beaufort, duke of Somerset; from the Somersets it passed to Sir George Rodney, and in 1639 came to the Maynard family. It is supposed to have been the birthplace of George Gascoigne the poet (d. 1577). Sir William Batten, commissioner of the navy (d. 1667), the friend of Pepys, had his seat at Walthamstow, and was frequently visited here by Pepys.  WALTHARIUS, a Latin poem founded on German popular tradition, relates the exploits of the west Gothic hero Walter of Aquitaine. Our knowledge of the author, Ekkehard, a monk of St Gall, is due to a later Ekkehard, known as Ekkehard IV. (d. 1060), who gives some account of him in the Casus Sancti Galli (cap. 80). The poem was written by Ekkehard, generally distinguished as Ekkehard I., for his master Geraldus in his schooldays, probably therefore not later than 920, since he was probably no longer young when he became deacon (in charge of ten monks) in 957. He died in 973. Waltharius was dedicated by Geraldus to Erchanbald, bishop of Strassburg (fl. 965-991), but MSS of it were in circulation before that time. Ekkehard IV. stated that he corrected the Latin of the poem, the Germanisms of which offended his patron Aribo, archbishop of Mainz. The poem was probably based on epic songs now lost, so that if the author was still in his teens when he wrote it he must have possessed considerable and precocious powers.

Walter was the son of Alphere, ruler of Aquitaine, which in the 5th century, when the legend developed, was a province of the west Gothic Spanish kingdom. When Attila invaded the west the western princes are represented as making no resistance. They purchased peace by offering tribute and hostages. King Gibich, here described as a Frankish king, gave Hagen as a hostage (of Trojan race, but not, as in the Nibelungenlied, a kinsman of the royal house) in place of his infant son Gunther; the Burgundian king Heririh, his daughter Hiltegund; and Alphere, his son Walter. Hagen and Walter became brothers in arms, fighting at the head of Attila's armies, while Hiltegund was put in charge of the queen's treasure. Presently Gunther succeeded his father and refused to pay tribute to the Huns, whereupon Hagen fled from Attila's court. Walter and Hiltegund, who had been betrothed in childhood, also made good their escape during a drunken feast of the Huns, taking with them a great treasure. The story of their flight forms one of the most charming pictures of old German story. They were recognized at Worms, however, where the treasure excited the cupidity of Gunther. Taking with him twelve knights, among them the reluctant Hagen, he pursued them, and overtook them at the Wasgenstein in the Vosges mountains. Walter engaged the Nibelungen knights one at a time, until all were slain but Hagen, who held aloof from the battle, and was only persuaded by Gunther to attack his comrade in arms on the second day. He lured Walter from the strong position of the day before, and both Gunther and Hagen attacked at once. All three were incapacitated, but their wounds were bound up by Hiltegund and they separated friends.

The essential part of this story is the series of single combats. The occasional incoherences of the tale make it probable that many changes have been introduced in the legend. The Thidreks Saga (chaps. 241-244) makes the story more probable by representing the pursuers as Huns. There is reason to believe that Hagen was originally the father of Hiltegund, and that the tale was a variant of the saga of Hild as told in the Skaldskaparmál. Hild, daughter of King Högni, was carried off by Hedinn, son of Hjarrandi (A.S. Heorrenda). The fight between the forces of father and lover only ceased at sundown, to be renewed on the morrow, since each evening Hild raised the dead by her incantations. This is obviously a form of the old myth of the daily recurring struggle between light and darkness. The songs sung by Hiltegund in Waltharius during her night watches were probably incantations, a view strengthened by the fact that in a Polish version the glance of Helgunda is said to have inspired the combatants with new strength. Hiltegund has retained nothing of Hild's fierceness, but the fragment of the Anglo-Saxon Waldere shows more of the original spirit. In Waltharius Hiltegund advises Walter to fly, in Waldere she urges him to the combat.

—Waltharius was first edited by Fischer (Leipzig, 1780). Later and more critical editions are by Jacob Grimm (Lat. Gedichte des Mittelalters (Göttingen 1838); R. Peiper (Berlin, 1873); V. Scheffel and A. Holder (Stuttgart 1874); there are German translations by F. Linnig (Paderborn, 1885), and H. Althof (Leipzig, 1896). See also Scheffel's novel of Eckehard (Stuttgart, 1887). The A.S. fragments of Waldere were first edited by G. Stephens (1860), afterwards by R. Wülker in Bibl. der angel-sächs. Poesie (vol. i.,