Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/443

Rh showed in these pages that the Welsh tale of Branwen, was probably influenced by the Siegfried Nibelung cycle. Now the child-slaughter incident is found here in substantially the same form as in the Nibelunglied. If I am correct, and borrowing has taken place, the Welshman borrowed from the second version of the Nibelung legend. Now Branwen, as a whole, is certainly anterior to the introduction of the French form of the Arthurian romance into Wales, i.e., anterior to the twelfth century. In all probability it was redacted in the late tenth or early eleventh century. From whom at that date (or, indeed, at any other) could a Welsh story-teller have heard the second version of the Nibelung saga? The first, the Northern version, was well known in Norse England. Stones, upon which episodes from it were graven, are standing to this day. But the second version! save Branwen ex hypothesi, there is no trace of it in Britain. Under these circumstances, the question arises whether M. Lichtenberger's contention is sound, and whether the child-slaughter incident of the Nibelungenlied and Thidreks saga is indeed wholly derived from that other incident preserved by the Volsunga saga.

Much, of course, would depend upon the date assigned to the transformation of the early into the later form of the legend. M. Lichtenberger does not dogmatise upon this point. Rightly so, in my opinion, the criteria relied upon by some German scholars for establishing a precise chronology of the different versions being of a secondary character. Nor is our author more dogmatic concerning the cause of this transformation. He seems to view it as belonging to the domain of historic psychology. The heroine of the early version typifies the virtue of fidelity to the kin. A time came when this virtue ceased to appeal to the ballad-singer's hearers, and that of wifely devotion was substituted for it.

The problem is complicated by the fact, which M. Lichtenberger notices but upon which he lays no stress, that the Volsunga saga (i.e., the chief representative of the early form of the legend) has a close parallel to the second