Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/445

Rh for one of the most famous and noblest of heroic stories, the story of Siegfried's fate and of the stress of the Nibelungs.

M. Lichtenberger's remarks (ch. 13-15) upon the conventional character of the personages in the twelfth-century minstrel narrative-poems are full of interest to the folklorist. The conventions are largely those which obtain in the ordinary märchen. We have the king, father of a beautiful princess, whom he denies to all suitors; the king or prince who goes in quest of the heroine, or of some other adventure; the king or prince who can accomplish no adventure unaided, but has at his side a bold and cunning servant or relation (in one case, Oswalt, this factotum is an animal, a crow); skill and cunning are greatly insisted upon, and form as essential a part of the hero's equipment as strength or valour; finally, the heroine is always fain, always prepared to trick her father and turn her back upon her kin when the hero whistles. In all these respects these poems differ greatly from those of the matière de Bretagne. But it should be noted that the earlier prose stratum of Arthurian tales, of which Kilhwch is the only representative, shows the same characteristics. A feature of these German minstrel-narratives is the almost invariable Crusading framework in which they are set. I would suggest that they are greatly spun-out versions of the folk-tales current at the time, provided with named personages, and fitted into what was, for twelfth-century Germany, the most picturesque and interesting cadre.

In App. G, M. Lichtcnberger discusses Professor Zimmer's views respecting the influence of the Nibelung upon the Cuchullan cycle, which I commented upon in these pages (Arch. Rev., Oct. 18S8). M. Lichtenberger is inclined to concede more to Professor Zimmer than I should, but in the main he rejects the theory as decisively as I do.