Page:Gummere (1909) The Oldest English Epic.djvu/182

166 to Hagen’s loyalty; and the hero consents, pointing out, however, that Walter must be enticed out of his impregnable fighting-place. So the king and his vassal apparently give up the battle and withdraw.

All night Walter and Hiltigund rest, and next day resume their journey. In the open Walter is attacked by both Gunther and Hagen; they fight as in ballads, for long hours; but after all three of the combatants have suffered mutilations of the severest kind, peace is made; the woman acts as surgeon; and amid jocosities between the reconciled brothers-in-arms, and with much drinking of wine, the poem ends, not omitting, however, the picture of future felicity for Walter and his bride.

The first of these Anglo-Saxon fragments belongs before the fight in the open. Exhausted by the long struggle with his foes, Walter now for the first time hesitates; he is not quite sure either of himself or of his sword. His own favorite weapon is the spear; and, as he says in the second fragment to Guthhere, he is battle-spent and weary. Probably the Anglo-Saxon poem did not put a night between the two sets of encounters. However that may have been, Hildeguth, who is here no shrinking and quiet maiden, exhorts Walter to play the man. As for his sword, that never failed yet; as for himself, she knows well what he has done, and willed to do, in the most desperate straits of war. Let him drive Guthhere in disgrace from the field. . . . Not very much of the text between the fragments has been lost. In the second Guthhere is advancing to fight and uttering his boast. He praises his sword