Page:Gummere (1909) The Oldest English Epic.djvu/187



LTHOUGH not written in English, the Hildebrand Lay, sole fragment of the old epic poetry in German, is so nearly related in matter and manner to parts of the English epic, and derives its theme from sources related so closely to the source of Waldere, that a translation of it may well be added to the foregoing pieces. One has thus a body of West-Germanic poetry of the early period, to offset the far greater mass of East-Germanic poetry preserved by happy chance in Scandinavia.

The facts about this lay of Hildebrand and Hathubrand are hard to fix in detail; but the general drift is clear. Not far from the year 800, two monks, who may have belonged to the monastery at Fulda, copied the poem, which lacks both beginning and end, on the covers of a theological manuscript. Probably they had the poem before them in writing. If so, this in its turn was written, as Lachmann urges for the copy, from memory; and memory retained only those parts that have come to us. Some roving singer had sung to the High-German writer a song which was mainly in Low-German dialect; and what this writer could remember of it he had set down in a curious mixture of linguistic forms, but not in such utter confusion as to forbid the recognition of the original piece as substantially of Saxon origin.

The main theme is very old and has always been