Page:Gummere (1909) The Oldest English Epic.djvu/189

Rh The original, as was hinted above, must have had a tragic ending; the theme demands it, and not only a scrap of this same tale in Old Norse, but analogy of other cases, where similar matter is handled, sustains the demand. The father unwillingly kills his son. Such things must have actually happened now and again in the days of the comitatus, and ten Brink surmises such a case in the Finnsburg with Garulf and Guthlaf; but the killing of near kin remained the capital crime for a German. The frequency of it means, for the Sibyl of the Voluspa poem, the approaching end of the world. Here, then, was tragedy of the kind which thrilled a Greek audience at the fearful dilemma of Orestes. Loyalty to one’s lord was a Germanic virtue which grew stronger with the necessities of constant warfare, until it came to be supreme, and thus overshadowed the obligations of actual kindred. Hildebrand is a victim of the clash of these two duties,—and not for once only. Thirty years before this crowning tragedy, he was forced to choose between his lord, a banished man, and his wife and child. Now the child faces him in arms.

. . . I heard it said. . that as foemen in fight sole faced each other Hildebrand and Hathubrand, two hosts between. There son and father their fighting-gear tested,