Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/511

 NIEBELUNGEN LIED. -EDDA. 479 versal insecurity, when the grand subjects of common respect and interest were the Church and the Crusades, and when the latter especially were embraced with an enthusiasm truly astonishing. The long German poem of the Niebelungen Lied, as well as the Volsunga Saga and a portion of the songs of the Edda, relate to a common fund of mythical, superhuman personages, and of fabulous adventure, identified with the earliest antiquity of the Teutonic and Scandinavian race, and representing their primitive sentiment towards ancestors of divine origin. Sigurd, Brynhilde, Gudrun, and Atle, are mythical characters celebrated as well by the Scandinavian Scalds as by the German epic poets, but with many varieties and separate additions to distinguish the one from the other. The German epic, later and more elaborated, includes various persons not known to the songs in the Edda, in particu- lar the prominent name of Dieterich of Bern presenting, more- over, the principal characters and circumstances as Christian, while in the Edda there is no trace of anything but heathenism. There is, indeed, in this the old and heathen version, a remarkable anal- ogy with many points of Grecian mythical narrative. As in the case of the short life of Achilles, and of the miserable Labdakids of Thebes so in the family of the Volsungs, though sprung from and protected by the gods a curse of destiny hangs upon them and brings on their ruin, in spite of preeminent personal quali- ties. 1 The more thoroughly this old Teutonic story has been traced and compared, in its various transformations and accom- paniments, the less can any well-established connection be made out for it with authentic historical names or events. We must acquiesce in its personages as distinct in original conception from common humanity, and as belonging to the subjective mythical world of the race by whom they were sung. Such were the compositions which not only interested the 1 Eespecting the Volsunga Saga and the Niebelungen Lied, the work of Lange Untersuchungen dber die Geschichte und das Verhaltniss der Nordischen und Deutschen Heldensage is a valuable translation from the Danish Saga-Bib! iothek of P. E. Mailer. P. E. Moller maintains, indeed, the historical basis of the tales respecting the Volsungs (see pp. 102-107) upon arguments very unsatisfactory; though the genuine Scandinavian origin of the tale is perfectly made out The chapter added by Lange himself, at the close (see p. 432, etc.). contain!