Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/141

Rh CHAP. VI but Siscurd can ooiide him across that awful barrier : but at his touch the maiden is roused from the slumber which had lasted since Odin thrust the thorn of sleep or winter into her cloak, like the Rakshas' claw which threw the little sun-girl of the Hindu tale into her magic trance. At once she knows that before her stands the only man who never knew fear, the only man who should ever have her as his bride. But Brynhild also has the gift of marvellous wisdom, and as the Teutonic Alrune,^ she reflects the knowledge of the Greek Athene and the Latin Minerva. From her Sigurd receives all the runes, but these scarcely reveal to him so much of the future as had been laid bare for him in the prophecies of Gripir.^ By the latter he had been told that Brynhild (like Helen) would work him much woe : but Brynhild knew, as Sigurd rode on to the hall of Giuki the Niflung, that her place was now to be taken by another, and that her own lot was to be that of Ariadne, Aithra, Oinone, or Medeia. It is the old tale, repeated under a thousand different forms. The bright dawn who greeted the newly risen sun cannot be with him as he journeys through the heaven ; and the bride whom he weds in her stead is nearer and more akin to the mists of evening or the cold of winter. Thus Gudrun, loving and beautiful as she is, is still the daughter of Niflung, the child of the mist, and stands to Sigurd precisely in the relation of Deianeira to Herakles, as the unwitting cause of her husband's ruin. But Brynhild yet lives, and Gunnar, who, like Hogni or Hagene, is a son of the Niflung and brother of Gudrun, seeks to have

the story of .Strong Hans (Grimm), she enemies without scruple or shame, but is the chained maiden who is guarded Sigurd must not do this, nor must he by the dwarf (Andvari). When Hans be, Hke Indra and Paris, yvvaifiav-nSj (Sigurd) slays the dwarf, the chains im- nor a liar like Odysseus. The warn- mediately fall off her hands. In the ings which she adds are much of the story of the True Bride, the prince is as same sort. faithless as Sigurd, but the princess The winter sleep of Br)-nhild is tra- recovers him in the end with the hap- vestied in the later story of Dietrich pier lot of Penelope. In the story of and Sigenot (Ludlow, Popular Epics, the Woodcutter's Child the Knight has i. 263). Dietrich is here the Sigurd or to cut his way through the thorny bright hero, who wears the helmet of hedges, as Sigurd has to ride through Grein whom he has slain, and who is the flames. As the fearless hero, Sigurd the nephew of the giant Sigenot. Sige- is the theme of the story of the " Prince not now carries off Dietrich and shuts who was afraid of Nothing," and whose him up in a hollow stone or tower, fortunes are much like those of the where, like Ragnar Lodbrog, he is deliverer of Brynhild. attacked by many a strong worm or

' The Aurinia of Tacitus, Germ. 8. serpent— the snakes of night. One of — Bunsen, God in History, ii. 454. his followers tries to raise him by a great deal of good advice, pointing pre- him that the wounds which he has cisely to those features in the myths of received cannot be healed. Things, Phoibos, Helios, Hermes, and Hera- however, turn out better than he ex- kles, which, when translated into the pects ; but the one night which he conditions of human morality, become spent in the house seemed to him as faults or vices; Helios may burn his thirty years.
 * With the runes he also receives a rope, which breaks, and Dietrich tells