Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/152

120 BOOK possession of Kriemhild ; and at this point the myth assumes a form which reminds us of the relations of Herakles with Eurystheus. Like Here in the Greek tale, Brj'nhild holds that Siegfried ought to do service to Gunther, as Herakles did to his lord, and thus urges him to summon Siegfried to Worms. The hero, who is found in the Niflung's castle on the Norwegian border, loads the messengers with treasures, and Hagen cannot suppress the longing that all this wealth may yet come into the hands of the Burgundians.^ No sooner has Siegfried, with his father Sigmund and his wife Kriemhild, reached Worms, than Brynhild hastens to impress on Kriemhild that Siegfried is Gunther's man, and that, like Theseus to Minos, he must pay tribute. In deep anger Kriemhild resolves to insult her adversary, and when they go to church, she presses on before Brynhild who bids her as a vassal stand back, and taunting her as having been won by Siegfried, shows him her girdle and ring as the evidence of her words. Gunther, urged by his wife, rebukes Siegfried for betraying the secret, but his anger is soon appeased. It is otherwise with Hogni, or Hagen, who here plays the part of Paris, by whose spear Achilleus is to fall. He sees his sister weeping, and, swearing to revenge her, spreads false tidings of the approach of an enemy, and when he knows that Siegfried is ready to set out against them, he asks Kriemhild how he may best insure her husband's safety. Not knowing to whom she spake, she tells him that when Siegfried bathed himself in the dragon's blood a broad linden leaf stuck between his shoulders, and there left him vulnerable, this place between the shoulders answering to the vulnerable heel of Achilleus. To make still more sure, Hagen asks Kriemhild to mark the spot, and the wife of the hero thus seals his doom. The narrative at this point becomes filled with all the tenderness and beauty of the Odyssey. Kriemhild is awakened to her folly in betraying Siegfried's secret to Hagen. Still, in vain she prays him not to go. He is the knight who knows no fear, and without fear he accompanies Hagen, doing marvellous things, until one day he asks Hagen why he has brought no wine to drink, when Hagen offers to show^ him the way to a good spring. Siegfried hastens thither with him, and as he stoops to drink Hagen shoots him through the back on the spot marked by the silver cross. It is scarcely necessary to compare this with the vast number of myths in which the death of the sun is connected with water,

' These Burgundians in the later por- present state is put together out of two tion of the epic are often spoken of as different legends." — Popular Epics of Niblungs, as mythically they assuredly the Middle Ages, i. 133. At the most, are. The fact evidently shows, in Mr. it would be but one of two versions of Ludlow's opinion, " that the poem in its the legend.