Page:The Nibelungenlied - tr. Shumway - 1909.pdf/33

Rh enter Atli’s room and thrust a sword through his breast. Atli awakes from the pain, only to be told by Gudrun that she is his murderess. When he reproaches her with thus killing her husband, she answers that she cared only for Sigurd. Atli now asks for a fitting burial, and on receiving the promise of this, expires. Gudrun carries out her promise, and burns the castle with Atli and all his dead retainers. Other Edda songs relate the further adventures of Gudrun, but they do not concern us here, as the Nibelungenlied stops with the death of the Nibelungs.

This in brief is the story of Siegfried, as it has been handed down to us in the Skandinavian sources. It is universally acknowledged that this version, though more original than the German tradition, does not represent the simplest and most original form of the tale; but what the original form was, has long been and still is a matter of dispute. Two distinctly opposite views are held, the one seeing in the story the personification of the forces of nature, the other, scouting the possibility of a mythological interpretation, seeks a purely human origin for the tale, namely, a quarrel among relatives for the possession of treasure. The former view is the older, and obtained almost exclusively at one time. The latter has been gaining ground of recent years, and is held by many of the younger students of the legend. According to the mythological view, the maiden slumbering upon the lonely heights is the sun, the wall of flames surrounding her the morning red (Morgenröte). Siegfried is the youthful day who is destined to rouse the sun from her slumber. At the appointed time he ascends, and before his splendor the