Page:The Nibelungenlied - tr. Shumway - 1909.pdf/41

Rh numbers and practically swept the Burgundian people from the face of the earth. According to the Roman historians, twenty thousand Burgundians were slain in this great battle of the Catalaunian Fields. Naturally this catastrophe, in which a whole German nation fell before the hordes of invading barbarians, produced a profound impression upon the Teutonic world. The King Gundahar, the Gunther of the Nibelungenlied, who also fell in the battle, became the central figure of a new legend, namely, the story of the fall of the Burgundians.

Attila is not thought to have taken part in the invasion, still, after his death in 454, his name gradually came to be associated with the slaughter of the Burgundians, for a legend operates mainly with types, and as Attila was a Hun and throughout the Middle Ages was looked upon as the type of a cruel tyrant, greedy for conquest, it was but natural for him to play the rôle assigned to him in the legend. Quite plausible is Boer’s explanation of the entrance of Attila into the legend. The Thidreksaga locates him in Seest in Westphalia. Now this province once bore the haute of Hûnaland, and by a natural confusion, because of the similarity of the names, Hûna and Huns, Attila, who is the chief representative of Hunnish power, was connected with the legend and located at Soest. This would show that the original extension of the legend was slight, as Xanten, the home of Hagen, is but seventy miles from Soest. The original form would then be that Hagen was slain by a king of Hûnaland, then because history relates that the Burgundians were slain by the Huns, the similarity of the names led to the in-