Page:The lay of the Nibelungs; (IA nibelungslay00hortrich).pdf/60

lvi all was to return, standing in the boat beside his chappelsoume (pyxes and other sacred furniture), he determines to belie at least this part of the prophecy, and on a sudden hurls the chaplain overboard. Nay as the poor priest swims after the boat, he pushes him down, regardless of all remonstrance, resolved that he shall die. Nevertheless it proved not so: the chaplain made for the other side; when his strength failed, “then God’s hand helped him,” and at length he reached the shore. Thus does the stern truth stand revealed to Hagen, by the very means he took for eluding it: “he thought with himself these Recken must all lose their lives.” From this time, a grim reckless spirit takes possession of him; a courage, an audacity, waxing more and more into the fixed strength of desperation. The passage once finished, he dashes the boat in pieces, and casts it in the stream, greatly as the others wonder at him.

“Why do ye this, good brother?” Said the Ritter Dankwart then;

“How shall we cross this river, When the road we come again?

Returning home from Hunland, Here must we lingering stay?”—

Not then did Hagen tell him That return no more could they.

In this shipment “into the unknown land,” there lies, for the more penetrating sort of commentators, some hidden meaning and allusion. The destruction of the unreturning Ship, as of the Ship Argo, of Æneas’s Ships, and the like, is a constant feature of such traditions; it is thought, this ferrying of the Nibelungen has a reference to old Scandinavian Mythuses; nay to the oldest, most universal emblems shaped out by man’s Imagination; Hagen the ferryman being, in some sort, a type of Death, who ferries over his thousands and tens of thousands into a Land still more unknown.

But leaving these considerations, let us remark the deep fearful interest which, in gathering strength, rises to a really tragical