the same helpless woman twice. Gunther is an accomplice and an ingrate. The other champions are fully conscious of the iniquity of those whose cause they support: their merit is that which in those times covered a multitude of sins—unflinching bravery and fidelity to their cause and to each other. Hagen shows a cynical disregard of righteousness and of honesty: he faces the consequences of his sin without a tremor: his callous contempt for the hearts he tramples on is matched by his reckless defiance of the retribution which involves a nation with himself. There is no word of repentance, no hint of remorse; and it is characteristic that none of his companions reproach him amid their ruin, and that even Rüdiger, the flower of chivalry, receives him as his most honoured guest, confers on him the most distinguished tokens of regard, and sympathizes with him to the end. The author shows less consideration for Kriemhild than for him in the final catastrophe; for, while the King and the stainless heroes lament his fall, no hand is raised to stay the vengeance upon Kriemhild that swiftly follows, no word of regret is uttered over her. This recalls to our mind certain characteristics of that period: first, the supreme importance of a great warrior and leader of men, whose life is held of more account, not merely to his party, but to the world, than that of many women. Secondly, we are reminded how thin was the veneer of courtesy to women in the so-called age of chivalry. It is significant that in the Volsunga-saga, which is instinct with the old unalloyed Teutonic spirit, no man thinks of taking vengeance on a woman: they may poison, betray, or assassinate, but they are always immune from the last penalty. The third characteristic here exemplified is well set forth by Dr. Arnold:
“Philip de Comines praises his master Louis XI as one of the best of princes, though he witnessed not only the crimes of his life, but the miserable fears and suspicions of his latter end, and has even faithfully recorded them. In this respect Philip de Comines is in no respect superior to Froissart, with whom the crimes committed by his knights and great lords never interfere with his general eulogies of them: the habit of deference and respect was too strong to be broken, and the facts which he himself relates to their discredit, appear to have produced on his mind no impression” (Lectures on Modern History, II).
In the historical characters which he introduced, the poet probably meant to adhere to historic truth, as he apprehended it; but we have to make large allowances for the utterly uncritical historic lore of the time, and for the probability, we might say the certainty, that some of the history was based on popular tradition, which is fruitful in confusion of personalities and in anachronisms. These characters are three:—
1. Attila, called Etzel in the Lied. The Atli of the Volsunga-saga much more nearly resembles the Attila of the historians of Rome and Constantinople than does Etzel. He here appears as a just and generous king, whose court is a rendezvous of foreign knights from every land, proud to enlist in his service. Not only is he no party to the treacherous entrapping of the Nibelungs, but he is utterly ignorant of it; and is only driven to countenance hostilities against them by their slaughter of his child and the intolerable insults they hurl at himself. The reason for this presentment of him may be, that Attila really was just, generous, and merciful to his own subjects, and to the large numbers of foreign mercenaries, many of them Germans, who took service under him. Some of these, on their return home, would always speak of him as a great king and a good master, whose court was magnificent; and this character of him might well persist in tradition through the generations, and be an essential part of the popular lays which formed the groundwork of the finished epic.
2. Theodoric, called in the Lied Dietrich of Bern, where Bern has nothing to do with Switzerland, but is the German form of Verona. The poet no doubt meant the great Theodoric the Ostrogoth, conqueror of Italy. But he (born 455 A.D.) lived a generation after Attila (died 453). Theodoric, king of the Visigoths, was indeed a contemporary of Attila, but he was an enemy, and died fighting against him in the great battle of Châlons, in 451. In Carlyle’s words, “some commentators have fished out another Theodoric, eighty years prior to him of Verona, and who actually served in Attila’s hosts with a retinue of Goths and Germans.” If this last be really historical, or was even traditional, he might have been the original Dietrich of the old lays who in the Lied serves in proud independence in Attila’s palace-guard. But popular tradition and the poets knew as their only Dietrich the great Theodoric, and were serenely unconscious that for him it was, on every ground, as possible to have served under Attila, as for our Alfred the Great to have served under Charlemagne.
3. Bishop Pilgrim. His introduction is a gross anachronism indeed, for he lived more than 500 years after Attila’s time. He owes his inclusion, or intrusion, to the fact that he had the Saga rendered into Latin verse by his secretary, Konrad, as he heard it from the lips of bards, some two hundred years before the poem took shape as a German epic. No doubt this Latin poem was used by the composers of the epic; and, if they were conscious at all of the anachronism, it would have troubled them as little as Walter Scott was troubled by the anachronisms, of which he cheerfully makes confession, in Ivanhoe.
We have spoken of a “poet”; but in truth there was a long succession of them. While the names of the authors of several of those trivial romances, the Court Epics, have been carefully handed down, there is no record of the authorship of the great National Epic; and this is the more remarkable, as, during the period of the Literary Revival, successive remodellings of it by different hands were produced, each, we may presume, regarded as an improvement on its predecessor; yet no trustworthy clue survives to the name of the composer of any one of them.
The following would appear to have been the different stages through which the Nibelungenlied, as a distinct poem, passed:—
I. The original form, in alliterative verse. (Not extant.) If we could recover this, we might find it, both in metrical form and in literary style, more like our Anglo-Saxon poem of Beowulf than the existing versions of the Lied.
II. The first 12th century version, cir. 1140, by an Austrian court poet (the Kürnberg Knight for whom Bartsch argues), in four-line stanzas, or “strophes,” of iambic basis, with assonant endings. (Not extant.)
III. The second 12th century version, cir. 1170, in which rhyme was partially substituted for assonance. (Not extant.)
IV. The third 12th century versions, of two contemporaneous poets, cir. 1190–1200, in which assonances are almost entirely superseded by rhymes. Extant in several MSS. which fall under two heads:—
1. MS. A. The Munich manuscript, of which only one single copy exists; this perhaps represents the poem just as this rédacteur left it. It is based on a good and ancient original, but is very carelessly written, and omits (apparently through oversight) a number of strophes. This, the shortest version, was adopted by Lachmann as the basis of his edition.
2. MS. B. The St. Gall manuscript. This represents the text as modified by later hands in the 13th and 14th centuries. Of this there are numerous copies. It was adopted by Bartsch as the basis of his edition.
V. MS. C. The fourth 12th century version, of about the same date as the preceding. It presents the same metrical characteristics, but aims
1. In its matter, at reconciling contradictions and inconsistencies in the original Saga;
2. At establishing a connexion between the Lied and Lament for the Niblungs (a poetically inferior continuation), which it does by a reference in the concluding strophe, and more especially by the insertion of a series of strophes at various points in the text, the tendency of which is to excite and maintain sympathy with Kriemhild, and to present her in the light of a righteous avenger. The author also, in the last line of the poem, changes the title from the original Nibelungen-nôt to Nibelungen-lied. Extant in the Donaueschingen manuscript, the additional strophes of which are included in Simrock’s modern German version.
The poem, after the Revival of Learning, suffered the same eclipse through the
