Part 2

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.

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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.

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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 fascination and superior literary finish of classical literature, as did the _Chanson de Roland_ in France. Its rescue from oblivion dates from the year 1757, when the first imperfect edition of it was published from an old manuscript by Prof. Bodmer. The labours of later scholars and critics produced more and more perfect editions; and the interest of the German public in it was gradually awakened, till it grew to an enthusiasm for what was at last recognised as a great national epic. It was not only a subject for patriotic pride, but, from its memories of old-time greatness, from its heroic spirit, and, from that soul of loyalty to fatherland and king which pervades it, and which is a fundamental trait of the German character, it became an inspiration to great effort and noble sacrifice, coming just at the time when these were pre-eminently called for. It was when the old spirit of freedom awoke with tenfold strength, and all Germany rose as one man against the Titanic tyranny of Napoleon, that this book became for Germans what the Iliad was for Greeks. It helped to fan patriotism into a flame of heroism; it was a voice crying from the past, a great battle-call that blended with the voices of such soldier-singers as Körner. In the year of Waterloo a cheap edition for the use of soldiers {P. xix} was issued--which reminds us of the claim Aeschylus (in Aristophanes' _Frogs_) puts forth for his two dramas of war, that they made every spectator long to be a warrior, and nerved him to resolve to conquer or die. And the national instinct which then recognised and claimed for its own that spirit of loyalty to king and country, through evil report and good report, which takes for its watchword, "My country!--may she always be in the right; but my country, right or wrong!" is fundamentally sound. It recognises that he who sets up his private conscience against that of his country in the hour of her need, must himself beware lest he make himself a traitor in sinning against those to whom he owes the greatest earthly debt a man can owe. It recognises that a man may be committing a far deeper wrong by refusing to help his country in a cause in which he thinks he detects some flaw, still more by striving with word or pen to paralyse the efforts of those who are fighting for her, than if he fought in a cause of which his conscience disapproves. Hence United Germany has been no congenial foster-mother for "the friends of every country save their own"; and her scholars are not wrong in claiming for their great epic its share in thus moulding the patriotic conscience.

This translation is based on the text of Bartsch (edit. 1886), but the strophes of MS. C have been incorporated with it, so that it thus corresponds with the widely read modern German version of Simrock. For the English reader it may be explained that a marginal C denotes that the four lines which follow are taken from that source, and he will note that their ethical tendency is designed to be cumulative, to excite and maintain sympathy for the murdered hero and his widow, and to supply what justification can be found for her revenge. They appeal to the modern reader's sense of justice, and are in themselves poetically not unworthy of being included, as they often elaborate a picturesque or stirring scene, and add touches of beauty, tenderness, or pathos which we could not wish away.

The metre adopted is that on which William Morris fixed, with true poetic instinct, for his _Story of Sigurd_, the great sister-poem to the _Nibelungenlied_, from which, indeed, he really seems to have taken it, as it preserves the "ringing caesura" of that original, and, accentually, the same measure. It is not in essentials different from that of the Middle High German text, for the basis of that is accentual and not numerical, though other translators have thought that it was {P. xx} best reproduced by rigidly adhering to an iambic structure. This, in a long poem, is apt to have a somewhat heavy, monotonous effect, whereas the anapaestic-iambic measure not only secures something of the lightness of the movement of the original, but has for English readers a variety, freedom and swiftness, a "lilt," which has made it of late years widely popular.

The old division into "strophes" has been discarded. It has always seemed to me a literary offence so to print an epic as to convey the suggestion that it is but a long ballad. I cannot help thinking that this device was one adopted for convenience' sake by the mediaeval reciters or chanters of the _Lied_, as was the gap in the line after the caesura, to mark artificially the cadence of the line. These, however, have a somewhat pedantic, formal, and so irritating effect on the modern reader who wants to enter into the spirit of an epic. The literary argument against the division into strophes is well stated by Bartsch: "I do not think that, fine as the Nibelungen strophe is in itself, and admirably as it lends itself to lyric treatment, its employment for the epic was a happy inspiration. A division into regular strophes is altogether antagonistic to the Epic: the even flow of the epic narrative does indeed require pauses, not, however, at prescribed, but at free intervals. And this principle we see invariably adhered to wherever a true epic has developed itself, in India, in Greece, in France."

In dropping the strophic arrangement, I have of course dropped the extra two syllables which lengthened the fourth line of each strophe. I incline to think that their presence is another indication that the _Lied_ was originally intended, not for reading, but for chanting or recitative, like the older lays on which it was founded. It is a common device of singers thus to lengthen the last line of a verse; it helps to the satisfaction of the ear: but the effect is quite different in reading. As a reviewer in the _Athenæum_ says: "No doubt it is theoretically proper to follow the original form with absolute fidelity, but unfortunately the line in English, or even, for that matter, in Modern German, is very different from the line in Middle High German. It drags grievously, and though it breaks the monotony to a certain extent, and occasionally produces a fine effect, yet more often it is merely irritating." The adoption of the principle laid down by the only English translator who has preserved this peculiarity, that "the very essence of a poem is its exact metrical quality," would at once condemn all translations of {P. xxi} Homer and Virgil into blank or heroic verse, or indeed, into anything but English hexameters, and all translations of the classical drama into anything but trimeter iambics and unrhymed choruses in the impossible metres of the originals--a theory which surely needs only to be stated to expose its untenability. The essence of a poem lies in its spirit more than its formal structure; and whatever jars on the reader, and puts a drag on the swift and easy movement of the verse, so far interferes with his entering into the spirit of that poem.

A. S. W.

_October_, 1911.

THE LAY OF THE NIBELUNG MEN

I. Of Kriemhild, and of her Dream

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Many a marvellous story have the ancient singers told Of heroes and their glory and their travail manifold, Of great feasts splendour-flashing that with weeping and wailing ended, Of the thunder of war-waves clashing--in the Lay shall ye hear all blended.

In the Land Burgundian nurtured was a maiden princely of birth; Though ye searched, ye should find none fairer to the uttermost ends of the earth; And her name far-sung was Kriemhild, she was sweeter than speech may tell. Ah, many a valiant champion in battle for her sake fell! There was no man whose pride had warded his breast against love's dart Shot from the eyes victorious, from the snare of many a heart: She was lovely beyond all measure that speech or thought may find, Yea, queenly withal and gracious, a glory of womankind.

Three high-born Kings and wealthy guarded and held her dear; Gunther and Gernot, heroes in prowess without a peer, And Giselher the youngest, unmatched in foughten field: Their sister was she and their glory, and her sword were they and her shield. Lords were they of noble lineage, and of courtesy the crown, And their aweless might was matchless, and limitless their renown; And over the Land Burgundian they stretched the sceptred hand, Ere the strange, grim end of their story was told in Etzel's land. {P. 2} In the City of Worms by the Rhine-flood these Kings in their might abode, And the best in the whole land served them, the proudest knights that rode, With glory of homage served them through their life's triumphant tide-- Till the day when in woeful battle through the Feud of the Queens they died. And the mother that bare them was Uta, and the treasures of queens were hers, And their father the old king Dankart, and he made them heritors Of his realm in the hour of his dying, a champion mighty of old, Who in days of his youth reaped harvest of glory manifold.

As the tale of their goodlihead telleth, such kings were they, these three, Strong, fearless lords; and the vassals that bent before them the knee Were the best of all of whose doings their songs have the minstrels made, Stalwart and aweless of spirit, in battle unafraid. For these were Hagen of Troneg, and Dankwart his brother withal The battle-eager, and Ortwein the warder of Metz's wall; And with these stood Gere and Eckwart, lords of the marches twain, And Volker the Knight Alsatian, the name without a stain; And Rumold the feast-arrayer, a worship-worthy lord; Sindold and Hunold, which ever kept heedful watch and ward For the state of the palace royal, that all should be ordered well; And with these were there knightly vassals whose tale no bard may tell. Dankwart was their palace-marshal, and beside the feastful board Waited his nephew Ortwein, of Metz was he overlord; And Sindold bare them the wine-cup, a goodly baron he; And Hunold was chamberlain, perfect in utterest courtesy. But of all their palace-splendour, and their might renowned afar, And the majesty of their worship, and their knightly deeds of war, And the joy that the kingly heroes therein had all their days-- No minstrel hath wholly told it, no harp sung all their praise.

Now it fell, in the midst of their glory, that a dream unto Kriemhild appeared: A strong, fair, tameless falcon in a bower of dreams she reared. But before her eyes two eagles swooped upon him and slew-- Never a bitterer sorrow the heart of the maiden knew! {P. 3} So she told to her mother the vision; but from Lady Uta's eyes Was it hid, that she could not interpret the dream save in halting wise: "The falcon reared in thy dream-bower, a princely husband is this-- Now God from evil defend him, else swift dark doom shall be his!" "What is this that thou talkest of husbands, heart's dearest, mother, to me? In the net of love untangled will I for ever be. Unto my death in the beauty of maidenhood I will abide, That I taste not the manifold sorrows that from love of man betide." But she answered: "Not wholly renounce it, for thy vow hath been spoken amiss: For if ever on earth thou knowest a heart full-brimmed with bliss, Of the love of a man shall this come; and a fair and happy bride Shalt thou be, if a noble baron by God's grace stand by thy side." "Let be, let be vain talking, heart's dearest, mother mine. In many a wife's repentance have I read the warning sign, How love hath sorrow for guerdon when the end of its journey is won:-- I will none of love nor of sorrow, I abide in my bliss alone."

So Kriemhild in pride of her spirit was a rebel to Lord Love's sway; And her heart-peace flowed as a river through many a sunlit day; And she looked upon earls and champions, but none might the heart of her move: Yet her hour drew near, and the breaking of the glory-dawn of love. For in flight even now was the Falcon, the fulfilment drew nigh and nigher Of the dream half read of her mother--but woe for the vengeance-hire That she paid to the eagles that slew him, her own blood-brethren they! Woe for the sons of women untold whom his death should slay!

II. Of the Fostering and the Knighting of Siegfried

Now grew unto man in the Low Land the child of a line world-famed. For Siegmund the King begat him, his mother was Siegelind named, In a tower-engirdled stronghold renowned through the earth afar, Where the Rhine and the sea meet: Xanten men named that burg of war. {P. 4} Now telleth the tale of a hero, how fair and stately he grew, How the shield of his heart was honour, nor taint of shame he knew, How shone the star of his glory, how strong was that fearless lord:-- Ho for the harvest of honour that earth's field gave to his sword! And his far-sung name was Siegfried, the name of a noble Knight; And he proved in his strength great-hearted full many a champion's might, And through many a strange land cleft he a path by his own right hand:-- Ho for the fiery warriors he found in Burgundia-land!

(C) Or ever this valiant champion to man was fully grown, By deeds of such marvellous prowess had the might of his hands been shown That the minstrel's voice and the harpstrings rang ever with his praise: Not a tithe thereof is remembered in these the latter days. But the noontide of his glory, but the spring of his goodlihead-- How marvelled the world at his story, what things were of Siegfried said, How bloomed as a bower his honour, how goodly he was to behold, How dreamed of his love fair women, how their eyes the heart's dream told! As beseems that a hero be fostered was he nurtured with diligent heed; But his own heart still was a wellspring of faith and of knightly deed, That by him was the land of his father as with gold of a diadem crowned, For in all the deeds of kingfolk all-kingly was he found. And by this so great was he waxen that to halls of kings must he fare: Glad-faced did the earls look on him, and dame and damsel there Sore longed to behold him wending thitherward evermore, And their eyes unto his shone welcome, and he knew the love they bore. Ever that child of princes rode girt by a henchman-ring, And in lovely-woven raiment of his mother's fashioning; And the wise and the lessoned in honour must teach him their lore, as one For whom there waited a kingdom and a nation's heart to be won. So waxed he to strength of manhood, till sword and shield he swayed, And in goodliest harness of battle were his mighty limbs arrayed. Then his thoughts after fair dream-faces of maids flew questing wide-- And O for the bliss and the honour of her that should be his bride!

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Then sent King Siegmund the bidding-word to his vassals all, And to all friends loyal-hearted, for a high-tide festival; And the tale thereof into kingdoms of other lords they bare With gifts for the friend and the stranger, even steeds and raiment fair. Wheresoever a strong young warrior high-born longed sore for the day That should bring to him knighthood's golden spurs, all such bade they To come to the land of Siegmund, to Siegfried's festal tide, To be girt with the sword of knighthood, standing by Siegfried's side. Long shall men sing of the wonder of that crown of festal days, How Siegmund and Siegelind won them the treasure-giver's praise For the gifts of cost uncounted that they gave with stintless hand, How the rumour thereof drew strangers from afar into Siegmund's land. Came thither squires four hundred in knighthood's vesture to be Arrayed with the young prince Siegfried; and maidens comely to see Sat fashioning goodly raiment, and their love with the threads was enwound, As they laid the priceless gemstones thereon with the gold set round, As their broidery-work on the robe-hems gleamed fair in coil on coil For the strong young knights high-hearted--they were worthy the love-sped toil.