ires
to avenge his father, and together they 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 Gorman 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 ("Morgenrote"). 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 morning red disappears. He awakens
the maiden; radiantly the sun rises from its couch and joyously greets
the world of nature. But light and shade are indissolubly connected; day
changes of itself into night. When at evening the sun sinks to rest
and surrounds herself once more with a wall of flames, the day again
approaches, but no longer in the youthful form of the morning to arouse
her from her slumber, but in the sombre shape of Gunther, to rest at her
side. Day has turned into night; this is the meaning of the change of
forms. The wall of flame vanishes, day and sun descend into the realm of
darkness. Under this aspect the Siegfried story is a day myth; but under
another it is a myth of the year. The dragon is