maiden from the rock, not for himself,
however, but for another. The exchange of forms on the part of
Siegfried and Gunther is a reminiscence of the older form. It gives the
impression, that Siegfried, and yet not Siegfried, won the bride. This
alteration probably took place when the Burgundians were introduced into
the legend. With this introduction an unlocalized saga of unknown heroes
of ancient times became one of events of world-wide importance; the fall
of a mighty race was depicted as the result of Siegfried's death. To
render this plausible, it was necessary on the one hand to idealize
the hero, so that his death should appear as a deed of horror demanding
fearful vengeance, and on the other, to make the king of the Burgundians
an active participator in Siegfried's death, for otherwise it would not
seem natural, that the whole race should be exterminated for a crime
committed by the king's brother or vassal. As the role of Brunhild's
husband had become vacant, and as Gunther had no special role, it was
natural that it should be given to him. Boer traces very ingeniously
the gradual development of this exchange of roles through the various
sources.

Another method of explaining away Siegfried's relation to two women is
to identify them, and this has been done by the Seyfrid ballad. Here the
hero rescues Kriemhild from the power of the dragon, marries her,
and then is later killed by her brothers through envy and hatred. As
Brunhild and Kriemhild are here united in one person, there is no need
of a wooing for the king, nor of vengeance on the part of Brunhild,
accordingly the old motive of greed (here envy) reappears.

As to the fight with the dragon, Boer believes that it did not
originally belong to the saga, for in none of the sources except the
popular ballad is the fight with the dragon connected with the release
of Brunhild. If the Siegfried-Hagen story is purely human, then the
dragon cannot have originally belonged to it, but was later introduced,
because of the widespread belief in the dragon as the guardian of
treasure, and in order to answer the question as to the provenience of
the hoard. This is, however, only one answer to the question. Another,
widespread in German legends, is that the treasure comes from the
Nibelungs, that is, from the dwarfs. Many identify the dwarfs and the
dragon, but this finds no support in the sources, for here the dwarfs
and Fafnir are never confused. The "Nibelungenlied"