alism,
rendered such a story unintelligible to the Germans of the Othos and
Henrys. In the Nibelungenlied, the whole story of the massacre of the
brothers is changed. Chriemhilt never forgives the murder of Siegfried,
and it is not Etzel--Atli for the sake of plunder, but she herself for
the sake of revenge, who decoys her brothers and murders them; it is she
who with her own hand cuts off the head of Gunther to expiate his murder
of Siegfried. To our feelings, more akin to those of the feudal
Christians of Franconia than to those of the tribal Scandinavians of the
Edda, the second version is far more intelligible and interesting--the
story of this once gentle and loving Chriemhilt, turned by the murder of
her beloved into a fury, and plotting to avenge his death by the death
of all his kinsfolk, must be much grander and more pathetic than the
story of this strange Gudrun, who sits down patiently beneath the injury
done to her by her brothers, but savagely avenges them on her new
husband, and her own and his innocent children; to us this persistence
of tribal feeling, destroying all indignation and love, is merely
unnatural, confusing, and repulsive. But this alteration for the better
in one of the incidents of the tale is a mere fluke; and the whole main
plot of the originally central figures are completely obliterated by the
new state of civilization, and rendered merely trivial and grotesque. In
the Volsunga Saga Sigurd, overcome by enchantments, has forgotten his
wife (or mistress, a vague mythical relationship); and, with all sense
of the past obliterated, has made her over to the brother of his new
wife Gudrun; and Brynhilt kills her faithless love to dissolve the
second marriage and be reunited with him in death. In the Nibelungenlied
Siegfried, although the flower of knighthood, conquers by foul play the
Amazon Brunhilt to reward Gunther for the hand of his sister; nay, in a
comic and loathsome scene he forces her into the embraces of the craven
Gunther; and then he gets killed by Brunhilt's machinations; when, after
most unqueenly bickerings, the proud Amazon is brutally told by
Siegfried's wife of the dirty trick which has given her to Gunther.
After this, it is impossible to realize, when Siegfried is murdered and
all our sympathies called on to his side, the utterly out-of-character,
blackguardly behaviour which has brought the hero to his death.
Similarly the conception of the character and position of Brynhi