ded! It was mighty and long, fashioned
like a sword, with a keen-edged outer blade, and in his good right hand
could deal a deft blow on either side. Ever ready for action was he, and
his friendship for Hagen of Tronje furnished the main elements of that
grim warrior's power. Together they were long invincible, smiting the
foe with giant strokes, accompanied by music.

The modern German poet, Wilhelm Jordan, in his Sigfridsage, clothes
Volker with the attributes of a violin king he loved, and represents him
tenderly handling the violin. His noble portrayal of a violinist
testifies no more fully to the mission of the musician than the creation
of the Nibelungen bard. In August Wilhelmj, once hailed by Henrietta
Sontag as the coming Paganini, Richard Wagner saw "Volker the Fiddler
living anew, until death a warrior true." So he wrote in a dedicatory
verse beneath a portrait of himself, presented to "Volker-Wilhelmj as a
souvenir of the first Baireuth festival."

The idea of a magic fiddle and a wonderworking fiddler was strongly
rooted in the popular imagination of many peoples, through many ages.
Typical illustrations are the Wonderful Musician of Grimm's Fairy Tales,
whose fiddling attracted man and beast, and the lad of Norse folk-lore
who won a fiddle that could make people dance to any tune he chose. In
Norway the traditional violin teacher is the cascade-haunting musical
genius Fossegrim, who, when suitably propitiated, seizes the right hand
of one that seeks his aid and moves it across the strings until blood
gushes from the finger-tips. Thenceforth the pupil becomes a master, and
can make trees leap, rivers stay their course and people bow to his
will.

Those of us who were brought up on English nursery rhymes early loved
the fiddle. Old King Cole, that merry old soul, was a prime favorite,
notwithstanding his fondness for pipe and bowl, because when he called
for them he called for his fiddlers three and their very fine fiddles.
According to Robert of Gloucester, the real King Cole, a popular monarch
of Britain in the third century, was the father of St. Helena, the
zealous friend of church music. The nursery satire of doubtful
antiquity is our sole evidence of his devotion to the art.

That John who stoutly refused to sell his fiddle in order to buy his
wife a gown placed the ideal above the material. It is to be hoped Mrs.
John enjoyed music more than gay attire. Certainly the dame who was
forced to dance w