ch things. It is sufficient to say that the authorship of the
_Lied_ in its present condition is quite unknown; that its date would
appear to be about the centre of our period, or, in other words, not
earlier than the middle of the twelfth century or later than the
middle of the thirteenth, and that, as far as the subject goes, we
undoubtedly have handlings of it in Icelandic (the so-called _Volsunga
Saga_), and still earlier verse-dealings in the Elder Edda, which are
older, and probably much older, than the German poem.[108] They are
not only older, but they are different. As a Volsung story, the
interest is centred on the ancestor of Sigurd (Sigfried in the later
poem), on his acquisition of the hoard of the dwarf Andvari by slaying
the dragon Fafnir, its guardian, and on the tale of his love for the
Amazon Brynhild; how by witchcraft he is beguiled to wed instead
Gudrun the daughter of Giuki, while Gunnar, Gudrun's brother, marries
Brynhild by the assistance of Sigurd himself; how the sisters-in-law
quarrel, with the result that Gudrun's brothers slay Sigurd, on whose
funeral-pyre Brynhild (having never ceased to love him and wounded
herself mortally), is by her own will burnt; and how Gudrun, having
married King Atli, Brynhild's brother, achieves vengeance on her own
brethren by his means. A sort of _coda_ of the story tells of the
third marriage of Gudrun to King Jonakr, of the cruel fate of
Swanhild, her daughter by Sigurd (who was so fair that when she gazed
on the wild horses that were to tread her to death they would not harm
her, and her head had to be covered ere they would do their work), of
the further fate of Swanhild's half-brothers in their effort to avenge
her, and of the final _threnos_ and death of Gudrun herself.

[Footnote 107: Ed. Bartsch. 6th ed. Leipzig, 1886.]

[Footnote 108: For the verse originals see Vigfusson and Powell's
_Corpus Poeticum Boreale_ (Oxford, 1883), vol. i. The verse and prose
alike will be found conveniently translated in a cheap little volume
of the "Camelot Library," _The Volsunga Saga_, by W. Morris and E.
Magnusson (London, 1888).]

The author of the _Nibelungenlied_ (or rather the "Nibelungen-_Noth_,"
for this is the older title of the poem, which has a very inferior
sequel called _Die Klage_) has dealt with the story very differently.
He pays no attention to the ancestry of Sifrit (Sigurd), and little to
his acquisition of the hoard, diminishes the part of Brynhild,