ence), has a slightly more archaic cast, as of
intended archaism, than is the case with the _Nibelungen_.

[Footnote 110: Ed. Bartsch. 4th ed. Leipzig, 1880.]

As for matter, the poem has the interest, always considerable to
English readers, of dealing with the sea, and the shores of the sea;
and, like the _Nibelungenlied_, it seems to have had older forms, of
which some remains exist in the Norse. But there is less coincidence
of story: and the most striking incident in the Norse--an unending
battle, where the combatants, killed every night, come alive again
every day--is in the German a merely ordinary "battle of Wulpensand,"
where one side has the worst, and cloisters are founded for the repose
of the dead. On the other hand, _Kudrun_, while rationalised in some
respects and Christianised in others, has the extravagance, not so
much primitive as carelessly artificial, of the later romances.
Romance has a special charter to neglect chronology; but the
chronology here is exceptionally wanton. After the above-mentioned
Battle of Wulpensand, the beaten side resigns itself quite comfortably
to wait till the sons of the slain grow up: and to suit this
arrangement the heroine remains in ill-treated captivity--washing
clothes by the sea-shore--for fifteen years or so. And even thus the
climax is not reached; for Gudrun's companion in this unpleasant task,
and apparently (since they are married at the same time) her equal, or
nearly so, in age, has in the exordium of the poem also been the
companion of Gudrun's grandmother in durance to some griffins, from
whom they were rescued by Gudrun's grandfather.

One does not make peddling criticisms of this kind on any legend that
has the true poetic character of power--of sweeping the reader along
with it; but this I, at least, can hardly find in _Kudrun_. It
consists of three or perhaps four parts: the initial adventures of
Child Hagen of Ireland with the griffins who carry him off; the wooing
of his daughter Hilde by King Hetel, whose ambassadors, Wate, Morunc,
and Horant, play a great part throughout the poem; the subsequent
wooing of _her_ daughter Gudrun, and her imprisonment and ill-usage by
Gerlind, her wooer's mother; her rescue by her lover Herwig after many
years, and the slaughter of her tyrants, especially Gerlind, which
"Wate der alte" makes. There is also a generally happy ending, which,
rather contrary to the somewhat ferocious use and wont of these
poems, is made