ion of the Teutonic folk. Place-names lend colour to this
assumption. Thus in the Odenwald we have a Siegfried Spring; a Brunhild
Bed is situated near Frankfort; there is a Hagen Well at Lorch, and the
Drachenfels, or Dragon's Rock, is on the banks of the Rhine. Singularly
enough, however, if we desire a full survey of the Nibelungenlied story,
we have to supplement it from earlier versions in use among the peoples
of Scandinavia and Iceland. These are distinctly of a more simple and
early form than the German versions, and it is to be assumed that
they represent the original Nibelungenlied story, which was preserved
faithfully in the North, whereas the familiarity of its theme among the
Southern Teutons caused it to be altered again and again for the sake
of variety, until to some extent it lost its original outline. Moreover,
such poems as the Norse Volsunga Saga and Thidreks Saga, not to speak
of other and lesser epics, afford many details relating to the
Nibelungenlied which it does not contain in its present form. It may
be interesting to give a summary of the Volsunga Saga, which is a prose
paraphrase of the Edda Songs.

The Volsunga Saga

The epic deals with the history of the treasure of the Nibelungs, and
tells how a certain Hreithmar had it given him by the god Loki as
a weregild for the slaying of the former's son, Otur or Otter, who
occasionally took the shape of that animal. Loki in his turn obtained
the ransom from the dwarf Andwari, who had stolen it from the river-gods
of the Rhine. The dwarf, incensed at losing the treasure, pronounced a
most dreadful curse upon it and its possessors, saying that it would be
the death of those who should get hold of it. Thus Hreithmar, its
first owner, was slain in his sleep by his son Fafnir, who carried the
treasure away to the Gnita Heath, where, having taken the form of a
dragon, he guarded it.

The treasure--and the curse--next passed into the keeping of Sigurd (the
Norse form of Siegfried), a descendant of the race of the Volsungs, a
house tracing its genealogy back to the god Woden. The full story of
Sigurd's ancestry it is unnecessary to deal with here, as it has
little influence on the connexion of the story of the Volsungs with
the Nibelungenlied. Sigurd came under the tutelage of Regin, the son of
Hreithmar and brother of Fafnir, received the magic steed Grani from
the king, and then was requested by Regin to assist him in obtaining the
treasure guarded by