story of Volund's
doings and sufferings during his sojourn in the territory of the
Swedish king Nidud. Volund (_Ger_. Wieland, _Fr_. Veland and Galans)
is the Scandinavian and Germanic Vulcan (Hephaistos) and Daedalus. In
England his story, as a skillful smith, is traceable to a very early
period. In the Anglo-Saxon poem of Beowulf we find that hero desiring,
in the event of his falling in conflict with Grendel, that his
corslets may be sent to Hygelac, being, as he says, the work of
Weland; and king AElfred, in his translation of Boethius de
Consolatione, renders the words _fidelis ossa Fabricii, etc_. by Hwaet
(hwaer) Welondes? (Where are now the bones of the famous and wise
goldsmith Weland?), evidently taking the proper name of Fabricius for
an appellative equivalent to faber. In the Exeter Book, too, there is
a poem in substance closely resembling the Eddaic lay. In his novel of
Kenilworth, Walter Scott has been guilty of a woeful perversion of the
old tradition, travestied from the Berkshire legend of Wayland Smith.
As a land-boundary we find Weland's smithy in a Charter of king Eadred
A.D. 955.

On the Lay of Helgi Hiorvard's Son there is nothing to remark beyond
what appears in the poem itself.

The Lays of Helgi Hundingcide form the first of the series of stories
relating to the Volsung race, and the Giukungs, or Niflungs.

The connection of the several personages celebrated in these poems
will appear plain from the following tables:

Sigi, king of Hunaland, said to be a son of Odin
|
Rerir
|
Volsung = a daughter of the giant Hrimnir
__________________|
|
Sigmund = Signi = Borghild = Hiordis
| | | |
Hamund. Sinfiotli. Helgi = Sigrun Sigurd = Gudrun
__|____________
| |
Sigmund, Svanhild.
m Jornmnrek.

Giuki = Grimhild.
_______________________|
|
Gunnar=Glaumvor. Hogni=Kostbera. Guthorm. Gudrun,=1 Sigurd.
| 2 Atli.
Solar. Giuki. Snaevar. 3 Jonakr.

Budli.
|
Atli = Gudrun: Brynhild = Gunnar. O