e an evil and criminal deed;
and a tragedy is constructed, in which generations appear as actors and
victims.

A special feature of the Frankish myth is the hoard, the fatal treasure
which works never-ending mischief. It is said to represent the metal
veins of the subterranean Region of Gloom. There, as is stated in an
Eddic record, Dark Elves (Nibelungs, or nebulous Sons of the Night) are
digging and working, melting and forging the ore in their smithies,
producing charmful rings that remind us of the diadems which bind the
brows of rulers; golden ornaments and sharp weapons; all of which confer
great power upon their owner. When Siegfried slays the Dragon, when
Light overcomes Darkness, this hoard is his booty, and he becomes master
of the Nibelungs. But the Dragon's dark heir ever seeks to regain it
from the victor; so Night malignantly murders the Day; Hagen kills
Siegfried. The treasure on which Siegfried's power is founded becomes
the cause of his death; and through Death he himself, albeit originally
a refulgent God of Light, is turned into a figure of gloom; that is, a
Nibelung.

There is much in the Norse Skalds which seems to support this
mythological aspect of the tale. The name of Siegfried's murderer,
Hagen--who is one-eyed, even as Hoedur, the God of Night, who kills
Baldur, the God of Light, is blind--has also been adduced for this
interpretation. Hagen is explained as the Thorn of Death, the hawthorn
(German Hagedorn), with which men are stung into eternal sleep, or
rather into a death-like trance. Odin stings Brynhild into her trance
with a sleeping-thorn. Hagen, in the sense of death, still lingers in
the German expression, "Friend Hain," as a euphemism for the figure
which announces that one's hour has come. The hawthorn was the special
wood used for fire-burial in Germany; hence the figurative poetical
expression which would make Hagen a synonym for death.

In the German and Norse poems, as we possess them now, myth and
apparently historical facts are inextricably welded together. A
powerful representation of the Siegfried tale is given in the series of
large pictures, at Munich, by the distinguished painter Schnorr von
Karolsfeld.

[Signature: Karl Blind.]

KING ARTHUR

By Rev. S. BARING-GOULD

(About 520)

[Illustration: King Arthur.]

Arthur, king of the Siluri, or Dumnonii--British races driven back into
the west of England by the Saxons--is represented as having united the