[1] The _i_ in the second syllable is short.
HEL, or _Hela_, in Scandinavian mythology, the goddess of the dead. She
was a child of Loki and the giantess Angurboda, and dwelt beneath the
roots of the sacred ash, Yggdrasil. She was given dominion over the nine
worlds of Helheim. In early myth all the dead went to her: in later
legend only those who died of old age or sickness, and she then became
synonymous with suffering and horror. Her dwelling was _Elvidnir_ (dark
clouds), her dish _Hungr_ (hunger), her knife _Sullt_ (starvation), her
servants _Ganglate_ (tardy feet), her bed _Kor_ (sickness), and her
bed-curtains _Blikiandabol_ (splendid misery).
HELDENBUCH, DAS, the title under which a large body of German epic
poetry of the 13th century has come down to us. The subjects of the
individual poems are taken from national German sagas which originated
in the epoch of the Migrations (_Volkerwanderung_), although doubtless
here, as in all purely popular sagas, motives borrowed from the forces
and phenomena of nature were, in course of time, woven into events
originally historical. While the saga of the Nibelungs crystallized in
the 13th century into the _Nibelungenlied_ (q.v.), and the Low German
Hilde-saga into the epic of _Gudrun_ (q.v.) the poems of the
_Heldenbuch_, in the more restricted use of that term, belong almost
exclusively to two cycles, (1) the Ostrogothic saga of Ermanrich,
Dietrich von Bern (i.e. Dietrich of Verona, Theodorich the Great) and
Etzel (Attila), and (2) the cycle of Hugdietrich, Wolfdietrich and
Ortnit, which like the _Nibelungen_ saga, was probably of Franconian
origin. The romances of the _Heldenbuch_ are of varying poetic value;
only occasionally do they rise to the height of the two chief epics, the
_Nibelungenlied_ and _Gudrun_. Dietrich von Bern, the central figure of
the first and more important group, was the ideal type of German
medieval hero, and, under more favourable literary conditions, he might
have become the centre of an epic more nationally German than even the
_Nibelungenlied_ itself. Of the romances of this group, the chief are
_Biterolf und Dietlieb_, evidently the work of an Austrian poet, who
introduced many elements from the court epic of chivalry into a milieu
and amongst characters familiar to us from the _Nibelungenlied_. _Der
Rosengarten_ tells of the conflicts which took place round Kriemhild's
"rose garden" in Worms--conflicts from which Dietrich always emerges
victor, even when he is confronted by Siegfried himself. In _Laurin und
der kleine Rosengarten_, the Heldensage is mingled with elements of
popular fairy-lore; it deals with the adventures of Dietrich and his
henchman Witege with the wily dwarf Laurin, who watches over another
rose garden, that of the Tyrol. Similar in character are the adventures
of Dietrich with the giants Ecke (_Eckenlied_) and Sigenot, with the
dwarf Goldemar, and the deeds of chivalry he performs for queen Virginal
(_Dietrichs erste Ausfahrt_)--all of these romances being written in the
fresh and popular tone characteristic of the wandering singers or
_Spielleute_. Other elements of the Dietrich saga are represented by the
poems _Alpharts Tod_, _Dietrichs Flucht_ and _Die Rabenschlacht_
("Battle of Ravenna"). Of these, the first is much the finest poem of
the entire cycle and worthy of a place beside the best popular poetry of
the Middle High German epoch. Alphart, a young hero in Dietrich's army,
goes out to fight single-handed with Witege and Heime, who had deserted
to Ermanrich, and he falls, not in fair battle, but by the treachery of
Witege whose life he had spared. The other two Dietrich epics belong to
a later period, the end of the 13th century--the author being an
Austrian, Heinrich der Vogler--and show only too plainly the decay that
had by this time set in in Middle High German poetry.
The second cycle of sagas is represented by several long romances, all
of them unmistakably "popular" in tone--conflicts with dragons,
supernatural adventures, the wonderland of the East providing the chief
features of interest. The epics of this group are _Ortnit_,
_Hugdietrich_, _Wolfdietrich_, the latter with its pathetic episode of
the unswerving loyalty of Wolfdietrich's vassal Duke Berchtung and his
ten sons. Although many of the incidents and motives of this cycle are
drawn from the best traditions of the _Heldensage_, its literary value
is not very high.
This collection of popular romances was one of the first German books
to be printed. The date of the first edition is unknown, but the
second edition appeared in the year 1491 and was followed by later
reprints in 1509, 1545, 1560 and 1590. The last of these forms the
basis of the text edited by A. von Keller for the Stuttgart
_Literarische Verein_ in 1867. In 1472 the _Heldenbuch_ was adapted to
the popular tastes of the time by being remodelled in rough
_Knittelvers_ or doggerel; the author, or at least copyist, of the MS.
was a certain Kaspar von dor Roen, of Munnerstadt in Franconia. This
version was printed by F. von der Hagen and S. Primisser in their
_Heldenbuch_ (1820-1825). _Das Heldenbuch_, which F. von der Hagen
published in 2 vols, in 1855, was the first attempt to reproduce the
original text by collating the MSS. A critical edition, based not
merely on the oldest printed text--the only one which has any value
for this purpose, as the others are all copies of it--but also on the
MSS., was published in 5 vols. by O. Janicke, E. Martin, A. Amelung
and J. Zupitza at Berlin (1866-1873). A selection, edited by E.
Henrici, will be found in Kurschner's _Deutsche Nationalliteratur_,
vol. 7 (1887). Recent editions have appeared of _Der Rosengarten_ and
_Laurin_, by G. Holz (1893 and 1897). All the poems have been
translated into modern German by K. Simrock and others. See F. E.
Sandbach, _The Heroic Saga-Cycle of Dietrich of Bern_ (1906). The
literature of the _Heldensage_ is very extensive. See especially W.
Grimm, _Die deutsche Heldensage_ (3rd ed., 1889); L. Uhland,
"Geschichte der deutschen Poesie im Mittelalter," _Schriften_, vol. i.
(1866); O. L. Jiriczek, _Deutsche Heldensage_, vol. i. (1898); and
especially B. Symons, "Germanische Heldensage," in Paul's _Grundriss
der germanischen Philologie_ (2nd ed., 1898).
HELDER, a seaport town at the northern extremity of the province of
North Holland, in the kingdom of Holland, 51 m. by rail N.N.W. of
Amsterdam. Pop. (1900) 25,842. It is situated on the Marsdiep, the
channel separating the island of Texel from the mainland, and the main
entrance to the Zuider Zee, and besides being the terminus of the North
Holland canal from Amsterdam, it is an important naval and military
station. On the east side of the town, called the Nieuwe Diep, is
situated the fine harbour, which formerly served, as Ymuiden now does,
as the outer port of Amsterdam. In this neighbourhood are the naval
wharves and magazines, wet and dry docks, and the naval cadet school of
Holland, the name Willemsoord being given to the whole naval
establishment. From Nieuwe Diep to Fort Erfprins on the west side of the
town, a distance of about 5 m., stretches the great sea-dike which here
takes the place of the dunes. This dike descends at an angle of 40 deg.
for a distance of 200 ft. into the sea, and is composed of Norwegian
granite and Belgian limestone, strengthened at intervals by projecting
jetties of piles and fascines. A circle of forts and batteries defends
the town and coast, and there is a permanent garrison of 7000 to 9000
men, while 30,000 men can be accommodated within the lines, and the
province flooded from this point. Besides several churches and a
synagogue, there are a town hall (1836), a hospital, an orphan asylum,
the "palace" of the board of marine, a meteorological observatory, a
zoological station and a lighthouse. The industries of the town are
sustained by the garrison and marine establishments.
HELEN, or HELENA (Gr. [Greek: Elene]),in Greek mythology, daughter of
Zeus by Leda (wife of Tyndareus, king of Sparta), sister of Castor,
Pollux and Clytaemnestra, and wife of Menelaus. Other accounts make her
the daughter of Zeus and Nemesis, or of Oceanus and Tethys. She was the
most beautiful woman in Greece, and indirectly the cause of the Trojan
war. When a child she was carried off from Sparta by Theseus to Attica,
but was recovered and taken back by her brothers. When she grew up, the
most famous of the princes of Greece sought her hand in marriage, and
her father's choice fell upon Menelaus. During her husband's absence she
was induced by Paris, son of Priam, with the connivance of Aphrodite, to
flee with him to Troy. After the death of Paris she married his brother
Deiphobus, whom she is said to have betrayed into the hands of Menelaus
at the capture of the city (_Aeneid_, vi. 517 ff.). Menelaus thereupon
took her back, and they returned together to Sparta, where they lived
happily till their death, and were buried at Therapnae in Laconia.
According to another story, Helen survived her husband, and was driven
out by her stepsons. She fled to Rhodes, where she was hanged on a tree
by her former friend Polyxo, to avenge the loss of her husband
Tlepolemus in the Trojan War (Pausanias iii. 19). After death, Helen was
said to have married Achilles in his home in the island of Leuke. In
another version, Paris, on his voyage to Troy with Helen, was driven
ashore on the coast of Egypt, where King Proteus, upon learning the
facts of the case, detained the real Helen in Egypt, while a phantom
Helen was carried off to Troy. Menelaus on his way home was also driven
by stress of winds to Egypt, where he found his wife and took her home
(Herodotus ii. 112-120; Euripides, _Helena_). Helen was worshipped as
the goddess of beauty at Therapnae in Laconia, where a festival was held
in her honour. At Rhodes she was worshipped under the name of Dendritis
(the tree goddess), where the inhabitants built a temple in her honour
to expiate the crime of Polyxo. The Rhodian story probably contains a
reference to the worship connected with her name (cf. Theocritus xviii.
48 [Greek: sebou m', Helenas phyton eimi]). She was the subject of a
tragedy by Euripides and an epic by Colluthus. Originally, Helen was
perhaps a goddess of light, a moon-goddess, who was gradually
transformed into the beautiful heroine round whom the action of the
_Iliad_ revolves. Like her brothers, the Dioscuri, she was a patron
deity of sailors.
See E. Oswald, _The Legend of Fair Helen_ (1905); J. A. Symonds,
_Studies of the Greek Poets_, i. (1893); F. Decker, _Die griechische
Helena in Mythos und Epos_ (1894); Andrew Lang, _Helen of Troy_
(1883); P. Paris in Daremberg and Saglio's _Dictionnaire des
antiquites_; the exhaustive article by R. Engelmann in Roscher's
_Lexikon der Mythologie_; and O. Gruppe, _Griechische Mythologie_, i.
163, according to whom Helen originally represented, in the
Helenephoria (a mystic festival of Artemis, Iphigeneia or Tauropolos),
the sacred basket ([Greek: helene]) in which the holy objects were
carried; and hence, as the personification of the initiation ceremony,
she was connected with or identified with the moon, the first
appearance of which probably marked the beginning of the festivity.
HELENA, ST (c. 247-c. 327) the wife of the emperor Constantius I.
Chlorus, and mother of Constantine the Great. She was a woman of humble
origin, born probably at Drepanum, a town on the Gulf of Nicomedia,
which Constantine named Helenopolis in her honour. Very little is known
of her history. It is certain that, at an advanced age, she undertook a
pilgrimage to Palestine, visited the holy places, and founded several
churches. She was still living at the time of the murder of Crispus
(326). Constantine had coins struck with the effigy of his mother. The
name of Helena is intimately connected with the commonly received story
of the discovery of the Cross. But the accounts which connect her with
the discovery are much later than the date of the event. The Pilgrim of
Bordeaux (333), Eusebius and Cyril of Jerusalem were unaware of this
important episode in the life of the empress. It was only at the end of
the 4th century and in the West that the legend appeared. The principal
centre of the cult of St Helena in the West seems to be the abbey of
Hautvilliers, near Reims, where since the 9th century they have claimed
to be in possession of her body. In England legends arose representing
her as the daughter of a prince of Britain. Following these Geoffrey of
Monmouth makes her the daughter of Coel, the king who is supposed to
have given his name to the town of Colchester. These legends have
doubtless not been without influence on the cult of the saint in
England, where a great number of churches are dedicated either to St
Helena alone, or to St Cross and St Helena. Her festival is celebrated
in the Latin Church on the 18th of August. The Greeks make no
distinction between her festival and that of Constantine, the 21st of
May.
See _Acta sanctorum_, Augusti iii. 548-580; Tixeront, _Les Origines de
l'eglise d'Edesse_ (Paris, 1888); F. Arnold-Forster, _Studies in
Church Dedications or England's Patron Saints_, i. 181-189, iii. 16,
365-366 (1899). (H. De.)
HELENA, a city and the county-seat of Phillips county, Arkansas, U.S.A.,
situated on and at the foot of Crowly's Ridge, about 150 ft. above
sea-level, in the alluvial bottoms of the Mississippi river, about 65 m.
by rail S.W. of Memphis, Tennessee. Pop. (1890) 5189, (1900) 5550, of
whom 3400 were negroes; (1910) 8772. It is served by the Yazoo &
Mississippi Valley (Illinois Central), the St Louis, Iron Mountain &
Southern (Missouri Pacific), the Arkansas Midland, and the Missouri &
North Arkansas railways. Built in part upon "made land," well protected
by levees, and lying within the richest cotton-producing region of the
south, the rich timber country of the St Francis river, and the
Mississippi "bottom lands," Helena concentrates its economic interests
in cotton-compressing and shipping, the manufacture of cotton-seed
products, lumbering and wood-working. The city was founded about 1821,
but so late as 1860 the population was only 800. During the Civil War
the place was of considerable strategic importance. It was occupied in
July 1862 by the Union forces, who strongly fortified it to guard their
communications with the lower Mississippi; on the 4th of July 1863, when
occupied by General Benjamin M. Prentiss (1819-1901) with 4500 men, it
was attacked by a force of 9000 Confederates under General Theophilus H.
Holmes (1804-1880), who hoped to raise the siege of Vicksburg or close
the river to the Union forces. The attack was repulsed, with a loss to
the Confederates of one-fifth their numbers, the Union loss being
slight.
HELENA, a city and the county-seat of Lewis and Clark county, Montana,
U.S.A., and the capital of the state, at the E. base of the main range
of the Rocky Mountains, 80 m. N.E. of Butte, at an altitude of about
4000 ft. Pop. (1880) 3624; (1890) 13,834; (1900) 10,770, of whom 2793
were foreign-born; (1910 census) 12,515. It is served by the Great
Northern and the Northern Pacific railways. Helena is delightfully
situated with Mt Helena as a background in the hollow of the Prickly
Pear valley, a rich agricultural region surrounded by rolling hills and
lofty mountains, and contains many fine buildings, including the state
capitol, county court house, the Montana club house, high school, the
cathedral of St Helena, a federal building, and the United States assay
office. It is the seat of the Montana Wesleyan University (Methodist
Episcopal), founded in 1890; St Aloysius College and St Vincent's
Academy (Roman Catholic); and has a public library with about 35,000
volumes, the Montana state library with about 40,000 volumes, and the
state law library with about 24,000 volumes. The city is the commercial
and financial centre of the state (Butte being the mining centre), and
is one of the richest cities in the United States in proportion to its
population. It has large railway car-shops, extensive smelters and
quartz crushers (at East Helena), and various manufacturing
establishments; the value of the factory product in 1905 was $1,309,746,
an increase of 68.7% over that of 1900. The surrounding country abounds
in gold- and silver-bearing quartz deposits, and it is estimated that
from the famous Last Chance Gulch alone, which runs across the city,
more than $40,000,000 in gold has been taken. The street railway and the
lighting system of the city are run by power generated at a plant and 40
ft. dam at Canyon Ferry, on the Missouri river, 18 m. E. of Helena.
There is another great power plant at Hauser Plant, 20 m. N. of Helena.
Three miles W. of the city is the Broadwater Natatorium with swimming
pool, 300 ft. long and 100 ft. wide, the water for which is furnished by
hot springs with a temperature at the source of 160 deg. Fort Harrison, a
United States army post, is situated 3 m. W. of the city. Helena was
established as a placer mining camp in 1864 upon the discovery of gold
in Last Chance Gulch. The town was laid out in the same year, and after
the organization of Montana Territory it was designated as the capital.
Helena was burned down in 1869 and in 1874. It was chartered as a city
in 1881.
HELENSBURGH, a municipal and police burgh and watering-place of
Dumbartonshire, Scotland, on the N. shore of the Firth of Clyde,
opposite Greenock, 24 m. N.W. of Glasgow by the North British railway.
Pop. (1901) 8554. There is a station at Upper Helensburgh on the West
Highland railway, and from the railway pier at Craigendoran there is
steamer communication with Garelochhead, Dunoon and other pleasure
resorts on the western coast. In 1776 the site began to be built upon,
and in 1802 the town, named after Lady Helen, wife of Sir James
Colquhoun of Luss, the ground landlord, was erected into a burgh of
barony, under a provost and council. The public buildings include the
burgh hall, municipal buildings, Hermitage schools and two hospitals. On
the esplanade stands an obelisk to Henry Bell, the pioneer of steam
navigation, who died at Helensburgh in 1830.
HELENUS, in Greek legend, son of Priam and Hecuba, and twin-brother of
Cassandra. He is said to have been originally called Scamandrius, and to
have received the name of Helenus from a Thracian soothsayer who
instructed him in the prophetic art. In the _Iliad_ he is described as
the prince of augurs and a brave warrior; in the _Odyssey_ he is not
mentioned at all. Various details concerning him are added by later
writers. It is related that he and his sister fell asleep in the temple
of Apollo Thymbraeus and that snakes came and cleansed their ears,
whereby they obtained the gift of prophecy and were able to understand
the language of birds. After the death of Paris, Helenus and his brother
Deiphobus became rivals for the hand of Helen. Deiphobus was preferred,
and Helenus withdrew in indignation to Mount Ida, where he was captured
by the Greeks, whom he advised to build the wooden horse and carry off
the Palladium. According to other accounts, having been made prisoner by
a stratagem of Odysseus, he declared that Philoctetes must be fetched
from Lemnos before Troy could be taken; or he surrendered to Diomedes
and Odysseus in the temple of Apollo, whither he had fled in disgust at
the sacrilegious murder of Achilles by Paris in the sanctuary. After the
capture of Troy, he and his sister-in-law Andromache accompanied
Neoptolemus (Pyrrhus) as captives to Epirus, where Helenus persuaded him
to settle. After the death of Neoptolemus, Helenus married Andromache
and became ruler of the country. He was the reputed founder of Buthrotum
and Chaonia, named after a brother or companion whom he had accidentally
slain while hunting. He was said to have been buried at Argos, where his
tomb was shown. When Aeneas, in the course of his wanderings, reached
Epirus, he was hospitably received by Helenus, who predicted his future
destiny.
Homer, _Iliad_, vi. 76, vii. 44, xii. 94, xiii. 576; Sophocles,
_Philoctetes_, 604, who probably follows the _Little Iliad_ of
Lesches; Pausanias i. 11, ii. 23; Conon, _Narrationes_, 34; Dictys
Cretensis iv. 18; Virgil, _Aeneid_, iii. 294-490; Servius on _Aeneid_,
ii. 166, iii. 334.
HELGAUD, or HELGALDUS (d. c. 1048), French chronicler, was a monk of the
Benedictine abbey of Fleury. Little else is known about him save that he
was chaplain to the French king, Robert II. the Pious, whose life he
wrote. This _Epitoma vitae Roberti regis_, which is probably part of a
history of the abbey of Fleury, deals rather with the private than with
the public life of the king, and its value is not great either from the
literary or from the historical point of view. The only existing
manuscript is in the Vatican, and the _Epitoma_ has been printed by J.
P. Migne in the _Patrologia Latina_, tome cxli. (Paris, 1844); and by M.
Bouquet in the _Recueil des historiens des Gaules_, tome x. (Paris,
1760).
See _Histoire litteraire de la France_, tome vii. (Paris, 1865-1869);
and A. Molinier, _Les Sources de l'histoire de France_, tome ii.
(Paris, 1902).
HELGESEN, POVL,[1] Danish humanist, was born at Varberg in Halland about
1480, of a Danish father and a Swedish mother. Helgesen was educated
first at the Carmelite monastery of his native place and afterwards at
another monastery at Elsinore, where he devoted himself to humanistic
studies and adopted Erasmus as his model. None had a keener eye for the
abuses of the Church; long before the appearance of Luther, he denounced
the ignorance and immorality of the clergy, and, as lector at the
university of Copenhagen, gathered round him a band of young
enthusiasts, the future leaders of the Danish Reformation. But Helgesen
desired an orderly, methodical, rational reformation, and denounced
Luther, whose ablest opponent in Denmark he subsequently became, as a
hot-headed revolutionist. Christian II. was also an object of Helgesen's
detestation, and so boldly did he oppose that monarch's measures that,
to save his life, he had to flee to Jutland. Under Frederick I.
(1523-1533) he returned to Copenhagen and resumed his chair at the
university, becoming soon afterwards provincial of the Carmelite Order
for Scandinavia. But like all moderate men in a time of crisis, Helgesen
could gain the confidence of neither party, and was frequently attacked
as bitterly by the Catholics as by the Protestants. From 1530 to 1533 he
and the Protestant champion Hans Tausen exhausted the whole vocabulary
of vituperation in their fruitless polemics. In October 1534, however,
Helgesen issued an eirenicon in which he attempted to reconcile the two
contending confessions. After that every trace of him is lost. For a
long time he was unjustly regarded as a turn-coat, but he was too
superior to the prejudices of his age to be understood by his
contemporaries. His ideal was a moral internal reformation of the Church
on a rational basis, conducted not by ill-informed fanatics, but by an
enlightened and well-educated clergy; and from this standpoint he never
diverged. Helgesen was indisputably the greatest master of style of his
age in Denmark, and as a historian he also occupies a prominent
position. He always endeavours to probe down to the very soul of things,
though his passionate nature made it very difficult for him to be
impartial. His chief works are _Danmark's Kongers Historie_ and _Skibby
Kroniken_.
See Ludwig Schmitt, _Der Karmeliter Paulus Helia_ (Freiburg, 1893);
_Danmarks Riges Historie_ (Copenhagen, 1897-1905), vol. iii.