Legend is not history; but in legend we find embodied historical
truths, manners and customs of past ages, beliefs and superstitions
otherwise long forgotten, of which history itself takes no account.
Legend has preserved for us, maybe in romantic dress, maybe under
altered names and circumstances, stirring pictures of heroes and
heroines, who once have lived and suffered, fought and conquered, or
have faced death with trustful courage; pictures, too, of men of equal
prowess, as strong in evil as in might, who, victorious for a time,
have yet ever met a stronger power than theirs, stronger in virtue,
stronger in might.
As we write, the shadowy forms of terrific Alboin raising aloft his
goblet fashioned from royal skull; the noble Siegfried with his loved
Chriemhild and the jealous Brunhild; brave King Dietrich; the gentle,
patient Gudrun and her beauteous mother Hilde, all flit before the
mind, framing themselves into a vivid picture, such as must have lived
in the imagination of our early forefathers, stirring them on to noble
actions, restraining them from evil working. Thus has good in all ages
fought against ill, and all races of men have sung its victory in
strains but slightly varying. And so will it ever fight, no matter how
our more elaborate ideas of what is good or evil may vary: the nation
always glorifies the great and noble according to its own unreasoning
reason.
This volume contains the principal hero-lays of the six great epic
cycles of the Teutonic Middle Ages, and to them we have added the great
mythical Carolingian cycle, which centred round the persons of
Charlemagne and his heroes. The latter is mostly of Romance origin, and
was composed by court troubadours for the delight of the royal palace,
wherefore it never became the true inheritance of the masses. Beside
these French poems, stand the Breton ones of King Arthur and his
Knights of the Round Table, which later on took up the legend of the
Holy Grail into their very heart, and at this period found their way to
Germany, where they met with a more romantic and poetic treatment at
the hands of the court minnesingers. But these foreign importations
never found a true home amongst the German people; they never became
_popular_. The native hero-lays on the other hand, even though less
beautiful in conception and in form, lived on through centuries, and
even to this day exist, though disguised and degraded. For in the
market-places of Germany, and at the few old English fairs that yet
remain, the pedlar bookseller gives in exchange for the farthing piece
printed versions of many of these old legendary tales: Siegfried’s
battle with the Dragon, the Rose-garden, Alberic and Elbegast’s
adventures, and other wondrous histories of Teutonic epical origin. But
this literature is fast dying out, if, indeed, it may not by this time
be said to be already dead. In Iceland, however, and in the Faroe
Isles, tradition still holds her throne unconquered. She yet sings to
the listening greybeards, to the men and women, and to the growing
youth, of Odin and his mighty rule, of Hönir and the wicked Loki, of
Thor and Frey, and Freya Queen of Heaven, of the Fenris-wolf and the
Midgard-serpent. In the long winter nights she still tells of bold
Sigurd’s (Siegfried) deeds and battles, of Gudrun’s faithful love and
dumb grief beside the body of her lord, of Gunnar’s marvellous harping
in the garden of snakes, and the listeners hold it all in their memory,
that they may sing and tell it to their children and their children’s
children. And so do they cherish the time-old legends of their fathers,
that the ardent youth may still be heard to adjure his bride to love
him “with the love of Gudrun,” the master revile his dishonest workmen
as “false as Regin” (the evil dwarf), and the old men to shake their
heads and say of the daring lad, that he is “a true descendant of the
Wolsings.” At the dance, Sigurd-songs are yet sung, at Christmastide a
grotesque Fafnir takes his part in the mummery. Thus old German
tradition in her wane has found an asylum, perhaps a last
resting-place, in the far North, driven from their first home by
strangers, the myths of Greece and Rome. Every schoolboy can tell of
Zeus and Hera, of Achilles and Odysseus, every schoolgirl of the golden
apples of the Hesperides, of Helen, of Penelope; yet to how many of our
older folks, even, are the grand forms of Siegfried, Chriemhild, and
Brunhild more than mere names?
It is true that a tendency is now springing up in England and in
Germany once more to enquire into these old tales, nay beliefs, of our
common ancestry. It is true that we have a Morris and they a Wagner;
but we should wish to see the people of both nations take a more
general interest in a subject of such intrinsic worth to them, their
long-forgotten heritage. It is not the history of class-books that they
will find in it—it is that of their fathers’ manners and customs, of
their joys and sufferings, their games and occupations, festivals and
religious observances, battles, victories and defeats, their virtues
and their crimes. Such is the golden field that lies beneath our feet,
which, unheeded, we have let lie fallow, till it has almost faded from
memory.
In a previous volume, _Asgard and the Gods, the Tales and Traditions of
our Northern Ancestors_, we have endeavoured to give an account of the
_religion_ of our ancient Norse parents. In this volume we are occupied
with their _legendary lore_.
To what extent these legends formed a part of their religion proper it
is impossible for us now to say. Of later origin and more poetic
treatment, they stood in a similar position toward the old Teutons as
the later Greek heroic legend stood to the Greeks of history. Some say,
and the learned Grimm amongst them,[1] that the heroes were historical
men raised to the dignity of gods, others that they were humanized gods
themselves; but may be neither theory is exactly true, though both
contain a portion of the truth. In the hero-legends we certainly find
heroes possessed of the distinctive attributes of certain gods, and we
are tempted to add others to their characters, but we consider that
these divine qualities were looked upon rather as divine _gifts_ of the
gods and did not thereby exactly deify the recipients. It was similar
with the Greeks, and perhaps with all nations at a stage when their
heroes really formed an essential element in their belief. The gods
were never human heroes, the heroes never became gods, though each
approached the other so nearly that we are often misled into assuming
that they were identical.