"Hail to you, heroes in golden hair,Good Goths, Gepidae, sprightly with spears;Greetings to you, glorious Germans!Exult rejoicing to sounding harps:He failed and fell, terror of holiness,Scourge of God, Etzel the Evil!Sword struck him not, nor shaft of the spear.No: in darkness of night, vicious viperHad crushed its hideous head.Woman of woe, Ildico, the mighty maid,Avenged with awe the races of menAnd holy honor with heroic deed.Sing to the harp the wailing song,Raise it rousing to Daghar's bride,The shimmering, shining savior,Guarding German men prison-bound:Ildico, idol of fame,Hail to thee, lofty one, hail!" (H. S.)
"Hail to you, heroes in golden hair,Good Goths, Gepidae, sprightly with spears;Greetings to you, glorious Germans!Exult rejoicing to sounding harps:He failed and fell, terror of holiness,Scourge of God, Etzel the Evil!Sword struck him not, nor shaft of the spear.No: in darkness of night, vicious viperHad crushed its hideous head.Woman of woe, Ildico, the mighty maid,Avenged with awe the races of menAnd holy honor with heroic deed.Sing to the harp the wailing song,Raise it rousing to Daghar's bride,The shimmering, shining savior,Guarding German men prison-bound:Ildico, idol of fame,Hail to thee, lofty one, hail!" (H. S.)
"Hail to you, heroes in golden hair,
Good Goths, Gepidae, sprightly with spears;
Greetings to you, glorious Germans!
Exult rejoicing to sounding harps:
He failed and fell, terror of holiness,
Scourge of God, Etzel the Evil!
Sword struck him not, nor shaft of the spear.
No: in darkness of night, vicious viper
Had crushed its hideous head.
Woman of woe, Ildico, the mighty maid,
Avenged with awe the races of men
And holy honor with heroic deed.
Sing to the harp the wailing song,
Raise it rousing to Daghar's bride,
The shimmering, shining savior,
Guarding German men prison-bound:
Ildico, idol of fame,
Hail to thee, lofty one, hail!" (H. S.)
The extensive Hunnish circle of lays throws light on the life and love of German womanhood during the centuries of wanderings; and so powerful is the influence and impression made by the Asiatic onslaught, that there is hardly a German saga of any importance that does not stand in some kind of relation to the Hunnish conquerors. To "sing and say" was an ancient talent of the Teutonic race, whose warlike life, with its bravery and heroism, inspired mightily to music and song. But the migrations, with their powerful changes, the contact with formerly unknown peoples, altered considerably the trend of the ancient traditions and the sagas of a world which they had abandoned. Indeed, many of the ancient racial sagas vanished from the memory of the Germanic tribes. Christianization and Romanization instilled into the souls of the race the germs of romanticism which rapidly overspread the old Germanic paganism with a luxuriant growth of new ideas founded on new ideals, and, great as that poetry is, it shows everywhere a contrast and a conflict between two different states of existence.
The Anglo-Saxon Beowulf, in its original Teutonic tongue, introduces us to the primeval life of Germanic heroism and warlike turmoil at the dawn of a still mystic past. The oldest High German lay, ofHildebrand and Hadubrand, telling of a superhuman duel between father and son, reveals to us the Titanic fierceness of the era of wanderings. We discover, however, in the third great poetic remnant, theSaga of Walthari of Aquitaine, not only the same descriptions of tremendous conflicts, of perfidy and greed, of joy over blood and wounds, but also the new elements of love and the loveliness and delicacy of the relations between the hero and his bride. The ancient legend, however, is transmitted to us only in the Latin garment in which Ekkehard, the monk of Saint Galle, clothed it in the tenth century, when the German language was at its lowest ebb and ecclesiastical Latin covered everything. But though the garment be Latin, the spirit of the saga is thoroughly German.
Walthari of Aquitaine, though composed in the tenth century, is a monument of love, and tells us graphically of the position of woman, at least in the upper stratum of ancient society, at the time of its composition. Attila, King of the Huns, who appears here in a very different light from that which throws such ghastly rays upon him in Felix Dahn's novel, Ildico, is represented in the epic of Walthari as almost a Germanic hero; and his career is pictured as a glorious conquest, in which he crushes all resistance. Like a torrent in flood, his hosts roll over the land of the Franks, the Burgundians, and the Aquitanians. Resistance is out of the question; hostages are demanded and given to guarantee faithfulness and peace. Hagen, Hildegund, "the pearl of Burgundy," and Walthari are taken to King Etzel's court. Here the romance begins. Hildegund, through the grace of her manners, her beauty, and her skill as a housekeeper, endears herself to Queen Ospirin, Attila's wife, who makes her treasurer and stewardess of her household. Hagen and Walthari become the heroes and heads of the Hunnish army. Hagen, however, seizes the first opportunity for flight on the news of King Gibich's death reaching him, believing himself thereby freed from all obligation toward Attila. Walthari, who has become better beloved by the Hunnish king than were his own sons, also meditates escape, a great longing for fatherland, parents, and friends having seized him. In the hope of escape, he declines marriage with the noble Hunnish maiden offered him by the king, under the pretext that love would interfere with his duties as a warrior and leader; for he who has once tasted the delights of love is weakened and unfit for deeds of valor. At this time a distant subject tribe revolts. Walthari is placed at the head of the army sent to crush the revolution, accomplishes acts of great heroism, and returns victorious. A triumphal feast is celebrated, and while the king and his retainers are overcome by wine and sleep Walthari prepares for escape.
Long before, however, he had won the consent of the maiden to whom he had once been betrothed as a child, and whom he secretly loves, to follow him in his flight. Weary and thirsty, he met Hildegund and asked for a drink. He tenderly kissed her hand and, while drinking, held and pressed it lovingly. He reminded her how they were betrothed as children. Hildegund, however, with maidenly modesty, mistook his advances for scorn. Said she: "Why dost thou let thy tongue speak whereof thy heart knows naught? Thou dost not desire a maiden like myself." But he convinces her, and in humble confidence Hildegund declares she will follow whither her beloved one will lead.
Now the occasion offers itself during the feast of victory. Well armed, and with horses laden with treasures, the lovers flee from the Hunnish court. During the day they hide in thickets; at night they ride over wild, almost impassable paths. Not once does an unchaste desire enter the heart of the hero, though he is brimming over with life and love. Thus they reach the Rhine, cross it near Worms, and seek a safe refuge in the Vosges Forest (Wasgenwald), to take the first rest since the night of their flight. Hildegund sings her hero to sleep; Walthari, his head in her lap, intrusts himself to the watchfulness of his love. But Gunther, King of the Franks, has heard of the treasures which Walthari carries; and despite the resistance of Hagen, who is pained by the necessity of fighting against his former brother in arms, he attacks the fleeing hero with twelve of his best warriors, including Hagen himself. Hildegund takes the approaching warriors for Huns, awakens Walthari, 'and entreats him to kill her, that she may not fall into the hands of the enemy. No one shall ever touch her body, as she is not to be his. It is not our task here to describe the ghastliness of the wounds inflicted, and Walthari's victory at the cost of the loss of a leg. Hildegund, in true old German fashion, again appears as an angel of mercy: she tends the wounds of the warriors and mixes their wine, as merry jests and friendly speeches cement the reconciliation. Walthari and Hildegund travel on to Aquitaine, where they are received with joy, and celebrate their marriage. Thus, we are able to gather from the Walthari Saga the traits of womanly modesty, humility, faithfulness. The woman's watch over the sleeping hero is especially touching. Her purity makes her ask for death when she sees the end of her hero and her own shame. Chaste and undefiled, she enters the realm of her future husband.
Most important among all the tribes of the German nation, and of most abiding value and influence for the future not only of Germany, but of Europe, were the Franks.
The early history of that great and important people, or rather bundle of tribes, is wholly legendary. Their legends describe certain characteristics of weakness and vice of the men of that Merovingian dynasty which again furnishes us rich material for the study of royal womanhood, which, with few exceptions, was of the most depraved character. Our principal contemporary source is aHistory of the Franksby Gregory, Bishop of Tours (A. D. 538-593). Though called the "Father of French History," we must confess that his honesty is equalled only by his credulity. The history of the Merovingian women belongs locally to France, but racially to Germany; it would, therefore, be impossible to leave it unnoticed in this volume.
One of the earliest kings of the Merovingian dynasty was Childeric, who, owing to his luxury and vices, was driven out by the Franks. He retired in exile to Bisinus, King of the Thuringians, where he seduced Basina the wife of the hospitable king. Childeric had left behind in Frankland a loyal friend with whom he had divided a gold piece, the friend promising when times were auspicious to send his half as a signal for Childeric's return. Eight years passed. The gold token reached the wandering king and he was restored to his realm. Basina soon afterward joined him at his court. She followed him, she said, because he was the bravest man she knew, but she warned him that she would desert him if she could find a better and mightier man than he was. This woman bore Clovis, a son who was worthy of his mother. In 493, Clovis took for his wife a Christian woman, Clotilde, the pious and beautiful daughter of Chilperic of Burgundy. The importance of this marriage of Clotilde to the pagan Clovis is self-evident, and it may have been suggested by the famous bishop, Saint Remigius. Clotilde at once began earnest efforts to convert her royal husband, but at first without avail. Everything tends to prove that Clovis was exceedingly tolerant, or perhaps rather indifferent, toward the Christian religion. His resistance was entirely passive, and without prejudice. Clovis's sister, Lantechilde, was an Arian, so was Autofleda, Theodoric's wife; but Albofleda, another sister of Clovis, remained a pagan. Clovis allowed the Christian baptism of his first son, who died in infancy. He reproached his wife, because he in a measure ascribed the infant's death to the influence of baptism, yet he consented to the baptism of the second son, Chlodomir, who fell ill, but survived. There was no spirit of propaganda in the naturalistic religion of the pagan king; he gave his wife a free scope, but refused to adopt the doctrine she advocated. In the fifteenth year of his reign, Clovis was at war with the powerful Alemanni. During the battle of Tolbiacum (Zulpich) he sees with apprehension the ranks of the Franks giving way before the rage of their opponents, and vows to adopt the religion of Christ, if He grants him victory. "O Christ," he exclaims, according to Gregorius of Tours, "I invoke devoutly thine glorious help. If thou accord me victory over these enemies, I shall believe in thee and shall be baptized in thine name. I have invoked my gods, but they are not ready to aid me." After the victory, he loyally executed the promise he had made to the God of Clotilde, the queen perhaps taking good care that the vow should be fulfilled. Bishop Remigius, with that prudence and political wisdom which always guided the princes of the Church, proceeded very slowly in the matter until he was assured that the consent of the Franks had been obtained. Three thousand of them allowed themselves to be baptized with their king, an event of the greatest importance in the world's history, for thereby the advance of Arianism was checked and heathenism was cast down. Clotilde, a woman and a queen, thus inaugurates the Christianization of the Germans, for Clovis thus becomes a "new Constantine" and the precursor of Charlemagne, the unifier of the Germans, the founder of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. The words of Bishop Remigius are fulfilled: "Bend thine head, proud Sigambrian: adore what thou hast burned heretofore; burn what thou hast adored heretofore." From this time on Clovis's life is but a chain of successes. It is true that all those successes of the most Christian king (rex christianissimus), a title bestowed upon him and his successors, were attained by atrocity and perfidy surpassed only in the later history of his own dynasty, and then by the female members of the royal line. The central point of his policy was the murder of the smaller Prankish kings so that he might be the sole chief of the entire people. He caused Sigebert of Cologne to be slain by his own son, whom he then assassinated, thereby securing for himself the kingship over the Ripuarian Franks. He dispossessed Chararic and his son and, later, killed both for the sake of greater security. He slew Racagnar, King of Cambrai, and the latter's brother, Richard, with his own hand, and, later on, murdered their brother, Rigomer; so that the tale of deaths is a long one. The manner in which the Christian religion aided Clovis in the execution of his ambitious plans, shows with terrible truth how deeply in the sixth century the ideal of Christianity had sunk from its lofty height. No one of his contemporaries ever reproached Clovis for his crimes; the Franks sang them in lays; and the pious Bishop Gregory of Tours having related the murder of Sigebert, adds naïvely: "Every day God thus felled his enemies to the ground and increased his kingdom because he walked with a pure heart before the Lord and did what was agreeable in his sight."
His four sons, when among them was divided the Prankish realm, soon found a pretext to wage a religious war against the Arian Burgundians. Their king, Sigismund, after the death of his first wife, Ostrogotha, a daughter of the great Theodoric, took a second wife who, like a real stepmother, ill-treated the young son of the king. When the youth once bitterly reproached his stepmother for wearing the garments and jewels of his mother, the wicked woman persuaded the king that his son aspired to his throne. She attained her purpose: the youth was murdered. But Nemesis soon overtook the murderer of his son: he lost his throne and his life in battle against the Franks.
Besides Clotilde, the pious wife of Clovis, we meet, among the many women of terrible moral depravity, with another saintly woman in the Prankish dynasty. Chlotar, the youngest of Clevis's four sons, after having conquered the Thuringians, though he had numberless wives and concubines, took Radegundis, the daughter of the defeated Hermanfrid, for a wife. But the saintly woman shrank from the touch of the immoral king, and threw herself on the icy stone pavement, unmindful of the pain it gave her body, for her soul was filled with the agitation of ardent religious passion, and spent her time in prayer and devotion. When she returned to the bridal chamber, neither the heat of the fire, nor the impure royal bed could restore the natural heat of her body; and the king declared that he possessed rather a nun than a wife. Radegundis succeeded in obtaining a divorce from Chlotar and retired to a cloister, where she obtained the dignity of a deaconess, an honor which canonical regulations reserved only to virgins. In the cloister founded by her in the neighborhood of Poitiers, Radegundis introduced a very strict discipline, she enriched the house with precious relics, and passed the rest of her life in pious devotions and expiations for the sins of Chlotar, who was sinking deeper and deeper into the mire of moral corruption.
A story is told by Gregory of Tours concerning Ingundis, one of the concubines of Chlotar, the pious bishop calls heruxor(wife), however, which is worth repeating. Ingundis, in the full possession of the love of Chlotar, begged of him to secure a worthy husband for her sister Aregundia, and expatiated on the physical qualities and moral virtues of her sister. Chlotar betook himself to her country residence, and as she pleased him well he married her. Then he returned to Ingundis and informed her that he had given her sister the best man he could find in the realm of the Franks, namely, himself. With bitter disappointment in her heart, she, according to the statement of the chronicler, meekly submitted, saying: "What may seem good in the eyes of my lord, he may do; only may thy maid live in the grace of the king."
The fratricidal and internecine wars of Clovis's four sons were yet surpassed during the next generation by crimes and atrocities which overstepped all the limits and bounds of nature. Of Chlotar's four sons, only Sigebert's character is praiseworthy. Gregory relates that Sigebert was greatly ashamed of the disgraceful alliances of his brothers, who married daughters of the people of the lowest strata of society and changed them as lust and caprice prompted. Sigebert, however, married the daughter of Athanagild, King of the Visigoths. Her name was Brunehild (Brunehaut), a woman of great beauty and excessive vices and passions, whose name is linked in history with those of the greatest female criminals of royal blood.
Chilperic, Sigebert's degenerate brother, jealous of the latter's alliance, asked in marriage Galswintha, Brunehild's sister, but he soon sacrificed her to the ambition of Fredegond, one of his concubines, who had the queen strangled and then occupied her place. This blond-haired woman of low birth, with most alluring charms and versed in all the arts to arouse passion, soon reduced her royal paramour to such subjection that he had her crowned with great pomp in his capital of Soissons. Beginning with this marriage, atrocities do not cease until the entire family becomes extinct. But to this very day to quote the words of a French poet "The fair, the blonde, the terrible Fredegond is unforgotten and sung in lurid songs from Austrasia to Perigord."
Brunehild undertook to avenge her sister; the terrible struggle began between the Prankish slave girl and the daughter of the King of the Visigoths, a dramatic strife which has left an enduring memory in the annals of the history of crime. A son of Chilperic joins his father's enemy, and, with his aid, Sigebert is victorious everywhere; but when, in his city of Vitry, he is on the point of being raised upon the shield as king over the land of his brother, Sigebert is assassinated by two emissaries of Fredegond, who thus once more saves her husband by crime. The widowed Brunehild was at the time in Paris with her five-year-old son Childebert, and, as it seemed, at the mercy of Chilperic. But upon the news of Sigebert's death, Gundovald, an Austrasian chief, brought Childebert from Paris and had him proclaimed king. Brunehild was exiled to the basilica of Saint Martin's Cathedral, at Rouen. The oath of Fredegond upon sacred relics that she will not harm the fugitives is violated at once. She murders two sons of Chilperic, also Bishop Tractesetatus, who had solemnized the marriage. Brunehild saved herself by flight, and an even more sanguinary civil war ensues, in the course of which Chilperic too is murdered. At last the flagitious murderess Fredegond, at the age of sixty, equally dreaded and abhorred by friend and foe, dies strange to say by a natural death.
FREDEGOND WATCHING THE MARRIAGE OF CHILPERIC AND GALSWINTHAAfter the painting by L. Alma-Tadema
Chilperic had taken a most unwilling bride, Galswintha, daughter of a king of the Visigoths and younger sister of Brunehild, notwithstanding the fierce jealousy of one of his concubines, Fredegond, who soon had the new queen strangled and then occupied her place. This blond-haired woman of low birth, with most alluring charms and versed in all the arts to arouse passion, soon reduced her royal paramour to such subjection that he had her crowned with great pomp in his capital of Soissons. Beginning with this marriage, atrocities did not cease until the entire family became extinct. But to this very day to quote the words of a French poet "The fair, the blonde, the terrible Fredegond is unforgotten and sung in lurid songs from Austrasia to Périgord".
Her rival and lifelong enemy Brunehild, who had vied with her in crimes and vices, met with a far more terrible end. After many years of further struggle she fell into the hands of Chlotar II., a son of Fredegond, who inflicted upon her a terrible punishment. Having charged her with the murder of at least ten Merovingian princes, he caused her, though a matron of seventy, to be frightfully tortured for several days; then she was placed on a camel and led for shame through the camp. Finally, she was tied to the tail of a wild horse and dragged to death: the hoofs of the horse crushed the limbs of the sinful queen into a shapeless mass. I know of no poem in the whole range of German literature which gives a more ghastly picture of that realistic scene of atrocity than one in which Ferdinand Freiligrath relates:
"How once in the fields of the river Marne near ChalonsChlotar, the son of Chilperic, had the sinful BrunehildTied by her silver hair to a wild stallion;To drag her galloping through the Prankish camp.The neighing stallion started, and the hind hoofs struckThe aged form, breaking and wrenching limb from limb.Dishevelled flew her whitened hair about her bloody brow.The pointed pebbles drank her royal blood; and shudderingBeheld the blood-accustomed Franks the horror of the judgmentOf their wrathful king Chlotar.The glow of the red fires burning before every tentFell ghastly on the pain-distorted countenance.With icy shower now the Marne washed from it the dustThe camel which had borne her through the ranks was spattered with her blood...."(H. S.)
"How once in the fields of the river Marne near ChalonsChlotar, the son of Chilperic, had the sinful BrunehildTied by her silver hair to a wild stallion;To drag her galloping through the Prankish camp.The neighing stallion started, and the hind hoofs struckThe aged form, breaking and wrenching limb from limb.Dishevelled flew her whitened hair about her bloody brow.The pointed pebbles drank her royal blood; and shudderingBeheld the blood-accustomed Franks the horror of the judgmentOf their wrathful king Chlotar.The glow of the red fires burning before every tentFell ghastly on the pain-distorted countenance.With icy shower now the Marne washed from it the dustThe camel which had borne her through the ranks was spattered with her blood...."(H. S.)
"How once in the fields of the river Marne near Chalons
Chlotar, the son of Chilperic, had the sinful Brunehild
Tied by her silver hair to a wild stallion;
To drag her galloping through the Prankish camp.
The neighing stallion started, and the hind hoofs struck
The aged form, breaking and wrenching limb from limb.
Dishevelled flew her whitened hair about her bloody brow.
The pointed pebbles drank her royal blood; and shuddering
Beheld the blood-accustomed Franks the horror of the judgment
Of their wrathful king Chlotar.
The glow of the red fires burning before every tent
Fell ghastly on the pain-distorted countenance.
With icy shower now the Marne washed from it the dust
The camel which had borne her through the ranks was spattered with her blood...."(H. S.)
We gladly leave the chapter of the Prankish nation under the Merovingians, for it is stained with the uninterrupted tragedy of brutal superstition, lust, perjury, treason, incest, murder of the closest blood relatives, malice, and cruelty. Such scenes as the Langobard Alboin's deeds and death, Brunehild's end, and the countless unspeakable vices mentioned by Bishop Gregory of Tours demonstrate sufficiently the terrible corruption of which even the best races are capable, when released from all the bonds of legal restraint in the time of peace, and when torn, root and branch, from a healthy native soil.
Even more characteristic is perhaps the poetic literature of the time, in which the unnatural vices are transformed and reflected as lofty virtues. What is the historian of culture to say when the contemporary presbyter and bishop, the pious poet, Venantius Fortunatus, glorifies and elevates both Brunehild and Fredegond as mirrors of virtue and grace? The latter, the slave girl who attained the crown through murder and prostitution, is to him the queen "who adorns the realm by her virtues. Wise in council, skilful, provident, useful to the Court; powerful of mind, magnanimous, excelling in all merits." Brunehild, on the other hand, "The ethereal Brunehild, shining more brilliantly than the stars, surpasses the light of the gems by the light of her countenance of milk and blood. The lilies mixed with roses cannot compare with her. She is a sapphire, a white diamond, a crystal, an emerald, a iaspis, nay, more, for all must yield the palm to her; Spain [referring to the Visigoths having occupied southern France and northern Spain] has produced a new jewel."
The literary remnants of the pre-Carlovingian era are too scanty to permit us to form from them a perfect picture of Teutonic woman during the centuries of migrations. We are, however, able fairly to reconstruct the record by the aid of the rich treasures transmitted to us from a period five or six centuries later, a time epochal in the stormy youth of the German peoples. Though the original songs were partly destroyed through the antagonism of the Church and her efforts to root out the pagan memories and traditions, and, though these causes, to a large extent, made futile the strenuous efforts of Charlemagne to collect and preserve the ancient lays and sagas, the people continued to be influenced by their memories. The spirit of the "Legend from Ancient Times," of which Heine writes in his beautiful poem,Lorelei, never died out in the soul of the race. The spirit of expansion, of enlargement of horizon, fostered by the crusades and by the broad policy of the great Hohenstaufen dynasty brought about an extensive knowledge of the poetic, romantic, and historic materials and forms among the older French and Italian literatures. The old heroes of the German legend and history awakened from the long slumber of vague recollection and lived again in their influence upon the ideals of the people. The origin of the German heroic epic is thus closely connected with the most decisive period of the political birth of the nation. The heroic epic in its entirety, therefore, flows from, and is reflected in, the great revolution of power and in the changes of habitation which, for the first time, awakened the historical self-consciousness of the German war nobility and made possible a new development in the national literature. The hour of birth of the German heroic epic is the Migration period. In the heroic epic the story is clothed in a romantic garment. The epic poets, looking backward from their own stirring times as far as the formation period, symbolize the progress of history in the time when it may be said that ancient Europe was broken to pieces, and the Germans in a new formation and in a new soil came uninjured and even strengthened from the general devastation.
The type of heroes and heroines formed in the fifth and sixth centuries, and the heroes grown and developed from those ancient, yet largely mythological ideas and ideals were adapted to the new type of chivalrous manhood of the eleventh and twelfth centuries by the poets and singers of the circles of the princes and nobles whose high culture promoted the first classical period of bloom. The heroic saga is then the crystallization of the treasure of traditions formed in the heroic period of the race.
The saga material is divisible into the group or tribal cycles, and every cycle revolves around a galaxy of great, good, heroic, or evil women. This saga literature, in fact, furnishes us with a perfect portrait gallery of the German women of the two most important and formative periods of their race. We have mentioned in the previous chapter a few of the Hunnish cycle around Attila (Etzel). Of these Ildico and Hildegund are preeminent. We have alluded to the historical women of the Ostrogoth cycle those associated with the great Theodoric or, as called in the saga, Dietrich von Bern (Verona). Other cycles there are: the Norse, embracing Beowulf, King of the Jutes, and the Scandinavian heroes Wittich and Wieland, belongs to our theme but incidentally; the Langobard cycle, singing the Langobard heroes King Rother, Ortnit, Hugdietrich, and Wolfdietrich, and their adventures on the Mediterranean Sea and in a legendary Byzantine Empire, with a type of Oriental-Greek or Byzantine women, lies a little aside from our present consideration of German women. We can well confine ourselves to theNibelungen SagaandGudrun, the GermanIliadandOdyssey, for these two heroic sagas of the German nation are the true exponents of all the characteristics of German women and men. The heroic epic in its germ is historical, but its growth freed it from its fetters of fact and decked it with ornaments from the domain of imagination. Historical and mythical elements are, then, strangely blended in these sagas. They develop exotically, scarce one that does not grow outside its original sphere, assimilate foreign unhistorical matter, blur all chronology, and anachronistically poetize the dim recollections of a historical but long-forgotten underground. The resultant of the convolutions and accretions is a complex epic cycle of sagas originating at different times, but always deeply rooted in the Migration period, wherein lay all the origins of Germanic historical existence.
TheNibelungenliedis the crystallization of the Burgundian Low Rhenish Hunnish cycle of Sagas. No more complete psychological record in poetic form of all the emotions, love and hate, vice and virtue, vanity and modesty, chastity and passion, piety and wickedness, womanly gentleness and virulence, is imaginable. All the phases of human existence are put before us in the lives of the Burgundian royal brothers Gunther, Gernot, Giselher; their mother Ute; and their sister Kriemhilde, whose character, as outlined, is the grandest and the most complex woman's character in the literature of the world. Kriemhilde, as the wife of the Low Rhenish hero Siegfried, and Brunhild, in the Norse version of the Saga, a former Valkyrie, humanized only to make it possible for her to be the wife of Gunther and to bear a deep love for Siegfried, are the opposite poles of womanhood.
It is, however, very difficult to obtain through the epics a correct estimate of the status of woman at a definite period. This difficulty is due not only to the poetic and fictitious characterization of the womanly types, but especially to the constant blending of ancient Germanic elements and twelfth century chivalry, knighthood, and romantic love (Minne), from which results an almost inextricable web of mythical and historical and purely romantic threads.
Siegfried wins Kriemhilde by a long wooing in the truly romantic fashion of the period ofMinne song, but later inflicts upon her, in the truly old Germanic fashion, a severe physical chastisement for her quarrelsome temper. We find in the story traces of the primeval Germanic beliefs of the power of divination and prophecy. Kriemhilde has a momentous dream; she sees a beautiful falcon that she had reared with care seized and overpowered by two eagles. Her mother, Ute, interprets the dream correctly as foreshadowing the fate of her future husband:
"The falcon, whom thou cherished, he was a noble man,May God in safety keep him, for no one other can."
"The falcon, whom thou cherished, he was a noble man,May God in safety keep him, for no one other can."
"The falcon, whom thou cherished, he was a noble man,
May God in safety keep him, for no one other can."
In the morning before the final catastrophe overtook Siegfried, Kriemhilde related to him with a sorrowful heart another dream:
"I dreamed last night of trouble, and how that two wild boarChased you thro' the thicket, then were the flowers red.That I must weep so sorely, in sooth! I have full need."
"I dreamed last night of trouble, and how that two wild boarChased you thro' the thicket, then were the flowers red.That I must weep so sorely, in sooth! I have full need."
"I dreamed last night of trouble, and how that two wild boar
Chased you thro' the thicket, then were the flowers red.
That I must weep so sorely, in sooth! I have full need."
The magic arts and the cutting ofrunesby women are no longer mentioned in the greatest epic of the Middle High German period, while they are yet in full sway in the Norse version ofSigurd and Brunhild, or, as she is there called,Sigrdrifa. The gift of healing, however, is attributed to women in both versions.
As we have seen in ancient Germanic law, woman is under the guardianship, or Mundium (hand), of her nearest male relatives. So she is at the period of the Nibelungenlied. Of Kriemhilde it is said:
"Her guardians were three kings, rich and of noble race...The maiden was their sister; the princes had her in ward."
"Her guardians were three kings, rich and of noble race...The maiden was their sister; the princes had her in ward."
"Her guardians were three kings, rich and of noble race...
The maiden was their sister; the princes had her in ward."
Noble women resided usually in the inner secluded rooms, calledhemenate. Siegfried did not see Kriemhilde at the Burgundian court for a whole year. Her favorite occupation in her seclusion was to embroider gold and jewels on silk, fashioning splendid garments for the bridal expeditions and courtly travels of the heroes. Rarely, and only on festal occasions, women appeared to receive distinguished guests. Then they are surrounded by their attendant warriors, who as a symbol of ready protection carry swords in their hands. Any offence to a noblewoman is taken up by her entire following and is expiated in bloody fashion. Marriage by capture no longer occurs, yet traces of it can be found everywhere in the later bridal expeditions of Gunther and the Hegelings. On the battlefield, Siegfried pays no gold for his bride, it is true, but he has to earn her in a hard struggle against the enemies of her three brothers.
The lot of woman is suffering and sorrow and care, as evidenced from such verses as:
"Whatever sufferings fall to the lot of the men,All those are wept over by the women."
"Whatever sufferings fall to the lot of the men,All those are wept over by the women."
"Whatever sufferings fall to the lot of the men,
All those are wept over by the women."
This is the tenor of all the epic songs. TheNibelungenliedhas devoted an epilogue,The Lamentation, to the expression of those sentiments. There are constant allusions to woman's woes: here, the death of a hero is "lamented by many a woman;" there, "heavy heartache harasses the women;" "all the worthy women weep over him."
We may, after this brief introduction, consider the great characters of the lay. A peculiar position in the Germanic heroic epic is occupied by Helche, King Attila's first consort. Although a pagan, the conception left to us of the wife of the dread Hunnish king is of a woman who has become almost entirely Germanized. Because of her traits of mildness, kindness, and purity, she appears as the ideal of a true German queen, just as Attila himself, with his Germanized name (attila, little father, from Gothicatta, father), appears in many lays as a good, liberal, kind-hearted king. Helche is especially motherly toward the numerous noblewomen who stay at the Hunnish court as hostages; she is a friend of the conquered and the helper of the miserable and the exiled. Dietrich von Bern, in his exile from home and throne, is under her protection. She obtained for him from Etzel money and men for the reconquest of Bern; and when the enterprise failed, she intervened for him with the irate Hunnish king, and even gave him her sister's daughter in marriage. When the king complained of the obnoxious foreign fugitives, she convinced him that the reception of a hero like Dietrich could only be of advantage to his realm and an honor to himself. At the death of Helche there is universal mourning throughout the land; for, says the chronicler, a true mother of the innocent virgins and of the entire people has departed.
In the foreground of all the epics of the German cycles stand the two greatest characters of ancient womanhood, Kriemhilde and Brunhild.
At Worms on the Rhine in the land of the Burgundians, the three royal brothers Gunther, Gernot, and Giselher guard a glorious treasure, Princess Kriemhilde. Many kings and heroes try to win her hand, but she is indifferent to the love of men. The most glorious hero of the age, Siegfried, hears the fame of Kriemhilde's beauty and proceeds with a numerous and splendid retinue from his royal father's castle at Xanten up the Rhine to Worms to win Kriemhilde. After a six days' sail, Siegfried and his escort reach their destination, and without disclosing their identity they ride to court. Only Hagen of Tronje is able to give information to the Burgundians regarding the strange heroes. He relates how Siegfried, in spite of his youth, has already accomplished great exploits, how he slew the dragon and became invulnerable by bathing in the blood of the monster, how he defeated the Nibelungs and seized their immense treasure. Hagen exhorts Gunther to receive the youthful hero with kindness and honor in order that he may not "earn the hatred of the bold prince."
Hagen's advice is followed and Siegfried is received by the Burgundians with great honor. But before he is permitted even to look upon the beautiful Kriemhilde, he is invited to aid the Burgundians in reducing to subjection the rebellious kings Ludeger of Saxony and Ludegast of Denmark. Upon his triumphal return from the war his eyes are gladdened by the sight of the royal maid at the festive celebration of the victory. The princess attended by a hundred sword-bearing chamberlains and a hundred richly adorned gentlewomen, steps forth from herhemenate, or as says the lay:
"Then came the lovely one, as does the rosy mornThrough sombre clouds advancing...As the bright Queen of heaven steps forth before each starAbove the clouds high soaring, in shine so pure and clear,So shone the beauteous maiden o'er other ladies nigh."
"Then came the lovely one, as does the rosy mornThrough sombre clouds advancing...As the bright Queen of heaven steps forth before each starAbove the clouds high soaring, in shine so pure and clear,So shone the beauteous maiden o'er other ladies nigh."
"Then came the lovely one, as does the rosy morn
Through sombre clouds advancing...
As the bright Queen of heaven steps forth before each star
Above the clouds high soaring, in shine so pure and clear,
So shone the beauteous maiden o'er other ladies nigh."
The very first glance exchanged between the princess and the prince betrays their mutual love. Siegfried is more than ever resolved to win the beauteous maiden for his wife.
But the time of trial is not yet over for him. King Gunther has set his heart upon the war maid Brunhild, Queen of the Isenstein, and he is determined to win her as his wife. Siegfried's presence seems to offer a favorable opportunity to press his suit; he therefore agrees that if the hero from the Netherlands will help him to obtain the hand of Brunhild, he may marry Kriemhilde. With a heavy heart for well he knows Brunhild Siegfried consents. Accompanied by but a few warriors, Gunther and Siegfried sail down the Rhine, and after a twelve days' journey they land on Isenstein. In sight of the royal castle, surmounted by eighty-six towers rising in gloomy magnificence, Siegfried, in order to pass for a vassal, holds the stirrup of Gunther. Brunhild receives the dragon slayer, whose fame and glory are well known to her, with the words:
"'Welcome you are, Sir Siegfried, here to this my land.What means your journey hither, now let me understand?'Quoth Siegfried: 'Lady Brunhild, great thanks to you I owe,That you, most gentle princess, should deign to greet me soBefore this noble hero who stands beside me here;For he is my master...He is by name Gunther, a mighty King and dread;If he your love can conquer, his fondest wish is sped.'"
"'Welcome you are, Sir Siegfried, here to this my land.What means your journey hither, now let me understand?'Quoth Siegfried: 'Lady Brunhild, great thanks to you I owe,That you, most gentle princess, should deign to greet me soBefore this noble hero who stands beside me here;For he is my master...He is by name Gunther, a mighty King and dread;If he your love can conquer, his fondest wish is sped.'"
"'Welcome you are, Sir Siegfried, here to this my land.
What means your journey hither, now let me understand?'
Quoth Siegfried: 'Lady Brunhild, great thanks to you I owe,
That you, most gentle princess, should deign to greet me so
Before this noble hero who stands beside me here;
For he is my master...
He is by name Gunther, a mighty King and dread;
If he your love can conquer, his fondest wish is sped.'"
Brunhild proclaims the conditions upon which she may be won. The hero who wishes to win her to wife must conquer her in three games: spear throwing, stone throwing, and leaping. If he fails in one of the three tests he must lose his head. Gunther declares himself ready for the trial though he feels that his strength is not equal to the superhuman power of Brunhild. Siegfried comes to his friend's assistance, and clad in his Tarn-cap which he had won from the Nibelung treasure, and which makes him invisible, he undertakes the task while Gunther merely executes the gesture of the action. Brunhild is defeated and with forebodings of evil follows the Burgundian king to Worms where a joyful double marriage is celebrated. Then Siegfried takes his bride to Xanten, his capital, where he passes ten years of peace and happiness. But the Norns, the Fates, have decreed that his joy shall not endure. King Gunther invites his friend and his sister to a great festival at Worms at the time of the summer solstice. On the eleventh day before Vespers, during the walk to church, a fatal quarrel breaks out between the queens. The quarrel is precipitated by a question of precedence. Brunhild, consumed by jealousy of Siegfried's heroic fame and Kriemhilde's happiness, insultingly taunts the latter that her consort is after all but a vassal of Gunther, an accusation which Kriemhilde violently rejects. The two queens part with vehement words. Kriemhilde threatens:
'"Since thou hast my Siegfried claimed as thy subject now,So shall this very day the knights of both kings see,Whether, before the Queen, the church I enter may.'"
'"Since thou hast my Siegfried claimed as thy subject now,So shall this very day the knights of both kings see,Whether, before the Queen, the church I enter may.'"
'"Since thou hast my Siegfried claimed as thy subject now,
So shall this very day the knights of both kings see,
Whether, before the Queen, the church I enter may.'"
Arrived at the same moment at the entrance to the church, Brunhild calls out to her sister-in-law:
"'Before wife of a monarch, a subject shall not go.'"
"'Before wife of a monarch, a subject shall not go.'"
"'Before wife of a monarch, a subject shall not go.'"
Kriemhilde, forgetting herself and all about her, breaks out in terrible passion:
"'Couldst thou have kept silent, 't would have been for thy good.Thou hast thyself dishonored thine own body fair;How could a concubine as a king's wife appear?''Whom wouldst thou a concubine?' speaks the haughty Queen.'That will I thee,' quoth Kriemhild; 'thy body fair, I ween,Was at first embraced by Siegfried, my dear man;'Sooth was it not my brother who thy maidenhood won.'"
"'Couldst thou have kept silent, 't would have been for thy good.Thou hast thyself dishonored thine own body fair;How could a concubine as a king's wife appear?''Whom wouldst thou a concubine?' speaks the haughty Queen.'That will I thee,' quoth Kriemhild; 'thy body fair, I ween,Was at first embraced by Siegfried, my dear man;'Sooth was it not my brother who thy maidenhood won.'"
"'Couldst thou have kept silent, 't would have been for thy good.
Thou hast thyself dishonored thine own body fair;
How could a concubine as a king's wife appear?'
'Whom wouldst thou a concubine?' speaks the haughty Queen.
'That will I thee,' quoth Kriemhild; 'thy body fair, I ween,
Was at first embraced by Siegfried, my dear man;
'Sooth was it not my brother who thy maidenhood won.'"
In the agony of shame, Brunhild sank with tears on the threshold. Kriemhilde passes through the door of the church with her attendants, but
"For this must soon perish many knights, brave and good."
"For this must soon perish many knights, brave and good."
"For this must soon perish many knights, brave and good."
The insulted queen swears vengeance; Siegfried's blood alone can wash away her shame. Here begins the work of fierce, grim Hagen, one of the most sombre characters in German legend. Brunhild wins for the execution of her revenge this knight, with his fearful record of crime and passion, though with, on the other hand, his tragic greatness and his unfaltering devotion to his king and master, to whom he is joined by the ties of absolute loyalty. As justified by his oath of vassalage he vows to slay the man who has insulted his sovereign. Gunther reluctantly consents to the murder of the man to whom he is so deeply indebted; Giselher, who decidedly rejects the murderous project, is outvoted.
A treacherous plan is concocted, and to make the perfidy still more flagrant Kriemhilde's innocent cooperation is mendaciously engaged. As Siegfried, after his bath in the blood of the dragon whom he had slain, is invulnerable except at one point between the shoulder-blades where a fallen linden leaf had prevented the skin from becoming "horny," Kriemhilde is persuaded by Hagen to mark the spot with red silk that he may protect him from harm. A hunt is chosen as the occasion for Siegfried's murder. While Siegfried stoops to a fountain to drink the limpid water, wine having intentionally been kept away from the hunting party, he is pierced by Gunther's vassal through the silken mark indicated by his innocent, loving wife. He sinks to the ground dying, rallies once more to face his murderer, but his strength leaves him, and dying he commends Kriemhilde to Gunther's care:
"'Would you ever, Gunther, on this world againTo any one show kindness, let it well appear,In truth and in favor, to my wife so dear.Let it at least speak for her that she your sister is:By every princely virtue, pledge your troth in this.'"
"'Would you ever, Gunther, on this world againTo any one show kindness, let it well appear,In truth and in favor, to my wife so dear.Let it at least speak for her that she your sister is:By every princely virtue, pledge your troth in this.'"
"'Would you ever, Gunther, on this world again
To any one show kindness, let it well appear,
In truth and in favor, to my wife so dear.
Let it at least speak for her that she your sister is:
By every princely virtue, pledge your troth in this.'"
The murderer causes Siegfried's corpse to be laid before the door of his sleeping queen. When leaving her chamber in the morning to go to early mass, Kriemhilde fainted on viewing the heartrending sight
"She sank down on the ground, no word more did she say;The lovely, joyless lady before them prostrate lay.Kriemhild's anguish was terrible to view,So loud her cries and wailing that the room echoed through."
"She sank down on the ground, no word more did she say;The lovely, joyless lady before them prostrate lay.Kriemhild's anguish was terrible to view,So loud her cries and wailing that the room echoed through."
"She sank down on the ground, no word more did she say;
The lovely, joyless lady before them prostrate lay.
Kriemhild's anguish was terrible to view,
So loud her cries and wailing that the room echoed through."
The body of the divine hero is laid on a bier in the cathedral. Then Kriemhilde challenges the king and Hagen to approach the shrine containing Siegfried's corpse and take the test that will decide their guilt or innocence. The ancient ordeal reveals the murderer, for at Hagen's approach the wound begins to bleed anew. In Kriemhilde's soul, that heretofore had been so filled with unspeakable love for her incomparable hero that other passions found no place, there arises now an all-destroying hatred and lust of revenge. The expression of this pervades the second part of theNibelungenlied, and reaches its climax in an orgy of blood, in a cataclysm that overwhelms alike all the participants in the murder, her brothers and herself.
Kriemhilde secludes herself at Worms, and mourns her dead for thirteen long years. During all this weary time no single word is addressed by her to Gunther her blood-stained brother. The silence becomes intolerable; and to reconcile her and to divert her thoughts, the kings send for the Nibelung treasure of red gold and precious jewels which lies under dwarf Alberich's guard in the land of the Nibelungs. During four days and nights twelve heavy wagons haul the shining treasure from the hollow of the mountain to the waiting ship. A truce is patched up between the widow and the brothers, but she hates Hagen with a deep and silent hate. Her only consolation lies in chanty toward the poor. Hagen fears the effect of her liberality. He takes the treasure away from her and thus adds further to her debt of hate. Upon Gernot's advice, Hagen sinks the Nibelung hoard in the Rhine, at a place between Worms and Lorsch, and there it rests, according to popular belief, to this very day. Those who knew where it rested swore solemnly never to betray its hiding place, and not one of those who knew survived Kriemhilde's hate. Nemesis now passes from Siegfried the Nibelung to the Burgundian Nibelungs. The Nibelungs' distress begins with the second part of the national epic.
Far away in Hungary, Etzel had lost his wife, Helche, the song-famed queen. Fair Kriemhilde is proposed to him, and, after some doubts whether he should wed a Christian, he is persuaded by his great vassal Riidiger of Bechlarn to undertake the wooing. Riidiger himself is sent on the errand, and proceeds from the Etzel castle to Bechlarn, in Austria, where he is heartily received by his faithful wife, Gotelinde, and his blooming daughter. Gotelinde is deeply affected by the death of the good and noble Helche, and by the thought that she is to be replaced by another wife. At last the envoy arrives at Worms, where Hagen alone recognizes the hero with whom and Walthari of Aquitaine he had once associated at Etzel's court. The kings are not averse to the proposal of marriage, but Hagen, conscious of the irretrievable wrong which he had inflicted upon the queen and apprehensive of the effect of her independence and power, dissuades them: "You do not know Etzel; if you knew him, you would reject his wooing, even though Kriemhilde might accept; it may turn out disastrously to you." Gunther replies: "Friend Hagen, thou mayst not render loyalty; repair by kindly consent to Kriemhilde's happiness the sorrow which thou hast caused to her." But Hagen is unmoved: "If Kriemhilde wears Helche's crown, she will inflict upon us as much sorrow and distress as she will be able to. It becomes heroes to avoid harm."
This anticipation of horror, this foreboding of dreadful evil, continues throughout the lay, until the measure of woe is full. The kings are unconscious of the dark clouds gathering above their heads, but Hagen, in spite of his ferocious bravery, seems, though defiant throughout, to be pursued by Nemesis of the Furies. When Kriemhilde is informed of Etzel's wooing, she replies mournfully: "God forbid you to mock me, poor wretched woman. What shall I be to a man who has already won love from a good wife?"
Heartrending lamentations for the unforgotten and still beloved Siegfried break from the queen. To Rudiger, Etzel's envoy, she states: "He who knows my sharp pain will not ask me to love another man. I lost more in the one than any woman can ever gain." Still, she asks time for deliberation. Gernot and Giselher encourage her: "If anyone can reverse your sorrow, the man is Etzel; from the Rhône to the Rhine, from the Elbe to the sea, no king is powerful as he; rejoice that he has chosen thee for his partner in his glorious realm." "Woe is me, lamentation and mourning beseem me better than marriage; I can no longer go to court as befits a queen; if once I was beautiful, my beauty has vanished long ago." With dry eyes, in bitter pain, she awaits the morning. Nothing can move her to consent. At last, Riidiger vows to her under four eyes with a solemn oath: "And though you had in Hunland no one but me and my loyal kinsman and warriors, still anyone who causes sorrow to you, shall heavily atone for it by my hand." Instantly all the spirits of revenge are aroused in her breast; but Riidiger knows not the terrible thoughts that linger in her bosom, as he swears the solemn oath; he knows not that by his oath he dooms his child, his men, himself to a double death. Kriemhilde, with her heart thirsting for revenge, proceeds with the embassy to Etzel's court. Twenty-four mighty kings and princes are sent by her great husband to meet her. Attila's brother, Blodel, renders her homage; and so, too, does Havart, the Dane, and his faithful vassal, Iring, and of others a host. And there she notices, at the head of his men, whose faces shine forth defiantly from their wolf's helmets, a lofty, almost gigantic hero a lion-like man with his powerful shoulders and loins, cast as of iron; he resembles Siegfried in bright looks and royal brow; but in him Siegfried's serene youth is mellowed to manly maturity. Heavy storms have raged over the head of the hero, whose hair is bound with a regal diadem, whose right arm leans upon his lion shield. This is Theodoric the Goth, Dietrich von Bern of the saga, the greatest hero of the Migration period, next to Siegfried the centre of Teutonic epic, now an exile at Etzel's court until he returns as a victor to the dominions of his fathers.
The strength and majesty of this heroic warrior appeal to the heart of Kriemhilde, but appeal only as the means to the accomplishment of sure revenge on the murderers of her husband, Siegfried. The marriage feast is celebrated at Vienna for seventeen days with profuse magnificence and numberless gifts to the bride; but Kriemhilde's heart is faithful to her first and only love.