The original, as was hinted above, must have had a tragic ending; the theme demands it, and not only a scrap of this same tale in Old Norse, but analogy of other cases, where similar matter is handled, sustains the demand. The father unwillingly kills his son. Such things must have actually happened now and again in the days of the comitatus, and ten Brink surmises such a case in the Finnsburg with Garulf and Guthlaf; but the killing of near kin remained the capital crime for a German. The frequency of it means, for the Sibyl of the Voluspa poem, the approaching end of the world. Here, then, was tragedy of the kind which thrilled a Greek audience at the fearful dilemma of Orestes. Loyalty to one’s lord was a Germanic virtue which grew stronger with the necessities of constant warfare, until it came to be supreme, and thus overshadowed the obligations of actual kindred. Hildebrand is a victim of the clash of these two duties,—and not for once only. Thirty years before this crowning tragedy, he was forced to choose between his lord, a banished man, and his wife and child. Now the child faces him in arms.
HILDEBRAND AND HATHUBRAND
. . . I heard it said[1] . .
that as foemen in fight sole faced each other
Hildebrand and Hathubrand, two hosts between.[2]
- ↑ Related, told in song and lay. “So the books tell us,” says the medieval writer. Even in Scottish ballads of the border a statement is backed by the assertion that “the chronicle will not lie.” The poet of the Heliand uses the “heard” formula, though the gospels are authority for his narrative.
- ↑ “Between two armies.” They meet, like two Homeric heroes, between the opposing lines, exchange speeches, and come to fight.
