perhaps, can scarcely realise, is faintly indicated in the beautiful hymn to Dêmêtêr; but winter, in the bright Hellenic land, assumed a form too fair to leave any deep impression of gloom and death on the popular mythology. The face of nature suggested there the simple tale which speaks of Persephone as stolen away, but brought back to her mother by a covenant insuring to her a longer sojourn on the bright earth than in the shadowy kingdom of Hades. But how completely the tragedy, to which this hymn points, forms the groundwork of the Volsung myth and of the Edda into which it was expanded, to what an extent it has suggested the most minute details of the great epics of the North, Professor Max Miiller has shown, with a force and clearness which leave no room for doubt.[1] Like Achilleus, Sifrit or Sigurd can be wounded only in one spot, as the bright sun of summer cannot grow dim till it is pierced by the thorn of winter. Like Phoibos, who smites the dragon at Pytho, the Northern hero slays the serpent Fafnir, and wins back the treasure of the Niflungar, while he rouses Brynhild from her long slumber.[2] This treasure is the power of vegetation, which has been lulled to sleep by the mists and clouds of winter; the seeds which refuse to grow while Dêmêtêr sorrows for her child Persephonê. The desertion of Brynhild is the advance of spring into summer and from it follows of necessity the hatred of Brynhild for Gudrun, who has stolen away the love of Sigurd. A dark doom presses heavily on him, darker and more woful than that which weighed down the toiling Heraklês; for the labour of Heraklês issued always in victory, but Sigurd must win his own wife Brynhild only to hand her over to Gunnar. The sun must deliver the bright spring, whom he had wooed and won, to the gloomy powers of cold and darkness. Gudrun only remains; but though outwardly she is fair and bright, she is of kin to the wintry beings, for the late summer is more closely allied to death than to life. Yet Gunnar, her brother, cannot rest; the wrath of the cold has been roused, and he resolves to slay the bright
- ↑ "Comparative Mythology," p. 108, &c. The story of Sigurd and Brynhild comes up again in the legends of Ragnar and Thora, and again of Ragnar and Aslauga. Like Brynhild, Thora with the earth's treasure is guarded by a dragon whose coils encircle her castle; and only the man who slays the dragon can win her for his bride. But Ragnar Lodbrog, who so wins her, is still the son of Sigurd. Thora dies, and Ragnar at length woos the beautiful Kraka, whom, however, he is on the point of deserting for the daughter of Osten, when Kraka reveals herself as the child of Sigurd and Brynhild. See Thorpe's Northern Mythology, vol. i. pp. 108, 113.
- ↑ The same myth, as we might expect, forms the subject of several of the "Sculptured Stones" of Scotland "The legend of a dragon holding a maiden in thrall until he is slain by a valiant knight, occurs more than once."—Burton, History of Scotland, vol. i. p. 150.
