original Narrative, but the second, or even the third redaction of one much earlier.
At what particuliar era the primeval fiction of the “Nibelungen” passed from its Mythological into its Historical shape; and the obscure spiritual elements of it wedded themselves to the obscure remembrances of the Northern Immigrations; and the Twelve Signs of the Zodiac became Twelve Champions of Attila’s Wife,—there is no fixing with the smallest certainty. It is known from history that Eginhart, the secretary of Charlemagne, compiled, by order of that monarch, a collection of the ancient German Songs; among which, it is fondly believed by antiquaries, this “Nibelungen” (not indeed our actual “Nibelungen Lied,” yet an older one of similar purport), and the main traditions of the “Heldenbuch” connected therewith, may have had honourable place. Unluckily Eginhart’s Collection has quite perished, and only his Life of the Great Charles, in which this circumstance stands noted, survives to provoke curiosity. One thing is certain, Fulco Archbishop of Rheims, in the year 885, is introduced as “citing certain German books,” to enforce some argument of his by instance of “King Ermerich’s crime toward his relations;” which King Ermerich and his crime are at this day part and parcel of the “Cycle of German Fiction,” and presupposed in the “Nibelungen.”[1] Later notices, of a more decisive sort, occur in abundance. Saxo Grammaticus, who flourished in the twelfth century, relates that about the year 1130, a Saxon Minstrel being sent to Seeland, with a treacherous invitation from one royal Dane to another; and not daring to violate his oath, yet compassionating the victim, sang to him by way of indirect warning “the Song of Chriemhild’s Treachery to her Brothers;” that is to say, the latter portion of the Story which we still read at greater length in the existing “Nibelungen Lied.” To which direct evidence, that these traditions were universally known in the twelfth century, nay had been in some
- ↑ Von der Hagen’s “Nibelungen,” Einleitung, § vii.
