instance goes further back than even that of the Persian legend. What, then, are we to say? Did the fiction come from the East? or did it go to the East? or was it invented in both the East and the West? Let every one judge for himself; my own opinion is in favour of the last supposition.

I have now brought together more stories of fortune-making cats than ever were, I believe, collected before: whether they are of any value, or not, is another question, and one into which I will not enter. There are, however, persons who think that time is not absolutely thrown away though spent in tracing popular fictions to their source. For such chiefly has this chapter been written. I will now proceed to treat of higher matters.

"Per correr miglior acqua alza le vele

Omai la navicella del mio ingegno."

267

CHAPTER VIII.

THE EDDA-SIGURD AND BRYNHILDA-VÖLUND-HELGI—

HOLGER DANSKE-OGIER LE DANOIS-TOKO-WILLIAM TELL.

IN the Tunga Norræna (Northern Tongue), or ancient language of the North of Europe, are still existing two collections of mythological narratives of the actions of the gods and heroes of the Gothic tribes. These collections are named the Elder and the Younger Edda. The former, which is in verse, consists of poems collected in the latter half of the eleventh century by a man named Sæmund, who was a Christian minister in Iceland, and was named the Learned (Hin Frode), on account of his great knowledge, knowledge which among his contemporaries and posterity brought him under the suspicion of being at the least a white wizard. The purity of his life and manners preserved him from a worse appellation.

These poems, of whose genuineness there cannot be the slightest reasonable suspicion, contain the ideas and opinions of the Pagan Northmen, for it was only in the beginning of the eleventh century that Christianity was established by law in Iceland. Sæmund, who was born in 1054-57 and who died at the age of seventy-seven, probably

made his Collection towards the end of the century, when many were living who knew the poems by heart; perhaps some had been already written out, or the wooden tables on which the ancient Northmen used to inscribe their poems in their Runic characters were still in existence. At all events, Sæmund's Edda must be regarded as one of the most curious monuments we possess, and invaluable for the aid it affords us in ascertaining the opinions and manners of our forefathers.

The principal personages in the heroic poems of the Edda are Sigurd and Brynhilda, the artist Völund, and the two heroes named Helgi. All of these I am disposed to regard as belonging to the original fabulous cycle of the North, and as being to it what the Heroes of Greece and the Pahluwâns of Persia are to those of these countries.

In the case of Sigurd it is said, that as he is so renowned in the romance of Germany under the name of Siegfried', the probability is that he has been transferred from German to Scandinavian fable. That such may be the case I am far from denying; but on the other hand, when I consider the general independence of the Northern mythology, and the decidedly Northern aspect of several of the circumstances in the history of the hero, such as his killing of Fafner under the form of a dragon, and getting possession of his treasure,

1 Perhaps it is also the Anglo-Saxon Siward, the modern Seward.

and his first meeting with Brynhilda in the castle surrounded by fire, where she lay buried in slumber, Odin having pierced her with his sleep-thorn —I am inclined to assert that the legend sprang up on the soil of Scandinavia'. Possibly we might go further, and, giving it a most remote antiquity, pronounce it to be common to the whole GothoGermanic race!

I am led to believe it to be a most ancient legend from the following circumstance. The name Brynhilda is evidently the same with that of Brunichilda, or Brunehault, the queen so celebrated in the history of the Merovingian race in France. Now it is remarkable enough, that Brunehault was daughter to Athanagild, king of the West-Goths in Spain; and it is quite consonant to the general usage to suppose that she may have been named after a heroine of popular tradition. This would make the story of Sigurd and Brynhilda to have been familiarly known in the sixth century, or rather to have been brought with them from their Scandinavian abodes by the Goths at the time of their migration southwards, and would thus tend very much to confirm the opinion of its Northern origin. It may certainly be said that the heroine was named after the queen, or was given a name

1 Lachman, in an essay on the Lay of the Nibelungs, in a late number of the Rhenisches Museum, gives an opinion the same as that in the text. It has pleased me to find my own opinion thus confirmed. Others may have expressed themselves to the same effect, but I am not aware of it.

which was in common use, and that the legend may thus be a late fiction; but to any one versed in tradition and mythology, the preceding supposition will, I think, appear far more probable.

The history of Völund, the Dædalus of Northern mythology, loses itself in a similar manner in the uncertainty of antiquity. In a dissertation on this subject which has lately appeared', it is shown that not only is he the hero of one of the songs of Sæmund's Edda, and a distinguished character in the Vilkina Saga, and that his memory still lives in the North, but that his name and story are to be found in Anglo-Saxon poetry, and that his skill as an artist is celebrated in the German and French romance of the Middle Ages 2. If the date assigned in this work to the Latin poem on Walter Prince of Aquitaine be correct, the name of Völund was famous in France in the sixth century; King Alfred certainly spoke of him in the ninth, in such a man

1 Véland le Forgeron, par G. B. Depping et F. Michel. Paris, 1833. M. Michel, whom I have the pleasure of knowing, though a very young man, has a surprisingly extensive acquaintance with the French MSS. of the Middle Ages. His future labours will, I am convinced, be of the utmost importance. The chapter of the "Traditions Françaises" by him in the present work is of great value, and it proves the wide range of his reading in this department.

2 His French name is Galans, Galant, or Galland; his German one, Wieland. It is curious enough that both of these should be proper names at the present day. Perhaps the English Wayland, Weyland and Welland, come from the Weland of the Anglo-Saxons.