BOOK Dietrich of Bern. As we approach the later legends or romances, we find, as we might expect, a strange outgrowth of fancies often utterly incongruous, and phrases which show that the meaning of the old myths was fast fading from men's minds. Still we cannot fail to see that the stories, while they cannot by any process be reduced into harmony with the real history of any age, are built up with the materials which the bards of the Volsungs and the Nibelungs found ready to their hand. Thus in the story of Dietrich and Ecke, the latter, who plays a part something like that of Hagen or Paris, is exhibited in more lustrous colours than the Trojan Alexandros in the Iliad, although his nature and his doom are those of the Vedic Panis. Three knights, discoursing at Köln of brave warriors, give the palm to Dietrich of Bern, and Ecke who hears his praise swears that he must search through all lands till he finds him, and that Dietrich must slay him or lose all his praise. The incidents which follow are a strange travesty of the Volsung myth. Three queens hear the three knights. talking, and the beautiful Seburk is immediately smitten with a love as vehement and lasting as that of Kriemhild in the Nibelung Song. Her one longing is to see Dietrich of Bern and to have him as her husband; but the means which she adopts to gain this end is to send Ecke in search of him, armed with a breastplate, which answers to the coat of mail wrought for Achilleus by Hephaistos. This breastplate had belonged to the Lombard king Otnit, to whom it had been. a fatal possession, for as he slept before a stone wall (the wall of glass in the Hindu fairy tale) a worm found him and carried him into the hollow mountain-the tower in which Dietrich is confined, in the story of the giant Sigenot. This breastplate was recovered by Wolfdietrich of Greece, in whom it is hard not to see a reflexion of the Lykeian god of Delos, the Lupercus of Latin mythology; and it is now given by Seburk to Ecke on the condition that if he finds Dietrich he will let him live. It is the Dawn pleading for the life of the Sun. "Could I but see the hero, no greater boon could be bestowed upon me. His high name kills me. I know not what he hath done to me, that my heart so longs after him." It is the language of Selênê and Echo as they look upon Endymion and Narkissos; and all that is said of Dietrich recalls the picture of the old story in another dress. It is The form in which these myths are so closely with the general character of the Volsung and Nibelung legends, that it is unnecessary here to speak of them. Some remarks on the subject will be found in Mr. Ludlow's Popular Epics, i. 308, &c. 1 Tylor, Primitive Culture, i. 255. DIETRICH OF BERN. VI. 131 the youthful Heraklês as given in the apologue of Prodikos. He is CHAP. the father of the afflicted; what he wins he shares; all that is good he loves. Wherever he goes, Ecke hears the people recount the exploits and dwell on the beauty and the goodness of Dietrich. Under a linden tree he finds a wounded man, and looking at his wounds, he cries out that he had never seen any so deep, and that nothing remained whole to him under helmet or shield. "No sword can have done this; it must be the wild thunder-stroke from heaven." Ecke is soon to see the hero who smote down the wounded man; but no sooner is he confronted with the valiant knight, than he forgets the part which he ought to play if he means to appear as a messenger of Seburk and to do her bidding. He now speaks in his own character, as the Pani who bears an irrepressible hate for his adversary, while Dietrich is as passive in the matter as Achilleus when he declared that the Trojans had never done him any mischief. "I will not strive with thee," he says, "thou hast done me no harm; give my service to thy lady, and tell her I will always be her knight." But Ecke is bent only upon fighting, and while he refuses to be the bearer of any message, he calls Dietrich a coward and dares him to the contest. Nor can we avoid noting that although Dietrich prays him to wait till the sun shines if fight they must, Ecke by his intolerable scoffs brings on the battle while it is yet night, and the strife between the powers of light and darkness is carried on amidst a storm of thunder and lightning until the day breaks. Ecke then thinks that he has won the victory; but just as he is boasting of his success, Dietrich is filled with new strength, and when Ecke refuses to yield up his sword, he runs him through. But he himself is sorely wounded, and as he wanders on he finds a fair maiden sleeping by a spring, as Daphne, Arethousa, Melusina, and the nymphs are all found near the running waters. The being whom Dietrich finds is gifted with the powers which Oinonê cannot or will not exercise for the benefit of Paris. She heals him with a wonderful salve, and tells him that she is a wise woman, like Brynhild and Medeia, knowing the evil and the good, and dwelling in a fair land beyond the sea. But the story has been awkwardly put together, and of the fair Seburk we hear no more. This, however, is but further evidence of the mythical character of the materials with which the poets of the early and middle ages for the most part had to deal. den. The poem of the Great Rose Garden is a still more clumsy The Great travesty of the myth of the Phaiakian or Hyperborean gardens. The Rose Garbirds are there, singing so sweetly that no mournful heart could refuse to be solaced by them; but the cold touch of the north is on BOOK I. The romance of Roland. the poet, and his seat under the linden tree is covered with furs and samite, while the wind which whispers through the branches comes from bellows black as a coal. In this garden is waged the same furious fight which fills Etzel's slaughter hall with blood in the Nibelung Lay; but the battle assumes here a form so horrible and so wantonly disgusting that we need only mark the more modern vein of satire which has used the myth for the purpose of pointing a jest against the monastic orders. The monk Ilsan, who, putting aside his friar's cloak, stands forth clad in impenetrable armour and wielding an unerring sword, is Odysseus standing in beggar's garb among the suitors; but the spirit of the ancient legend is gone, and Ilsan appears on the whole in a character not much more dignified than that of Friar Tuck in Ivanhoe. The same wonderful armour is seen again in the beautiful romance of Roland. How thoroughly devoid this romance is of any materials of which the historian may make use, it is scarcely necessary to say; that many incidents in the legend may have been suggested by actual facts in the lifetime of Charles the Great, is an admission which may be readily made. When Charles the Great is made to complain on the death of Roland that now the Saxons, Bulgarians, and many other nations, as those of Palermo and Africa, will rebel against him, it is possible that the story may point to some redoubtable leader whose loss left the empire vulnerable in many quarters: but we do not learn this fact, if it be a fact, from the romance, and the impenetrable disguise which popular fancy has thrown over every incident makes the idea of verifying any of them an absurdity. Whatever may have been the cause of the war, Roland plays in it the part of Achilleus. The quarrel was none of his making, but he is ready to fight in his sovereign's cause; and the sword Durandal which he wields is manifestly the sword of Chrysâôr. When his strength is failing, a Saracen tries to wrest the blade from his hand, but with his ivory horn Roland strikes the infidel dead. The horn is split with the stroke, and all the crystal and gold fall from it. The night is at hand, but Roland raises himself on his feet, and strikes the recovered sword against a rock. "Ha! Durandal," he cries, "how bright thou art and white! how thou shinest and flamest against the sun! Charles was in the vale of Mauricane when God from heaven commanded him by his angel that he should give thee to a captain; wherefore the gentle king, the great, did gird thee on me." This is the pedigree of no earthly weapon, and to the list "Chronicle of Turpin," Ludlow, Ibid. i. 425. 1 The address of Roland to his sword is more magniloquently given in the THE ROMANCE OF ARTHUR. 133 VI. of conquests wrought by it in the hands of Roland we may add the CHAP. exploits of the good brands Excalibur, and Gram, and Balmung, and in short, the swords of all the Hellenic and Teutonic heroes. We are thus prepared for the issue when Alda (Hilda), to whom he has been betrothed, falls dead when she hears that Roland is slain. Kleopatra and Brynhild cannot survive Meleagros and Sigurd.1 mance of As useless for all historical purposes, and as valuable to the com- The roparative mythologist, is the magnificent romance of King Arthur. Arthur. Probably in no other series of legends is there a more manifest recurrence of the same myth under different forms. The structure of the tale is simple enough. Arthur himself is simply a reproduction of Sigurd or Perseus. Round him are other brave knights, and these, not less than himself, must have their adventures; and thus Arthur and Balin answer respectively to Achilleus and Odysseus in the Achaian hosts. A new element is brought into the story with the Round Table, which forms part of the dowry of Guinevere; and the institution of the Knights furnishes the starting-point for a series of exploits on the part of each knight, which are little more than a clog to the narrative, and may easily be detached from the main thread of it. They answer in fact to those books in our Iliad which relate the fortunes of the Achaian chieftains during the inaction of Achilleus. A third series of narratives, rising gradually to a strain of surpassing beauty and grandeur, begins with the manifestation of the Round Table in the form of the holy Grail; and the legend of the quest for the sacred vessel, while it is really an independent story, is in its essential features a mere repetition of some which have preceded it. In short, the original meaning of these myths had been completely forgotten by the medieval romancers; but, like the Homeric poets, they have felt the irresistible spell, and have adhered to the traditional types with marvellous fidelity. Stripped thus of its adventitious matter, the poem assumes a form The birth common to the traditions and folk-lore of all the Teutonic or even all of Arthur. and youth the Aryan nations. Not only is the wonderful sword of Roland seen again in the first blade granted to King Arthur, but the story of the mode in which Arthur becomes master of it is precisely the story of the Teutonic Sigurd and the Greek Theseus. We might almost say with truth that there is not a single incident with which we are not familiar in the earlier legends. The fortunes of Igraine, Arthur's mother, are precisely those of Alkmênê, Uther playing the part of Zeus, while Gorlois takes the place of Amphitryon. As soon as he This is the story of Lord Nann and the Korrigan. Keightley, Fairy Mythology, 433. 2 The scene in which Sigurd personates Gunnar in order to win Brynhild for the latter is but slightly different I. is born, Arthur is wrapped in a cloth of gold, the same glittering raiment which in the Homeric hymn the nymphs wrap round the new-born Phoibos, and like the infant Cyrus, who is arrayed in the same splendid garb, is placed in the hands of a poor man whom the persons charged with him, like Harpagos, meet at the postern-gate of the castle. In his house the child grows like Cyrus and Romulus and others, a model of human beauty, and like them he cannot long abide in his lowly station. Some one must be chosen king, and the trial is to be that which Odin appointed for the recovery of the sword Gram, which he had thrust up to the hilt in the great roof-tree of Volsung's hall, "There was seen in the churchyard, at the east end by the high altar, a great stone formed square, and in the midst thereof was like an anvil of steel a foot high, and therein stuck a fair sword naked by the point, and letters of gold were written about the sword that said thus, "Whoso pulleth out this sword out of this stone and anvil is rightwise born king of England.'" The incident by which Arthur's title is made known answers to the similar attempts made in Teutonic folk-lore to cheat Boots, the younger son, of his lawful inheritance. Sir Kay, leaving his sword at home, sends Arthur for it, and Arthur not being able to find it, draws the weapon imbedded in the stone as easily as Theseus performed the same exploit. Sir Kay, receiving it, forthwith claims the kingdom. Sir Ector, much doubting his tale, drives him to confess that it was Arthur who gave him the sword, and then bids Arthur replace it in the solid block. None now can draw it forth but Arthur, to whose touch it yields without force or pressure. Sir Ector then kneels to Arthur, who, supposing him to be his father, shrinks from the honour; but Ector, like the shepherds in the myths of Oidipous, Romulus, or Cyrus, replies, “I was never your father nor of your blood, but I wote well ye are of an higher blood than I weened ye were.” But although like the playmates of Cyrus, the knights scorn to be governed by a boy whom they hold to be baseborn, yet they are compelled to yield to the ordeal of the stone, and Arthur, being made king, forgives them all. The sword thus gained is in Arthur's first war so bright in his enemies' eyes that it gives light like thirty torches, as the glorious radiance flashes up to heaven when Achilleus dons his armour. But this weapon is not to be the blade with which Arthur is to perform his greatest exploits. Like the sword of Odin in the Volsung story, from the story of Uther as told by gods of the heaven and the light, and as such is exercised by Phoibos the fish god, and Dionysos the lion and bear. |