story of Siegfried has been stimulated by Wagner's operas and by
the reading of such poems as William Morris' "Sigurd the
Volsung". Prose has been selected as the medium of translation,
since it is hardly possible to give an accurate rendering and at
the same time to meet the demands imposed by rhyme and metre; at
least, none of the verse translations made thus far have
succeeded in doing this. The prose translations, on the other
hand, mostly err in being too continuous and in condensing too
much, so that they retell the story instead of translating it.
The present translator has tried to avoid these two extremes. He
has endeavored to translate literally and accurately, and to
reproduce the spirit of the original, as far as a prose
translation will permit. To this end the language has been made
as simple and as Saxon in character as possible. An exception
has been made, however, in the case of such Romance words as were
in use in England during the age of the romances of chivalry, and
which would help to land a Romance coloring; these have been
frequently employed. Very few obsolete words have been used, and
these are explained in the notes, but the language has been made
to some extent archaic, especially in dialogue, in order to give
the impression of age. At the request of the publishers the
Introduction Sketch has been shorn of the apparatus of
scholarship and made as popular as a study of the poem and its
sources would allow. The advanced student who may be interested
in consulting authorities will find them given in the
introduction to the parallel edition in the Riverside Literature
Series. A short list of English works on the subject had,
however, been added.

In conclusion the translator would like to thank his colleagues,