symbol of winter, the dwarfs of darkness. Siegfried denotes the
bright summer, his sword the sunbeams. The youthful year grows
up in the dark days of winder. When its time has come, it goes
forth triumphantly and destroys the darkness and the cold of
winter. Through the symbolization the abstractions gain form and
become persons; the saga is thus not a mere allegory, but a
personification of nature's forces. The treasure may have
entered the saga through the widespread idea of the dragon as the
guardian of treasure, or it may represent the beauty of nature
which unfolds when the season has conquered. In the last act of
the saga, Siegfried's death, Wilmanns, the best exponent of this
view, sees again a symbolic representation of a process of
nature. According to him it signifies the death of the god of
the year in winter. In the spring he kills the dragon, in the
winter he goes weary to his rest and is foully slain by the
hostile powers of darkness. Later, when this act was connected
with the story of Gunther's wooing Brunhild, the real meaning was
forgotten, and Siegfried's death was attributed to the grief and
jealousy of the insulted queen.

Opposed now to the mythological interpretation is the other view
already spoken of, which denies the possibility of mythological
features, and does not seek to trace the legend beyond the heroic
stage. The best exponent of this view is R. C. Boer, who has
made a remarkable attempt to resolve the story into its simplest
constituents. According to him the nucleus of the legend is an
old story of the murder of relatives ("Verwandienmord"), the
original form being perhaps as follows. Attila (i.e., the enemy
of Hagen under any name)is married to Hagen's sister Grimhild or
Gudrun. He invites his brother-in-law to his house, attacks him