in the hope of obtaining his treasure, and kills him. According
to this view Hagen was originally the king, but later sinks to a
subordinate position through the subsequent connection of the
story with the Burgundians. It is of course useless to hunt for
the date of such an episode in history. Such a murder could have
frequently occurred, and can be localized anywhere. Very early
we find this Hagen story united with the Siegfried legend. If
the latter is mythological, then we have a heterogeneous
combination, a mythical legend grafted on a purely human one.
This Boer thinks unlikely, and presents a number of arguments to
disprove the mythical character of the Siegfried story, into
which we cannot enter here. He comes, however, to the
conclusion, that the Siegfried tale is likewise purely human, and
consisted originally of the murder of relatives, that is, a
repetition of the Hagen title. Siegfried is married to Hagen's
sister, and is killed by his brother-in-law because of his
treasure. The kernel of the legend is, therefore, the enmity
between relatives, which exists in two forms, the one in which
the son-in-law kills his father-in-law, as in the "Helgi" saga,
the other in which Hagen kills his son-in-law and is killed by
him, too, as in the "Hilde" saga. The German tradition tries to
combine the two by introducing the new feature, that Kriemhild
causes the death of her relatives, in order to avenge her first
husband. Boer is of the opinion that both the Norse and the
German versions have forgotten the original connection between
the two stories, and that this connection was nothing more nor
less than the common motive of the treasure. The same treasure,
which causes Hagen to murder Siegfried, causes his own death in
turn through the greed of Attila. There was originally,
according to Boer, no question of revenge, except the revenge of