CHAPTER II.



GUDRUN.


Maximilian I., Emperor of Germany, rendered a great service to posterity by
ordering that copies of many of the ancient national manuscripts should be
made. These copies were placed in the imperial library at Vienna, where,
after several centuries of almost complete neglect, they were discovered by
lovers of early literature, in a very satisfactory state of preservation.
These manuscripts then excited the interest of learned men, who not only
found therein a record of the past, but gems of literature which are only
now beginning to receive the appreciation they deserve.


[Sidenote: Origin of poem of Gudrun.] Among these manuscripts is the poem
"Gudrun," belonging to the twelfth or thirteenth century. It is evidently
compiled from two or more much older lays which are now lost, which are
alluded to in the Nibelungenlied. The original poem was probably Norse, and
not German like the only existing manuscript, for there is an undoubted
parallel to the story of the kidnaping of Hilde in the Edda. In the Edda,
Hilde, the daughter of Högni, escapes from home with her lover Hedin, and
is pursued by her irate father. He overtakes the fugitives on an island,
where a bloody conflict takes place, in which many of the bravest warriors
die. Every night, however, a sorceress recalls the dead to life to renew
the strife, and to exterminate one another afresh.