in the earliest one (that in _Beowulf_), where even Sigurd does not
appear. The feud might easily have been transferred from him to Helgi
as well as to Sigurd, for invention is limited as regards episodes,
and a narrator who wishes to elaborate the story of a favourite hero
is often forced to borrow adventures. In the original story, Helgi's
blood-feud was probably with the kindred of Sigrun or Svava.

The origin of the Helgi legend must be sought outside of the Volsung
cycle. Some writers are of opinion that the name should be Holgi,
and there are two stories in which a hero Holgi appears. With
the legend of Thorgerd Holgabrud, told by Saxo, who identified it
with that of Helgi Hundingsbane, it has nothing in common; and the
connection which has been sought with the legend of Holger Danske is
equally difficult to establish. The essence of this latter story is
the hero's disappearance into fairyland, and the expectation of his
return sometime in the future: a motive which has been very fruitful
in Irish romance, and in the traditions of Arthur, Tryggvason, and
Barbarossa, among countless others. But it is absent from the Helgi
poems; and the "old wives' tales" of Helgi's re-birth have nothing
to do with his legend, but are merely a bookman's attempt to connect
stories which he felt to be the same though different.

The essential feature of the story told in these poems is the motive
familiar in that class of ballads of which the _Douglas Tragedy_ is a
type: the hero loves the daughter of his enemy's house, her kinsmen
kill him, and she dies of grief. This is the story told in both the
lays of _Helgi Hundingsbane_, complete in one, unfinished in the
other. No single poem preserves all the incidents of the legend; some
survive in one version, some in another, as usual in ballad literature.