Skaldic, in style, in which other heroic cycles are represented. The
great majority of the poems deal with the favourite story of the
Volsungs, which threatens to swamp all the rest; for one hero after
another, Burgundian, Hun, Goth, was absorbed into it. The poems in this
part of the MS. differ far more widely in date and style than do the
mythological ones; many of the Volsung-lays are comparatively late, and
lack the fine simplicity which characterises the older popular poetry.

_Völund_.--The lay of Völund, the wonderful smith, the Weland of
the Old English poems and the only Germanic hero who survived for
any considerable time in English popular tradition, stands alone in
its cycle, and is the first heroic poem in the MS. It is in a very
fragmentary state, some of the deficiencies being supplied by short
pieces of prose. There are two motives in the story: the Swan-maids,
and the Vengeance of the Captive Smith. Three brothers, Slagfinn,
Egil and Völund, sons of the Finnish King, while out hunting built
themselves a house by the lake in Wolfsdale. There, early one
morning, they saw three Valkyries spinning, their swancoats lying
beside them. The brothers took them home; but after seven years the
swan-maidens, wearied of their life, flew away to battle, and did
not return.

"Seven years they stayed there, but in the eighth longing seized
them, and in the ninth need parted them." Egil and Slagfinn went to
seek their wives, but Völund stayed where he was and worked at his
forge. There Nithud, King of Sweden, took him captive:

"Men went by night in studded mailcoats; their shields shone by
the waning moon. They dismounted from the saddle at the hall-gable,
and went in along the hall. They saw rings strung on bast which the