in venerable lays, now collected in what we call the Elder, or Poetic
Edda; simple majestic songs, whose mellow accents go straight to the
heart through the ear, and whose simple severity never suffers us to
mistake their meaning. But, besides these gods, there were heroes of
the race whose fame and glory were in every man's memory, and whose
mighty deeds were in every minstrel's mouth. Helgi, Sigmund,
Sinfjoetli, Sigurd, Signy, Brynhildr, Gudrun; champions and shield-
maidens, henchmen and corse-choosers, now dead and gone, who sat
round Odin's board in Valhalla. Women whose beauty, woes, and
sufferings were beyond those of all women; men whose prowess had
never found an equal. Between these, love and hate; all that can
foster passion or beget revenge. Ill assorted marriages; the right
man to the wrong woman, and the wrong man to the right woman;
envyings, jealousies, hatred, murders, all the works of the natural
man, combine together to form that marvellous story which begins with
a curse--the curse of ill-gotten gold--and ends with a curse, a
widow's curse, which drags down all on whom it falls, and even her
own flesh and blood, to certain doom. Such was the theme of the
wondrous Volsung Tale, the far older, simpler and grander original of
that Nibelungen Need of the thirteenth century, a tale which begins
with the slaughter of Fafnir by Sigurd, and ends with Hermanaric,
'that fierce faith-breaker', as the Anglo-Saxon minstrel calls him,
when he is describing, in rapid touches, the mythic glories of the
Teutonic race.

This was the story of the Volsungs. They traced themselves back, like
all heroes, to Odin, the great father of gods and men. From him
sprung Sigi, from him Rerir, from him Volsung, ripped from his
mother's womb after a six years' bearing, to become the Eponymus of
that famous race. In the centre of his hall grew an oak, the tall