THE GUDRUNL THE increasing attention which is paid in this

country to the old Norse literature is partly a consequence of the increasing attention paid to the history of literature generally, and partly the result of the growing popularity of the fruits of German criticism. Mr. Carlyle's hero-worship has also contributed to throw something of an interest round the old fighting and tippling German and Scandinavian heroes. No doubt their dishevelled energies lay at the root of our Northern enterprise, and we are beginning to look back neon them with some of the compas- sionate indulgence and retrospective yearning with which in later life a sou recalls the softened memories of a Christopher North, or riotous, brawling father. But, besides this, many scholars, who care little for the muscular aspects of the subject, are attracted by the scientific chain established of late years by philological inquiry, not only between the 1 inguages, but between the mythical and moral elements traceable to the great primmval Aryan stock from which the sandy-haired Highlander and the bronzed Sepoy muti- neer, who bayonet one another, are equally descended. Few English books upon subjects not essentially ephemeral have been more widely studied by general readers than Professor Max Milner's treatises on the science of language, in which he has popularized and put into English dress the results of German philological learning, and Dr. Dasent's excellent edition of "Popular Tales from the Norse." They have told English readers how, in the grey dawn of incalculable time, our ancestors came from that central plain of Asia, now commonly called Iran, which was the habitation of the tillers and earers of the earth, as opposed to Turan, the abode of restless horseriding nomads, whom posterity called Turks. How, at a later period, but almost equally remote from our day, an eastern branch of Iranian emigration, passing the Indian Caucasus, swept through the defiles of Aff- ghanistan, and spreading over the fruitful plains of India, sat down and lived a life of transcendental thought, remote from action, and resulting in stagnancy. How, on the other baud, the Western and earlier stream of emigrants plunged from the first into a life of adventure, and under the various names of Celts, Greeks, Romans, Teutons, Slavouiaus, became the pro- minent actors in the drama of history, so far as we can trace it, perfected, more than any other race, society and morals, and laid the true foundations of science, art, and philosophy. In this aspect the Norse tales, apparently so trivial in themselves, acquire a scientific interest of the highest kind, showing the differential element a few degrees north from the mere favoured Greek and Latin waves of the same great stream.

if we were to attempt in the .fewest words to describe the character of the Northern mythology, compared with the mythology of Greece and Rome, we should say that the Northern gods and heroes were in substance the heroes and gods of Rome and Greece fading into fog. We are aware that this description may be objected to, as if we intended to convey that the Norse mythology were in any sense a corruption of the more Southern mythology of the same stock. This, of course, it is not. Later intercourse between Germany and Rome, and especially between heathen Germany and Christian Rome, undoubtedly led to the distortion of the old Northern legends. But, leaving this out of account, and remembering that originally both only drew from one primmval 4`. Gudrun. A Story of the North Sea. From the Mediteval German. By Emma Letherbrow. Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas. source without intercommunication, we think that the difference between the ultimate forms of the two mythologies is exactly an alogous to the difference of cl imate and circti thstance. III Grecian mythology there is a brilliancy, a definiteness of outline, a liropor- don of parts, an exquisite plausibility in the very miracles, a human probability about all the actions of the gods and heroe4, which impressed the old Greek much as the adventures of the Court of the Great Monarch must have influenced a French provincial of the time of Louis XIV. A people living in a clear, eondles-e. brilliant climate, on the boundary line, where action was com- pulsory, yet nature, transparently luminous, soon e!aborated their myths into thesame luminous transparency. On the other hand, the gloom and murkiness of the north, the looming dis- tortion of outlines, the grey sadness of the earth, the teasing trickiness and irony of nature, essentially remote from the crushing and abasing grandeur of the tropics—all these- are precisely the elements in which the Northern differs fron the Southern mythology of the Indo-European stocks. In both there is the almost indefinite Western variety compared with the stagnancy of the East—in both there is the logical develop- ment of all the results of action—in both there is the same anthropAnwphisin. But in the south of Europe it is a luminous. reality. In the north it is a dream ; the dream of a nightmare, in which forms, vivid for a moment, pass into other forms without any definite reason, and without any preparation. If any instances were wanted, we should name " The Giant who had no. Heart in his Body," " Why the Sea is Salt," " The old Dame and her Hen," in Mr. Dasent's tales, besides a host of others. But,. in addition to the nightmarishness, is the quaint devil-may-carish- uess of the Northern tales. When Venus is wounded in the "Iliad," Homer stops to make her set up the most woebegone screech. But in "Time old Dame and her Hen," for itistance, the first sister's neck is wrung, and then that of the second, all in the most matter-of-fact sort of way. The uarrator records the fact without raising his voice or altering a muscle ill his face. The gods of Greece, it is true, followed in the wake or the civilization of their worshippers, and as these grew more refined, lost one by one their grosser attributes. No doubt time- older Saturnian legends fell into the quiet contempt in later Greek times in which the Roman Catholic hagiology has falien with educated Catholics. But this process was denied to the Northern gods, who were first turned into devils by the mon!is, and then, wiped out of the heavens, before they had time to learn good manners. When, therefore, we compare Northern tvi th Southern European mythology, it is necessary to bear in mind that we are comparing kindred fauna, hut in different strata.

The Gudrunlied lies much further down the stream, and critics. assign its written form to the thirteenth century, the age of the Cathedral of Mayence, of the Nibelungenlied, and of Walther von der Vogelweide. Miss Emma Letherbrow, who has under- taken to put it into an English form, describes eloquently the main literary outlines of that century which excites the enthusiasm of German scholats. The kings of East Gothland of the race of the Amalungs, Hermauric, his nephew Dietrich or Bern, and his mighty Wellings,—Attila tile scourge of God, and his royal hostages Hildegonda and Walther of Aquitaine,—the three hapless kings of Burgundy, Gunther, Giselher, and Gernot, the dark Brunhilda and iron-handed Hagen ;--again, the kingly race of Lombardy, the Bothers, °alias, and Wolf- dieterichs ;—lastly, further north, the Danish and 'Frisian heroes of the Gudrunlied, amid the green flats that border the North Sea, the sandy island, the stormy friths and dreamy waves,—the steadfast and noble Hegeling maiden Gudrun, the crafty, cruel,. Norman Gerlinta, and the proud, motherly Hilda - all these- passed in review give the English reader a peep into what we may call not unfairly the Northern Hotneric gallery. Miss Letherbrow's version of the story of Gudrun, bow she was the fairest of the fair, and was wooed by Siegfried, King of Moorland e Hartmut, Prince of Normandy, and Herwig, King of Zealand;. and how, as in more modern novels, the maid loves not the richer, but the poorer suitor, and is happy in the end, is an hn- portant addition to Norse literature in this country. The book abounds with materials for the study of the earlier forms, the. true germs, of our family life and love, as distinguished from the Greek and Roman. We invite scholars to compare the Gad- runlied with the "Odyssey" on the one hand, and with Plautus on the other, and we think the comparison will, even in spite of the Christian element, throw far more light upon the aboriginal Teutonic temper than anything Tacitus has told us.

Indeed, Tacitus, though living so much nearer the men he de- scribed,looked at them through a prism, which essentially distorted

what he saw. His descriptions of the old German races, with a constant play of innuendo upon the Roman vices, though they con- tain many outward facts, are as untrue to the inner German nature in their whole tone and colour as were the eighteenth-century descriptions by the Chateaubriands and Bernardin de St. Pierres of the ideal savage they trumped up to ridicule and brand modern civilization. We venture to say that an ordinary reader will obtain a deeper insight into the old Northern thought and feel- ing, from a simple perusal of the Gudrunlied, even in Miss Letherbrow's version, than front the most exhaustive study of Tacitus, so dear to antiquarians. Unlike Tacitus, we look back in the straight line of our own thought. He looked from with- out and from aside.

We say even in Miss Letherbrow's version, for while we are grateful for the Gudrun lied in any English dress, we are com- pelled to add that the Homeric, let us say almost Odyssean, tone of the original is entirely lost in her prose compilation, which she has, moreover, invested with a modern sentimental tinge very different from the true feeling of the poem itself. Compare, for instance, the passage quoted by the authoress as a specimen from the old German :-

"Die so die rode hOrten, die liefen balde dan.

Dem snellen Hartmut wart ez kunt getfin. Bi im sawn mere sines vater manna, DO sagete im eines maere, daz or ze Gedrimen gienge dannen. Der sagete im offenlichen, Gebt mir daz boten bret, Der schoenen Hilden tohter ir dienest in enbot ; Daz ir komen ruochet zus ir kemenaten.

Si wil inch nimmer vremeden, si hat sich bezzer dinge sit beraten.' Da sprach der ritter edele, 'Du hugest fine 'lilt

Waere war din maere, ich gaebe dir boten brot ;

Gnoter bUrge drie und der zuo huobe riche Und sehzic bouge goldes, ja wolte iche immer leben wiinnichliche.'

DO sprach em n sin geselle, Ich lifin ez ouch vernomen,' " &c.

Thefive translation of this given by Miss Letherbrow herself is :—

4, Those who heard the speech ran quickly thence ;

It was made known to the swift Hartmut ; Some of his father's men sat with him, 'When one brought tidings that he should go to Gudrun. This spake to him openly, Give me errand-bread ; Hilda's fair daughter sends you her service, That you shall deign to come to her in her chamber; She will be strange to you no longer ; she has thought better of it.' Then spake the noble knight, Thou liest without need ; If thy message were true, I would give thee errand-bread, Three good burgs, and rich lands to boot, And sixty gold pieces ; and I should always live in bliss.'"

Even this translation, in which the hard Homeric simplicity of the original is lost, is, nevertheless, poor as it is, far nearer the truth than the following prose version, adopted in the body of the book :—

" When the King's servants heard these words, two or three of them ran speedily to Hartmut's hall, where he sat conversing with his father's knights.

"Give me largess,' said the first comer. I bring you good news. Hilda's daughter greets you, and desires that you shall straightway visit her in her chamber. She will be strange to you no longer ; she has bethought herself more wisely.'" "'Thou hest in vain,' said Hartmut, sadly. [This word " sadly " is sadly out of place, and emasculates the original.] `If the news were true, I would give thee rare gifts, a burg and many an acre of good land besides; for I should rejoice that I had won my life's delight."

This is the tone not of the Gudrunlied, but of the sentimental tea-cup story—the flimsy and indefinable twang "unto edifica- tion" which so many modern writers adopt, in order, as they think, to edify the juvenile mind, but which only demoralizes their own. A little spice of the cold, devil-may-carishness of the old German bards, so far, at least, as to restore the healthy masculine tone of English writing, would be of priceless value to many of our modern writers, who can say nothing until they have put their bead on one side and adjusted them- selves to a sentimental angle. How very odious nature would be ilnatuie were sentimental ! If the sheep walked senti- mentally, if the dogs barked sentimentally, if the nightingale sang sentimentally, if the trees grew at sentimental angles—if there really were sermons in stones and sentimentin everything, the world would be infinitely more nauseous than it even ever is. There would then be nothing left in nature to turn to as a solace for the falsification of feeling and the degradation of art.