Epic and Romance | Page 4

Sigrun 95
Helgi Hiorvardsson and Swava 98
Helgi and Kara (lost) 99
The story of the Volsungs--the long Lay of Brynhild 100 contains the
whole story in abstract 100 giving the chief place to the character of
Brynhild 101
The Hell-ride of Brynhild 102
The fragmentary Lay of Brynhild (Brot af Sigurðarkviðu) 103
Poems on the death of Attila--the Lay of Attila (Atlakviða), and the
Greenland Poem of Attila (Atlamál) 105
Proportions of the story 105
A third version of the story in the Lament of Oddrun (Oddrúnargrátr)
107
The Death of Ermanaric (Hamðismál) 109
The Northern idylls of the heroines (Oddrun, Gudrun)--the Old Lay of
Gudrun, or Gudrun's story to Theodoric 109
The Lay of Gudrun (Guðrúnarkviða)--Gudrun's sorrow for Sigurd 111
The refrain 111
Gudrun's Chain of Woe (Tregrof Guðrúnar) 111
The Ordeal of Gudrun, an episodic lay 111
Poems in dialogue, without narrative-- (1) Dialogues in the common
epic measure--Balder's Doom, Dialogues of Sigurd,

Angantyr--explanations in prose, between the dialogues 112 (2)
Dialogues in the gnomic or elegiac measure: (a) vituperative
debates--Lokasenna, Harbarzlióð (in irregular verse), Atli and Rimgerd
112 (b) Dialogues implying action--The Wooing of Frey (Skírnismál)
114
Svipdag and Menglad (Grógaldr, Fiölsvinnsmál) 114
The Volsung dialogues 115
The Western and Northern poems compared, with respect to their scale
116
The old English poems (Beowulf, Waldere), in scale, midway between
the Northern poems and Homer 117
Many of the Teutonic epic remains may look like the "short lays" of the
agglutinative epic theory; but this is illusion 117
Two kinds of story in Teutonic Epic--(1) episodic, i.e. representing a
single action (Hildebrand, etc.); (2) summary, i.e. giving the whole of a
long story in abstract, with details of one part of it (Weland, etc.) 118
The second class is unfit for agglutination 119
Also the first, when it is looked into 121
The Teutonic Lays are too individual to be conveniently fused into
larger masses of narrative 122
III
EPIC AND BALLAD POETRY
Many of the old epic lays are on the scale of popular ballads 123
Their style is different 124
As may be proved where later ballads have taken up the epic subjects

125
The Danish ballads of Ungen Sveidal (Svipdag and Menglad) 126 and
of Sivard (Sigurd and Brynhild) 127
The early epic poetry, unlike the ballads, was ambitious and capable of
progress 129
IV
THE STYLE OF THE POEMS
Rhetorical art of the alliterative verse 133
English and Norse 134
Different besetting temptations in England and the North 136
English tameness; Norse emphasis and false wit (the Scaldic poetry)
137
Narrative poetry undeveloped in the North; unable to compete with the
lyrical forms 137
Lyrical element in Norse narrative 138
Volospá, the greatest of all the Northern poems 139
False heroics; Krákumál (Death-Song of Ragnar Lodbrok) 140
A fresh start, in prose, with no rhetorical encumbrances 141
V
THE PROGRESS OF EPIC
Various renderings of the same story due (1) to accidents of tradition
and impersonal causes; (2) to calculation and selection of motives by
poets, and intentional modification of traditional matter 144

The three versions of the death of Gunnar and Hogni
compared--Atlakviða, Atlamál, Oddrúnargrátr 147
Agreement of the three poems in ignoring the German theory of
Kriemhild's revenge 149
The incidents of the death of Hogni clear in Atlakviða, apparently
confused and ill recollected in the other two poems 150
But it turns out that these two poems had each a view of its own which
made it impossible to use the original story 152
Atlamál, the work of a critical author, making his selection of incidents
from heroic tradition 153 the largest epic work in Northern poetry, and
the last of its school 155
The "Poetic Edda," a collection of deliberate experiments in poetry and
not of casual popular variants 156
VI
BEOWULF
Beowulf claims to be a single complete work 158
Want of unity: a story and a sequel 159
More unity in Beowulf than in some Greek epics. The first 2200 lines
form a complete story, not ill composed 160
Homeric method of episodes and allusions in Beowulf 162 and Waldere
163
Triviality of the main plot in both parts of Beowulf--tragic significance
in some of the allusions 165
The characters in Beowulf abstract types 165
The adventures and sentiments commonplace, especially in the fight

with the dragon 168
Adventure of Grendel not pure fantasy 169
Grendel's mother more romantic 172
Beowulf is able to give epic dignity to a commonplace set of romantic
adventures 173
CHAPTER III
THE ICELANDIC SAGAS
I
ICELAND AND THE HEROIC AGE
The close of Teutonic Epic--in Germany the old forms were lost, but
not the old stories, in the later Middle Ages 179
England kept the alliterative verse through the Middle Ages 180
Heroic themes in Danish ballads, and elsewhere 181
Place of Iceland in the