The Edda, Volume 2 | Page 4

with the former, which becomes the real centre of the action. In the Anglo-Saxon reference, the fragment in Beowulf, the second episode does not appear.
In this, the oldest version of the story, which, except for a vague reference to early feats by Sigmund and Sinfj?tli, consists solely of the dragon adventure, the hero is not Sigurd, but Sigemund the Waelsing. All that it tells is that Sigemund, Fitela (Sinfj?tli) not being with him, killed the dragon, the guardian of the hoard, and loaded a ship with the treasure. The few preceding lines only mention the war which Sigmund and Sinfj?tli waged on their foes. They are there uncle and nephew, and there is no suggestion of the closer relationship assigned to them by _V?lsunga Saga_, which tells their story in full.
Sigmund, one of the ten sons of Volsung (who is himself of miraculous birth) and the Wishmaiden Hlod, is one of the chosen heroes of Odin. His twin-sister Signy is married against her will to Siggeir, an hereditary enemy, and at the wedding-feast Odin enters and thrusts a sword up to the hilt into the tree growing in the middle of the hall. All try to draw it, but only the chosen Sigmund succeeds. Siggeir, on returning to his own home with his unwilling bride, invites her father and brothers to a feast. Though suspecting treachery, they come, and are killed one after another, except Sigmund who is secretly saved by his sister and hidden in the wood. She meditates revenge, and as her two sons grow up to the age of ten, she tests their courage, and finding it wanting makes Sigmund kill both: the expected hero must be a Volsung through both parents. She therefore visits Sigmund in disguise, and her third son, Sinfj?tli, is the child of the Volsung pair. At ten years old, she sends him to live in the wood with Sigmund, who only knows him as Signy's son. For years they live as wer-wolves in the wood, till the time comes for vengeance. They set fire to Siggeir's hall; and Signy, after revealing Sinfj?tli's real parentage, goes back into the fire and dies there, her vengeance achieved:
"I killed my children, because I thought them too weak to avenge our father; Sinfj?tli has a warrior's might because he is both son's son and daughter's son to King Volsung. I have laboured to this end, that King Siggeir should meet his death; I have so toiled for the achieving of revenge that I am now on no condition fit for life. As I lived by force with King Siggeir, of free will shall I die with him."
Though no poem survives on this subject, the story is certainly primitive; its savage character vouches for its antiquity. _V?lsunga_ then reproduces the substance of the prose _Death of Sinfj?tli_ mentioned above, the object of which, as a part of the cycle, seems to be to remove Sinfj?tli and leave the field clear for Sigurd. It preserves a touch which may be original in Sinfj?tli's burial, which resembles that of Scyld in _Beowulf_: his father lays him in a boat steered by an old man, which immediately disappears.
Sigmund and Sinfj?tli are always close comrades, "need-companions" as the Anglo-Saxon calls them. They are indivisible and form one story. Sigurd, on the other hand, is only born after his father Sigmund's death. _V?lsunga_ says that Sigmund fell in battle against Hunding, through the interference of Odin, who, justifying Loki's taunt that he "knew not how to give the victory fairly," shattered with his spear the sword he had given to the Volsung. For this again we have to depend entirely on the prose, except for one line in _Hyndluljod_: "The Father of Hosts gives gold to his followers;... he gave Sigmund a sword." And from the poems too, Sigurd's fatherless childhood is only to be inferred from an isolated reference, where giving himself a false name he says to Fafni: "I came a motherless child; I have no father like the sons of men." Sigmund, dying, left the fragments of the sword to be given to his unborn son, and Sigurd's fosterfather Regin forged them anew for the future dragon-slayer. But Sigurd's first deed was to avenge on Hunding's race the death of his father and his mother's father. _V?lsunga_ tells this story first of Helgi and Sinfj?tli, then of Sigurd, to whom the poems also attribute the deed. It is followed by the dragon-slaying.
Up to this point, the story of Sigurd consists roughly of the same features which mark that of Sigmund and Sinfj?tli. Both are probably, like Helgi, versions of a race-hero myth. In each case there is the usual irregular birth, in different forms, both familiar; a third type, the miraculous or supernatural birth, is attributed by _V?lsunga_ to