The Story of Sigurd the Volsung

The Story of Sigurd the Volsung

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Title: The Story of Sigurd the Volsung
Author: William Morris
Release Date: September 17, 2004 [eBook #13486]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THE STORY OF SIGURD THE VOLSUNG
Written In Verse By
WILLIAM MORRIS
With Portions Condensed Into Prose by Winifred Turner, B.A. Late
Assistant Mistress, Ware Grammar School For Girls And Helen Scott,
M.A.
1922

BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION
By J. W. Mackail
William Morris, one of the most eminent imaginative writers of the
Victorian age, differs from most other poets and men of letters in two
ways--first, he did great work in many other things as well as in

literature; secondly, he had beliefs of his own about the meaning and
conduct of life, about all that men think and do and make, very
different from those of ordinary people, and he carried out these views
in his writings as well as in all the other work he did throughout his
life.
He was born in 1834. His father, a member of a business firm in the
City of London, was a wealthy man and lived in Essex, in a country
house with large gardens and fields belonging to it, on the edge of
Epping Forest. Until the age of thirteen Morris was at home among a
large family of brothers and sisters. He delighted in the country life and
especially in the Forest, which is one of the most romantic parts of
England, and which he made the scene of many real and imaginary
adventures. From fourteen to eighteen he was at school at Marlborough
among the Wiltshire downs, in a country full of beauty and history, and
close to another of the ancient forests of England, that of Savernake. He
proceeded from school to Exeter College, Oxford, where he soon
formed a close friendship with a remarkable set of young men of his
own age; chief among these, and Morris's closest friend for the rest of
his life, was Edward Burne-Jones, the painter. Study of the works of
John Ruskin confirmed them in the admiration which they already felt
for the life and art of the Middle Ages. In the summer vacation of 1855
the two friends went to Northern France to see the beautiful towns and
splendid churches with which that country had been filled between the
eleventh and the fifteenth centuries; and there they made up their minds
that they cared for art more than for anything else, such as wealth or
ease or the opinion of the world, and that as soon as they left Oxford
they would become artists. By art they meant the making of beauty for
the adornment and enrichment of human life, and as artists they meant
to strive against all that was ugly or mean or untruthful in the life of
their own time.
Art, as they understood it, is one single thing covering the whole of life
but practised in many special forms that differ one from another.
Among these many forms of art there are two of principal importance.
One of the two is the art which is concerned with the making and
adorning of the houses in which men and women live; that is to say,
architecture, with all its attendant arts of decoration, including
sculpture, painting, the designing and ornamenting of metal, wood and

glass, carpets, paper-hangings, woven, dyed and embroidered cloths of
all kinds, and all the furniture which a house may have for use or
pleasure. The other is the art which is concerned with the making and
adorning of stories in prose and verse. Both of these kinds of art were
practised by Morris throughout his life. The former was his principal
occupation; he made his living by it, and built up in it a business which
alone made him famous, and which has had a great influence towards
bringing more beauty into daily domestic life in England and in other
countries also. His profession was thus that of a manufacturer, designer,
and decorator. When he had to describe himself by a single word, he
called himself a designer. But it is the latter branch of his art which
principally concerns us now, the art of a maker and adorner of stories.
He became famous in this kind