Women of the Teutonic Nations Part 4

The saga material is divisible into the group or tribal cycles, and every cycle revolves around a galaxy of great, good, heroic, or evil women. This saga literature, in fact, furnishes us with a perfect portrait gallery of the German women of the two most important and formative periods of their race. We have mentioned in the previous chapter a few of the Hunnish cycle around Attila (_Etzel_). Of these Ildico and Hildegund are preeminent. We have alluded to the historical women of the Ostrogoth cycle those a.s.sociated with the great Theodoric or, as called in the saga, Dietrich von Bern (_Verona_). Other cycles there are: the Norse, embracing Beowulf, King of the Jutes, and the Scandinavian heroes Wittich and Wieland, belongs to our theme but incidentally; the Langobard cycle, singing the Langobard heroes King Rother, Ortnit, Hugdietrich, and Wolfdietrich, and their adventures on the Mediterranean Sea and in a legendary Byzantine Empire, with a type of Oriental-Greek or Byzantine women, lies a little aside from our present consideration of German women. We can well confine ourselves to the _Nibelungen Saga_ and _Gudrun_, the German _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, for these two heroic sagas of the German nation are the true exponents of all the characteristics of German women and men. The heroic epic in its germ is historical, but its growth freed it from its fetters of fact and decked it with ornaments from the domain of imagination. Historical and mythical elements are, then, strangely blended in these sagas. They develop exotically, scarce one that does not grow outside its original sphere, a.s.similate foreign unhistorical matter, blur all chronology, and anachronistically poetize the dim recollections of a historical but long-forgotten underground. The resultant of the convolutions and accretions is a complex epic cycle of sagas originating at different times, but always deeply rooted in the Migration period, wherein lay all the origins of Germanic historical existence.

The _Nibelungenlied_ is the crystallization of the Burgundian Low Rhenish Hunnish cycle of Sagas. No more complete psychological record in poetic form of all the emotions, love and hate, vice and virtue, vanity and modesty, chast.i.ty and pa.s.sion, piety and wickedness, womanly gentleness and virulence, is imaginable. All the phases of human existence are put before us in the lives of the Burgundian royal brothers Gunther, Gernot, Giselher; their mother Ute; and their sister Kriemhilde, whose character, as outlined, is the grandest and the most complex woman's character in the literature of the world. Kriemhilde, as the wife of the Low Rhenish hero Siegfried, and Brunhild, in the Norse version of the Saga, a former Valkyrie, humanized only to make it possible for her to be the wife of Gunther and to bear a deep love for Siegfried, are the opposite poles of womanhood.

It is, however, very difficult to obtain through the epics a correct estimate of the status of woman at a definite period. This difficulty is due not only to the poetic and fict.i.tious characterization of the womanly types, but especially to the constant blending of ancient Germanic elements and twelfth century chivalry, knighthood, and romantic love (_Minne_), from which results an almost inextricable web of mythical and historical and purely romantic threads.

Siegfried wins Kriemhilde by a long wooing in the truly romantic fashion of the period of _Minne song_, but later inflicts upon her, in the truly old Germanic fashion, a severe physical chastis.e.m.e.nt for her quarrelsome temper. We find in the story traces of the primeval Germanic beliefs of the power of divination and prophecy. Kriemhilde has a momentous dream; she sees a beautiful falcon that she had reared with care seized and overpowered by two eagles. Her mother, Ute, interprets the dream correctly as foreshadowing the fate of her future husband:

"The falcon, whom thou cherished, he was a n.o.ble man, May G.o.d in safety keep him, for no one other can."

In the morning before the final catastrophe overtook Siegfried, Kriemhilde related to him with a sorrowful heart another dream:

"I dreamed last night of trouble, and how that two wild boar Chased you thro' the thicket, then were the flowers red.

That I must weep so sorely, in sooth! I have full need."

The magic arts and the cutting of _runes_ by women are no longer mentioned in the greatest epic of the Middle High German period, while they are yet in full sway in the Norse version of _Sigurd and Brunhild_, or, as she is there called, _Sigrdrifa_. The gift of healing, however, is attributed to women in both versions.

As we have seen in ancient Germanic law, woman is under the guardianship, or Mundium (hand), of her nearest male relatives. So she is at the period of the Nibelungenlied. Of Kriemhilde it is said:

"Her guardians were three kings, rich and of n.o.ble race...

The maiden was their sister; the princes had her in ward."

n.o.ble women resided usually in the inner secluded rooms, called _hemenate_. Siegfried did not see Kriemhilde at the Burgundian court for a whole year. Her favorite occupation in her seclusion was to embroider gold and jewels on silk, fashioning splendid garments for the bridal expeditions and courtly travels of the heroes. Rarely, and only on festal occasions, women appeared to receive distinguished guests. Then they are surrounded by their attendant warriors, who as a symbol of ready protection carry swords in their hands. Any offence to a n.o.blewoman is taken up by her entire following and is expiated in b.l.o.o.d.y fashion. Marriage by capture no longer occurs, yet traces of it can be found everywhere in the later bridal expeditions of Gunther and the Hegelings. On the battlefield, Siegfried pays no gold for his bride, it is true, but he has to earn her in a hard struggle against the enemies of her three brothers.

The lot of woman is suffering and sorrow and care, as evidenced from such verses as:

"Whatever sufferings fall to the lot of the men, All those are wept over by the women."

This is the tenor of all the epic songs. The _Nibelungenlied_ has devoted an epilogue, _The Lamentation_, to the expression of those sentiments. There are constant allusions to woman's woes: here, the death of a hero is "lamented by many a woman;" there, "heavy heartache hara.s.ses the women;" "all the worthy women weep over him."

We may, after this brief introduction, consider the great characters of the lay. A peculiar position in the Germanic heroic epic is occupied by Helche, King Attila's first consort. Although a pagan, the conception left to us of the wife of the dread Hunnish king is of a woman who has become almost entirely Germanized. Because of her traits of mildness, kindness, and purity, she appears as the ideal of a true German queen, just as Attila himself, with his Germanized name (attila, little father, from Gothic _atta_, father), appears in many lays as a good, liberal, kind-hearted king. Helche is especially motherly toward the numerous n.o.blewomen who stay at the Hunnish court as hostages; she is a friend of the conquered and the helper of the miserable and the exiled. Dietrich von Bern, in his exile from home and throne, is under her protection.

She obtained for him from Etzel money and men for the reconquest of Bern; and when the enterprise failed, she intervened for him with the irate Hunnish king, and even gave him her sister's daughter in marriage.

When the king complained of the obnoxious foreign fugitives, she convinced him that the reception of a hero like Dietrich could only be of advantage to his realm and an honor to himself. At the death of Helche there is universal mourning throughout the land; for, says the chronicler, a true mother of the innocent virgins and of the entire people has departed.

In the foreground of all the epics of the German cycles stand the two greatest characters of ancient womanhood, Kriemhilde and Brunhild.

At Worms on the Rhine in the land of the Burgundians, the three royal brothers Gunther, Gernot, and Giselher guard a glorious treasure, Princess Kriemhilde. Many kings and heroes try to win her hand, but she is indifferent to the love of men. The most glorious hero of the age, Siegfried, hears the fame of Kriemhilde's beauty and proceeds with a numerous and splendid retinue from his royal father's castle at Xanten up the Rhine to Worms to win Kriemhilde. After a six days' sail, Siegfried and his escort reach their destination, and without disclosing their ident.i.ty they ride to court. Only Hagen of Tronje is able to give information to the Burgundians regarding the strange heroes. He relates how Siegfried, in spite of his youth, has already accomplished great exploits, how he slew the dragon and became invulnerable by bathing in the blood of the monster, how he defeated the Nibelungs and seized their immense treasure. Hagen exhorts Gunther to receive the youthful hero with kindness and honor in order that he may not "earn the hatred of the bold prince."

Hagen's advice is followed and Siegfried is received by the Burgundians with great honor. But before he is permitted even to look upon the beautiful Kriemhilde, he is invited to aid the Burgundians in reducing to subjection the rebellious kings Ludeger of Saxony and Ludegast of Denmark. Upon his triumphal return from the war his eyes are gladdened by the sight of the royal maid at the festive celebration of the victory. The princess attended by a hundred sword-bearing chamberlains and a hundred richly adorned gentlewomen, steps forth from her _hemenate_, or as says the lay:

"Then came the lovely one, as does the rosy morn Through sombre clouds advancing...

As the bright Queen of heaven steps forth before each star Above the clouds high soaring, in shine so pure and clear, So shone the beauteous maiden o'er other ladies nigh."

The very first glance exchanged between the princess and the prince betrays their mutual love. Siegfried is more than ever resolved to win the beauteous maiden for his wife.

But the time of trial is not yet over for him. King Gunther has set his heart upon the war maid Brunhild, Queen of the Isenstein, and he is determined to win her as his wife. Siegfried's presence seems to offer a favorable opportunity to press his suit; he therefore agrees that if the hero from the Netherlands will help him to obtain the hand of Brunhild, he may marry Kriemhilde. With a heavy heart for well he knows Brunhild Siegfried consents. Accompanied by but a few warriors, Gunther and Siegfried sail down the Rhine, and after a twelve days' journey they land on Isenstein. In sight of the royal castle, surmounted by eighty-six towers rising in gloomy magnificence, Siegfried, in order to pa.s.s for a va.s.sal, holds the stirrup of Gunther. Brunhild receives the dragon slayer, whose fame and glory are well known to her, with the words:

"'Welcome you are, Sir Siegfried, here to this my land.

What means your journey hither, now let me understand?'

Quoth Siegfried: 'Lady Brunhild, great thanks to you I owe, That you, most gentle princess, should deign to greet me so Before this n.o.ble hero who stands beside me here; For he is my master...

He is by name Gunther, a mighty King and dread; If he your love can conquer, his fondest wish is sped.'"

Brunhild proclaims the conditions upon which she may be won. The hero who wishes to win her to wife must conquer her in three games: spear throwing, stone throwing, and leaping. If he fails in one of the three tests he must lose his head. Gunther declares himself ready for the trial though he feels that his strength is not equal to the superhuman power of Brunhild. Siegfried comes to his friend's a.s.sistance, and clad in his Tarn-cap which he had won from the Nibelung treasure, and which makes him invisible, he undertakes the task while Gunther merely executes the gesture of the action. Brunhild is defeated and with forebodings of evil follows the Burgundian king to Worms where a joyful double marriage is celebrated. Then Siegfried takes his bride to Xanten, his capital, where he pa.s.ses ten years of peace and happiness. But the Norns, the Fates, have decreed that his joy shall not endure. King Gunther invites his friend and his sister to a great festival at Worms at the time of the summer solstice. On the eleventh day before Vespers, during the walk to church, a fatal quarrel breaks out between the queens. The quarrel is precipitated by a question of precedence.

Brunhild, consumed by jealousy of Siegfried's heroic fame and Kriemhilde's happiness, insultingly taunts the latter that her consort is after all but a va.s.sal of Gunther, an accusation which Kriemhilde violently rejects. The two queens part with vehement words. Kriemhilde threatens:

'"Since thou hast my Siegfried claimed as thy subject now, So shall this very day the knights of both kings see, Whether, before the Queen, the church I enter may.'"

Arrived at the same moment at the entrance to the church, Brunhild calls out to her sister-in-law:

"'Before wife of a monarch, a subject shall not go.'"

Kriemhilde, forgetting herself and all about her, breaks out in terrible pa.s.sion:

"'Couldst thou have kept silent, 't would have been for thy good.

Thou hast thyself dishonored thine own body fair; How could a concubine as a king's wife appear?'

'Whom wouldst thou a concubine?' speaks the haughty Queen.

'That will I thee,' quoth Kriemhild; 'thy body fair, I ween, Was at first embraced by Siegfried, my dear man; 'Sooth was it not my brother who thy maidenhood won.'"

In the agony of shame, Brunhild sank with tears on the threshold.

Kriemhilde pa.s.ses through the door of the church with her attendants, but

"For this must soon perish many knights, brave and good."

The insulted queen swears vengeance; Siegfried's blood alone can wash away her shame. Here begins the work of fierce, grim Hagen, one of the most sombre characters in German legend. Brunhild wins for the execution of her revenge this knight, with his fearful record of crime and pa.s.sion, though with, on the other hand, his tragic greatness and his unfaltering devotion to his king and master, to whom he is joined by the ties of absolute loyalty. As justified by his oath of va.s.salage he vows to slay the man who has insulted his sovereign. Gunther reluctantly consents to the murder of the man to whom he is so deeply indebted; Giselher, who decidedly rejects the murderous project, is outvoted.

A treacherous plan is concocted, and to make the perfidy still more flagrant Kriemhilde's innocent cooperation is mendaciously engaged. As Siegfried, after his bath in the blood of the dragon whom he had slain, is invulnerable except at one point between the shoulder-blades where a fallen linden leaf had prevented the skin from becoming "h.o.r.n.y,"

Kriemhilde is persuaded by Hagen to mark the spot with red silk that he may protect him from harm. A hunt is chosen as the occasion for Siegfried's murder. While Siegfried stoops to a fountain to drink the limpid water, wine having intentionally been kept away from the hunting party, he is pierced by Gunther's va.s.sal through the silken mark indicated by his innocent, loving wife. He sinks to the ground dying, rallies once more to face his murderer, but his strength leaves him, and dying he commends Kriemhilde to Gunther's care:

"'Would you ever, Gunther, on this world again To any one show kindness, let it well appear, In truth and in favor, to my wife so dear.

Let it at least speak for her that she your sister is: By every princely virtue, pledge your troth in this.'"

The murderer causes Siegfried's corpse to be laid before the door of his sleeping queen. When leaving her chamber in the morning to go to early ma.s.s, Kriemhilde fainted on viewing the heartrending sight

"She sank down on the ground, no word more did she say; The lovely, joyless lady before them prostrate lay.

Kriemhild's anguish was terrible to view, So loud her cries and wailing that the room echoed through."

The body of the divine hero is laid on a bier in the cathedral. Then Kriemhilde challenges the king and Hagen to approach the shrine containing Siegfried's corpse and take the test that will decide their guilt or innocence. The ancient ordeal reveals the murderer, for at Hagen's approach the wound begins to bleed anew. In Kriemhilde's soul, that heretofore had been so filled with unspeakable love for her incomparable hero that other pa.s.sions found no place, there arises now an all-destroying hatred and l.u.s.t of revenge. The expression of this pervades the second part of the _Nibelungenlied_, and reaches its climax in an orgy of blood, in a cataclysm that overwhelms alike all the partic.i.p.ants in the murder, her brothers and herself.

Kriemhilde secludes herself at Worms, and mourns her dead for thirteen long years. During all this weary time no single word is addressed by her to Gunther her blood-stained brother. The silence becomes intolerable; and to reconcile her and to divert her thoughts, the kings send for the Nibelung treasure of red gold and precious jewels which lies under dwarf Alberich's guard in the land of the Nibelungs. During four days and nights twelve heavy wagons haul the shining treasure from the hollow of the mountain to the waiting ship. A truce is patched up between the widow and the brothers, but she hates Hagen with a deep and silent hate. Her only consolation lies in chanty toward the poor. Hagen fears the effect of her liberality. He takes the treasure away from her and thus adds further to her debt of hate. Upon Gernot's advice, Hagen sinks the Nibelung h.o.a.rd in the Rhine, at a place between Worms and Lorsch, and there it rests, according to popular belief, to this very day. Those who knew where it rested swore solemnly never to betray its hiding place, and not one of those who knew survived Kriemhilde's hate.

Nemesis now pa.s.ses from Siegfried the Nibelung to the Burgundian Nibelungs. The Nibelungs' distress begins with the second part of the national epic.

Far away in Hungary, Etzel had lost his wife, Helche, the song-famed queen. Fair Kriemhilde is proposed to him, and, after some doubts whether he should wed a Christian, he is persuaded by his great va.s.sal Riidiger of Bechlarn to undertake the wooing. Riidiger himself is sent on the errand, and proceeds from the Etzel castle to Bechlarn, in Austria, where he is heartily received by his faithful wife, Gotelinde, and his blooming daughter. Gotelinde is deeply affected by the death of the good and n.o.ble Helche, and by the thought that she is to be replaced by another wife. At last the envoy arrives at Worms, where Hagen alone recognizes the hero with whom and Walthari of Aquitaine he had once a.s.sociated at Etzel's court. The kings are not averse to the proposal of marriage, but Hagen, conscious of the irretrievable wrong which he had inflicted upon the queen and apprehensive of the effect of her independence and power, dissuades them: "You do not know Etzel; if you knew him, you would reject his wooing, even though Kriemhilde might accept; it may turn out disastrously to you." Gunther replies: "Friend Hagen, thou mayst not render loyalty; repair by kindly consent to Kriemhilde's happiness the sorrow which thou hast caused to her." But Hagen is unmoved: "If Kriemhilde wears Helche's crown, she will inflict upon us as much sorrow and distress as she will be able to. It becomes heroes to avoid harm."

This antic.i.p.ation of horror, this foreboding of dreadful evil, continues throughout the lay, until the measure of woe is full. The kings are unconscious of the dark clouds gathering above their heads, but Hagen, in spite of his ferocious bravery, seems, though defiant throughout, to be pursued by Nemesis of the Furies. When Kriemhilde is informed of Etzel's wooing, she replies mournfully: "G.o.d forbid you to mock me, poor wretched woman. What shall I be to a man who has already won love from a good wife?"

Heartrending lamentations for the unforgotten and still beloved Siegfried break from the queen. To Rudiger, Etzel's envoy, she states: "He who knows my sharp pain will not ask me to love another man. I lost more in the one than any woman can ever gain." Still, she asks time for deliberation. Gernot and Giselher encourage her: "If anyone can reverse your sorrow, the man is Etzel; from the Rhone to the Rhine, from the Elbe to the sea, no king is powerful as he; rejoice that he has chosen thee for his partner in his glorious realm." "Woe is me, lamentation and mourning beseem me better than marriage; I can no longer go to court as befits a queen; if once I was beautiful, my beauty has vanished long ago." With dry eyes, in bitter pain, she awaits the morning. Nothing can move her to consent. At last, Riidiger vows to her under four eyes with a solemn oath: "And though you had in Hunland no one but me and my loyal kinsman and warriors, still anyone who causes sorrow to you, shall heavily atone for it by my hand." Instantly all the spirits of revenge are aroused in her breast; but Riidiger knows not the terrible thoughts that linger in her bosom, as he swears the solemn oath; he knows not that by his oath he dooms his child, his men, himself to a double death.

Kriemhilde, with her heart thirsting for revenge, proceeds with the emba.s.sy to Etzel's court. Twenty-four mighty kings and princes are sent by her great husband to meet her. Attila's brother, Blodel, renders her homage; and so, too, does Havart, the Dane, and his faithful va.s.sal, Iring, and of others a host. And there she notices, at the head of his men, whose faces shine forth defiantly from their wolf's helmets, a lofty, almost gigantic hero a lion-like man with his powerful shoulders and loins, cast as of iron; he resembles Siegfried in bright looks and royal brow; but in him Siegfried's serene youth is mellowed to manly maturity. Heavy storms have raged over the head of the hero, whose hair is bound with a regal diadem, whose right arm leans upon his lion shield. This is Theodoric the Goth, Dietrich von Bern of the saga, the greatest hero of the Migration period, next to Siegfried the centre of Teutonic epic, now an exile at Etzel's court until he returns as a victor to the dominions of his fathers.

The strength and majesty of this heroic warrior appeal to the heart of Kriemhilde, but appeal only as the means to the accomplishment of sure revenge on the murderers of her husband, Siegfried. The marriage feast is celebrated at Vienna for seventeen days with profuse magnificence and numberless gifts to the bride; but Kriemhilde's heart is faithful to her first and only love.