Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 69, No. 423, January 1851
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The death of Siegfried is the catastrophe of the first part of the poem. Kriemhild laments the death of her peerless knight with a love more than the love of common women, and which feeds itself on the intense hatred of the murderer, and the inly-cherished expectation of revenge. The hoary old Siegmund returns home in silent sorrow, for he is too weak to offer resistance; and, to complete the matchless wrong, the thorough-working, never-hesitating Hagan takes unjust possession of "the Niebelungen treasure" – a famous hoard bestowed by Siegfried on his wife – thus depriving the fair widow of the means of external munificence, as he had formerly stopt her source of inward consolation. Not avarice, but policy, was Hagan's motive for this, as for all his crimes. He was never a villain without a reason.
"'A prudent man,' said Hagan, 'not for a single hour,Would such a mass of treasure leave in a woman's power.She'll hatch, with all this largess, to her outlandish crew,Something that hereafter all Burgundy may rue.'"A deep desire of revenge now takes possession of the once gentle mind of Kriemhild; and all the milk of her affections is metamorphosed into gall. The best things, it is proverbially said, when abused, become the worst; and so the revenge of Kriemhild, revealed in the second part of an essentially Christian poem, works out a catastrophe far more bloody than the warlike wrath of the heathen Pelidan, or the well-calculated retribution worked by the bow of the cunning Ulysses, —
"For Earth begets no monster direThan man's own heart more dreaded,All-venturing woman's dreadful ireWhen love to woe is wedded."We have now finished a rapid outline of nineteen adventures of the Niebelungen Lay; and there are thirty such divisions in the whole poem. Our space forbids us to detail what follows with equal fullness; but the extracts already given will have been sufficient to give the reader a fair idea of the general character of the composition. A brief summary of the progress of the story, till it ends in the sanguinary retribution, may therefore content us.
For thirteen years after the death of Siegfried, Kriemhild remained a widow. At the end of that period a knightly messenger, Sir Rudeger of Bechelaren, came from Etzel, King of the Huns, requesting the fair sister of King Gunther to supply the place of his queen, "Dame Helca," lately deceased. Nursing silently the religion of sorrow, the widow at first refused steadfastly to give ear to any message of this description; Hagan also, with his dark far-seeing wisdom, gave his decided negative to the proposal, knowing well that, beneath the calm exterior of time-hallowed grief, the high-hearted queen, never forgetting by whose hand her dear lord had fallen, still nursed the sleepless appetite for revenge. The brothers of the king, however, his other counsellors, and Dame Uta, urged the acceptance of the proposal, with the hope thereby, no doubt, of compensating in some degree to the royal widow for the injury at whose infliction they had connived. But all this moved not Kriemhild; only the distinct pledge given by Rudeger that he would help her, when once the sharer of King Etzel's throne, to avenge herself of all her enemies, at length prevailed. She married a second husband mainly to acquire the means of avenging the death of the first. Under the protection of Margrave Rudeger therefore, and with bad omens only from the lowering brows of Sir Hagan, the widow of Siegfried takes her departure from Worms, and proceeding through Bavaria, and down the Danube – after being hospitably entertained by the good bishop Pilgrin of Passau – arrives at Vienna, where she receives a magnificent welcome from "the wide-ruling Etzel," and his host of motley courtiers, pranked with barbaric pomp and gold, that far outshone the brightest splendour of the Rhine. Polacks and Wallachians, Greeks and Russians, Thuringians and Danes, attend daily, and do knightly service in the court of the mighty King of the Huns. The marriage feast was held for seventeen days with all pomp and revelry; and after that the happy monarch set out with Kriemhild for his castle at Buda. There he dwelt "in proudest honour, feeling nor woe nor sorrow," for seven years, during which time Kriemhild bore him a son, but only one, whom the pious wife prevailed with her lord to have baptised after the Christian custom. Meanwhile, in her mind she secretly harboured the same deep-rooted determination of most unchristian revenge; and towards the dark Hagan delay only intensified her hatred. Accordingly, that she might find means of dealing back to him the blow which he had inflicted on her first husband, she prevailed on Etzel to invite her brothers, with their attendants, and especially Hagan, to come from the far Rhine, and partake the hospitality of the Huns in the East. This request, from motives partly of kindness, partly of curiosity, was at once responded to by all: only, as usual, the dark Hagan stands alone, and prophesies harm. He knew he had done a deed that could not be pardoned; and he foresaw clearly that, in going to Vienna, he was marching into a lion's den, whence, for him, certainly there was no return. But, with a hardihood that never deserts him, if for no other reason than that no one may dare to call him a coward, he goes along with the doomed band, the only conscious among so many unconscious, who were destined to turn the halls of Hunnish merriment into mourning, and to change the wine of the banqueters into blood. So far, however, his dark anticipations prevailed with his unsuspecting comrades, that they marched in great force and well armed; so that when, after encountering some bloody omens on the long road, they did at length encounter the false fair welcome of the injured queen, they were prepared to sell their lives dearly, and to die standing. No sooner arrived than they were well advertised by the redoubted Dietrich of Bern, (Verona,) then attached to Etzel's court, of the temper of their hostess, and of the deathful dangers that awaited them behind the fair show of regal hospitality. This information only steeled the high heart of Hagan the more to meet danger in the only way that suited his temper, by an open and disdainful defiance. He and his friend Volker, the "valiant gleeman," who plays a distinguished part in the catastrophe of the poem, doggedly seated themselves before the palace gate, and refused to do homage to the Queen of the Huns in her own kingdom; and, as if to sharpen the point of her revenge, displayed across his knees his good broadsword, that very invincible Balmung which had once owned no hand but that of Siegfried. This display of defiance was a fitting prelude to the terrible combat that followed. Though the knight of Trony was the only object of Lady Kriemhild's hatred, connected as he was with the rest of the Burgundians, it was impossible that the sword should reach his heart without having first mowed down hundreds and thousands of the less important subordinates. Accordingly, the sanguinary catastrophe of the tragedy consists in this, that in order to expiate the single sin of Hagan – proceeding as that did originally out of the false dealing of Siegfried, and the wounded pride of Brunhild – the whole royal family of the Burgundians or Niebelungers are prostrated in heaps of promiscuous slaughter with their heathen foemen, the Huns. The slaughter of the suitors, in the twenty-second book of the Odyssey, is ferocious enough to our modern feelings; but the gigantic butchery with which the Niebelungen Lay concludes out-purples that as far as the red hue of Sylla's murders did the pale castigation of common politicians. Eight books are occupied in describing the details of this red ruin, which a woman's revenge worked; and the different scenes are painted out with a terrific grandeur, that resembles more the impression produced by some horrid opium dream than a human reality. Victim after victim falls before the Titanic vastness of the Burgundian heroes – Gunther, and Gernot, and Gieselher, the valiant gleeman Volker, who flourishes his broadsword with a humorous ferocity, as if it were his fiddlestick, and, above all, the dark Hagan himself:
"Well grown and well compacted was that redoubted guest;Long were his legs and sinewy, and deep and broad his chest.His hair, that once was sable, with grey was dashed of late,And terrible his visage, and lordly was his gait."Finding her first attempt at midnight assassination fail, the Queen first commits her cause to Bloedel, the brother of Etzel; but in an instant his head was severed from his body by the might of Sir Dankwart. A terrible massacre ensues, during which the banqueting hall of King Etzel is turned into a charnel-house. Then Iring, the Danish Margrave, falls in single combat with Hagan. An infuriate rush is now made by the Huns against the Burgundians, who had fortified themselves in the hall; but against such men as Dankwart, Hagan, and Volker, they avail no more than hail against the granite rock.
"Thereafter reigned deep silence, the din of war was hushed;Through every crack and cranny the blood on all sides gushedFrom that large hall of slaughter; red did the gutters run.So much was through their prowess by those of Rhineland done."Kriemhild then, finding all her efforts with the sword baffled, sets fire to the hall; but, the roof being vaulted, even this application of the terror that scared Napoleon from Moscow, did not subdue the Promethean endurance of the Burgundians. The noble Margrave Rudeger is at last appealed to, as bound by his promise made to Kriemhild at Worms to prosecute the bloody work of her revenge to the last; but he also, with five hundred of his men, falls in the bloody wrestling, and with him his adversary Gernot, the brother of Gunther. Last of all, the haughty defiant spirit of the unsubdued Hagan draws, though unwilling, the redoubted Dietrich of Bern into the fight; and before his might Hagan himself is not slain, but taken captive, that he may be reserved to glut the private appetite of the sanguinary queen. "Bring me here John the Baptist's head in a charger!" Nothing less than this will satisfy the terrible revenge of Kriemhild. With her own hand she lifts up the terrible sword Balmung, and, meeting Hagan face to face in the dark prison, and charging him hot to the heart with his deadly wrongs, severs the head from his body. Kriemhild's revenge is now complete. But the revenge of Him who rules above required one other blow. This was immediately executed by the aged master Hildebrand, one of Dietrich's company. And the poem concludes, like a battle-field, many to weep for, and only a few to weep.
"There now the dreary corpses stretched all around were seen;There lay, hewn in pieces, the fair and noble queen.Sir Dietrich and King Etzel, their tears began to start;For kinsmen, and for vassals, each sorrowed in his heart.The mighty and the noble there lay together dead;For this had all the people dole and drearihead.The feast of royal Etzel was thus shut up in woe.Pain in the steps of pleasure treads ever here below."On the singular poem, of which a brief but complete outline now stands before us, many remarks of a critical and historical nature might be made; but we confine ourselves to three short observations, and with these leave the matter to the private meditations of the reader. First, that the poem is not "snapt out of the air," as the Germans say, but has a historical foundation, seems sufficiently manifest – Etzel being plainly the famous Attila, Dietrich, Theodoric the Goth, and counterparts to Siegfried and Gunther being producible from the early history of the Franks.17 Besides this, it is perfectly plain, from the analogy of the Cid, and other popular poetry of the narrative character, that not religious allegory – as some Germans would have it – but actual, though confused and exaggerated history, is the real staple of such composition. The nucleus of the story of the Burgundian Kings, and the revenge of Kriemhild, belongs, probably, to the century following that in which Attila was so prominent a character. But the complete poem, in its present shape, is not later than the thirteenth century. Its author is not known.
Secondly, the lay of the Niebelungen is extremely interesting, as disproving, so far as analogy may avail to do so, the Wolfian theory above alluded to, of the composition of the Iliad out of a number of separate ballads. Lachmann has tried the same process of disintegration with the unknown Homer of his own country; but a sound-minded Englishman needs but to read the poem as it has been given us, for the first time, complete by Mr Lettsom,18 in order to stand aghast at the extreme trouble which learned men in Germany often give themselves, in order to prove nonsense. "Nihil est tam absurdum quod non scripserit aliquis Germanorum."
Thirdly, as a poetical composition, the Lay of the Niebelungen will not bear comparison for a moment with the two great Greek works of the same class; it is even, in our opinion, inferior to its nearest modern counterpart, the Cid. The author of the Iliad possessed a soul as sunny and as fiery as those lovely island-fringed coasts that gave him birth; and in describing battles he rushes on himself to the charge, like some old French-eating Marshal Blucher, the incarnation of the whirlwind of battle which he guides. Our German minstrel takes matters more easily, and, while his pen revels in blood, sits all the while in his easy chair, rocking himself delectably, and, like a true German, smoking his pipe. His quiet serene breadth is very apt to degenerate into Westphalian flats and sheer prosiness. When, again, he would be sublime and stirring, as in the bloody catastrophe, he is apt to overshoot the mark, and becomes horrible. His heroes are too gigantic, and do things with a touch of their finger which no Homeric hero would have dreamt of without the help of a god. The fancy, also, of the old German is very barren and monotonous, as compared with the wealthy Greek. His similes are few; he has no richness of analogy. Nevertheless, the Niebelungen Lay remains for all Europe a very notable poem – for all lovers of popular poetry an indispensable study. Whatever else it wants, it has nature and health, simplicity and character about it; and these things are always pleasurable – sometimes, where a taint of vicious taste has crept in, your only curatives.
ADDITIONAL CHAPTERS FROM THE HISTORY OF JOHN BULL
CHAPTER I.
HOW DICK DEVILSDUST WENT UPON HIS TRAVELS; HOW THE JUGGLER MADE A PACTION WITH MOSES; AND HOW HE KEPT IT
You are, I suppose, perfectly aware of what took place before Juggling Johnny was appointed steward of Squire Bull's household. The story is not a pretty one; and, for the sake of those who are dead and gone, I shall not enter into particulars. Suffice it that Johnny was installed in the superintendence of the under-servants' room through the influence of Dick Devilsdust, Old Hum, the superannuated Quack, Bendigo the fighting Quaker, and a lot more of the same set, who lived in the villages upon the Squire's property, and bore anything but goodwill to the steady and peaceable tenants. Dick Devilsdust, in particular, was a walking pestilence to himself. For some reason or other, which I could never fathom, he had imbibed a most intense hatred to the military, and never could set his eyes upon a Redcoat without being thrown into a horrible convulsion, and bellowing like a bull at the sight of a Kilmarnock nightcap. As he grew up, he took to writing tracts between the intervals of weaving; and one of his first productions was an elaborate defence of Esquire North, who was then accused of having used harsh measures towards one of his tenantry. It is reported that Dick sent a copy of this pamphlet to the Esquire, with his humble compliments and so forth; but whether that be true or no, certain it is that he never received any thanks, or so much as a stiver's acknowledgment for having taken up cudgels against poles – an omission which, to the present day, he remembers with peculiar bitterness. So Dick thought it his best policy, as it really was, to turn his attention to the state of matters at home in Bullockshatch. Dick, you must know, dealt in a kind of cloth so utterly bad that no tenant on the estate would allow it to approach his skin. It was stamped all over with great flaring patterns of flamingos, parroquets, and popinjays, such as no Christian could abide the sight of; and if you took one of his handkerchiefs to blow your nose with, the odds are that its texture was so flimsy that both your fingers came through. He was therefore obliged to sell it to people living beyond the estate – Jews, Turks, heretics or infidels, he did not care whom, so that he could turn a penny; and some of those benighted creatures, having no other way of covering their nakedness, were content to take his rags, and to pay him handsomely for them. For all that, Dick was a discontented man. Did he meet a respectable tenant of Squire Bull going soberly with his family to church, when he, Dick, was pretending to jog to the meeting-house with his associates, (though Obadiah refused to certify that he was by any means a regular attender,) he would make mouths at the worthy man, and accost him thus: —
"So, sir! going to the tithe-eating parson's, I see – much good may it do ye. And if ye don't happen to have any particular sins this fine morning to repent of, I may as well remind ye that the quartern loaf is a farthing dearer than it ought to be just at the present time. Do you know what a locust is, you clod? You're a cankerworm, you base chawbacon!" And so on he would go reviling the honest man, who had all the mind in the world to lay him on the broad of his back in the mud – and would have done it too, had it been a working week-day. Another while, Dick would send the bellman round the village, and having called a special meeting of weavers like himself, he would harangue them, in some fashion like the following: —
"Look'ye, my lads, I'm an independent man and a weaver, and I don't care a brass for Squire Bull. I've got a seat in the under-servants' room, and if I am not entitled to make a row at meal-times I don't know who is. I'll tell you a bit of my mind – you're the worst-used set of fellows on the face of the earth, and if you have the least atom of pluck you won't stand it. Here are you obliged to take your flour from the Squire's tenantry, when you might get it cheaper if you went to the next town and bought it from Nick Frog, or Philip Baboon, or even Esquire North; though I consider his name an abomination, and would not give sixpence to save him from perdition. And then you have to find meal for Dragon the house-dog, and to victual some of the under servants; and it's no joke, I can tell you, what they eat. If you stand this any longer, you are a set of jolterheads, and nincompoops, and asses, and slaves, and base cowardly coistrels. Why don't you get up a stir, rouse the villages, and alarm the tenantry a little? Rely upon it, they will come to reason soon enough if you give them a hint or two about the duck-pond or the pump; and for my own part, I don't mind telling them so in the servants' hall."
And so he would go on, raving and spouting, telling everybody that Squire Bull was a superannuated idiot, with not half the sense of his natural bye-blow Jonathan – a chap whom Dick quoted on all occasions – till he got a kind of reputation as an itinerant orator; and the tag-rag-and-bobtail would come from any distance, if they were certified that Devilsdust was to give tongue.
Now, as to the grievance that Dick complained of, there was none. The tenantry, as you know, were obliged to pay a pretty high rent to Squire Bull for their farms, and to keep up all sorts of watchmen and gamekeepers, and rural police – besides a night-patrol on the canal – not only for the general security of the estate, but for the order of the villages, which hatched the most turbulent, mischievous, and discontented crew that ever an estate was cursed with. When one of these fellows in the villages fell ill, the tenantry were compelled to pay for his nursing and cure. When any of them were out of employment, and lounging about the market-place with their hands in their breeches' pocket, not knowing where to turn for a job, the tenantry, out of sheer goodness of heart, gave them a turn at ditching or draining; and though they worked very ill they got fair wages. More than two-thirds of all the webs they wove – for some of them were really skilful artisans, and not mere botchers like Devilsdust – were taken by John Bull's tenantry: they paid almost no rent to the squire – in fact, they were a great deal too well treated, and this indulgence had turned their heads. They wanted now to have nothing to do with the tenantry – beyond forcing them to take the same amount of cloth as before – and to get all their meat and bread from Frog, Baboon, North, Jonathan, and others, who lived off the estate, and who, they thought, would be uncommonly glad to take webs in exchange for provisions. None of these squires wanted webs, because their own villagers would have made a precious hullabaloo if they had introduced into their estates anything which was manufactured on the grounds of Mr Bull; but they made believe as if they would have no objections, at some future period, to meet the views of Devilsdust; and in the mean time, having a good deal of land which they wished to see properly tilled, they intimated to the villagers of Squire Bull, that they would have no objection whatever to sell them cattle and corn at a rate somewhat smaller than Bull's tenantry could afford.
This scheme never could have been carried into effect but for a difference, in the servants' hall. It is of no use now raking up old matters. Carried it was, to the great disgust of the tenantry, and Juggling Johnny was appointed steward. To do the Juggler justice, he was not altogether in favour of the plan. But he could hardly help himself, as, without the assistance of Dick and his backers, he never would have got the keys; so, being an adroit little creature, and as clever at spinning a pirouette as an opera-dancer, he turned his back upon himself, declared that the tenantry were labouring under an antiquated fallacy, and that he would put all to rights in the twinkling of a bed-post. So, much against the convictions of the Squire, who knew him of old for as incapable a squirrel as ever cracked a rotten nut, he sat himself down at the head of the table, and began to talk to the servants as though he were a second edition of Mahomet or the prophet Nixon.
And where do you think was Dick Devilsdust all this time? If you suppose that he was not looking after his own interest, you are consumedly mistaken. No sooner was the measure which swindled Squire Bull's tenantry carried in the servants' hall, than he went down to the country, called the villagers together, mounted upon an old sugar-barrel – which was now perfectly useless – and, brandishing a billy-roller in his hand, addressed them in the following terms: —
"Friends, Billy-roller men, and brothers! lend me your ears! The victory is won – we have done the trick! Cottonchester and the Mississippi are henceforward laid side by side. (Enormous cheering.) The devil take Bull's tenantry. (Applause.) They are dolts, asses, fools, idiots, chawbacons, and Helots. Bull himself is a blockhead, and we must look after his affairs. We alone, and not the tenantry, are fit to do it. (Cheering.) And I am not going to stand any nonsense about police or house-dogs. (Vociferous applause.) We know very well why they are kept; and I, for one, have no notion of being interfered with. You understand me? (Cries of "We do!") Well, then, I'll tell you what it is – the Juggler hasn't behaved to me at all handsome in this matter. Not that I care about it one toss of a Brummagem farden; but I think they might have paid a little more respect to the voice of the villages. Howsom'dever, d'ye see, I don't mind the thing; only, as my health's a little shaken as it were with doing jobs of yours, I think a slight jaunt would do me good; and as I have been obliged to neglect my business, at an enormous sacrifice, on your account, perhaps you wouldn't consider it an unwarrantable liberty if I were just to send round the hat."