Part 8 (1/2)

The Teutonic poetry presents itself, at a first view, as the complement of Homer. Here are to be found many of the things that are wanting at the beginning of Greek literary history. Here are single epic lays, or cl.u.s.ters of them, in every form. Here, in place of the two great poems, rounded and complete, there is the nebulous expanse of heroic tradition, the outline of an heroic cycle, together with a number of episodic poems taking their origin from one point or another of the cycle, according as the different parts of the story happen to catch the imagination of a poet. Instead of the Homeric scale of epic there are a number of brief epic tragedies, the plots of which are chosen from the mult.i.tude of stories current in tradition.

Among these shorter epic poems, if such they may be called, there are to be distinguished great varieties of procedure in regard to the amount of action represented in the poem.

There is one cla.s.s of poem that represents a single action with some detail; there is another that represents a long and complex story in a summary and allusive way. The first kind may be called _episodic_ in the sense that it takes up about the same quant.i.ty of story as might make an act in a play; or perhaps, with a little straining of the term, as much as might serve for one play in a trilogy.

The second kind is not episodic; it does not seem fitted for a place in a larger composition. It is a kind of short and summary epic, taking as large a province of history as the _Iliad_ or the _Odyssey_.

_Hildebrand_, the _Fight at Finnesburh_, _Waldere_, _Byrhtnoth_, the _Winning of the Hammer_, _Thor's Fis.h.i.+ng_, the _Death of the Niblungs_ (in any of the Northern versions), the _Death of Ermanaric_, might all be fairly regarded as belonging to the first kind of story; while the _Lay of Weland_ and the _Lay of Brynhild_ cover a much larger extent of story, though not of actual s.p.a.ce, than any of those.

It is not quite easy to find a common measure for these and for the Homeric poems. One can tell perhaps from Mr. Arnold's poem of _Sohrab and Rustum_ how much is wanting to the _Lay of Hildebrand_, and on what scale the story of Hildebrand might have been told if it had been told in the Homeric instead of the archaic German manner. The story of Walter of Aquitaine in the Latin hexameters of _Waltharius_ takes up 1456 lines. Although the author of this Latin poem is something short of Homer, ”a little overparted” by the comparison, still his work is designed on the scale of cla.s.sical epic, and gives approximately the right extent of the story in cla.s.sical form. But while those stories are comparatively short, even in their most expanded forms, the story of Weland and the story of Helgi each contains as much as would suffice for the plot of an _Odyssey_, or more. The _Lay of Brynhild_ is not an episodic poem of the vengeance and the pa.s.sion of Brynhild, though that is the princ.i.p.al theme. It begins in a summary manner with Sigurd's coming to the house of the Niblungs, the wedding of Sigurd and Gudrun, the wooing of Brynhild for Gunnar; all these earlier matters are taken up and touched on before the story comes to the searchings of heart when the kings are persuaded to kill Sigurd. Then the death of Sigurd is told of, and the rest of the poem is filled with the tragedy of Brynhild and Gudrun; the future history of Gudrun is spoken of prophetically by Brynhild before she throws herself on the funeral pile. Plainly this cannot be considered in the same sense ”episodic” as the poem of Thor's fis.h.i.+ng for the Midgarth snake. The poems of Thor's fis.h.i.+ng and the recovery of the hammer are distinctly fragments of a legendary cycle. The _Lay of Brynhild_ makes an attempt to complete the whole Volsung story from beginning to end, while giving special importance to one particular incident of it,--the pa.s.sion of Brynhild after the death of Sigurd. The poems of _Attila_ and the _Lay of the Death of Ermanaric_ are more restricted.

It remains true that the great story of the Niblung tragedy was never told at length in the poetical measure used for episodes of it, and for the summary form of the _Lay of Brynhild_. It should be remembered, however, that a poem of the scale of the _Nibelungenlied_, taking up the whole matter, must go as far beyond the Homeric limit as the _Lay of Brynhild_ falls short of it. From one point of view the shorter episodic poems are more Homeric in their plots than either the summary epics which cover the whole ground, as the _Lay of Brynhild_ attempts to cover it, or the longer works in prose that begin at the beginning and go on to the end, like the _Volsunga Saga_. The _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ are themselves episodic poems; neither of them has the reach of the _Nibelungenlied_. It should not be forgotten, either, that Aristotle found the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ rather long. The Teutonic poems are not to be despised because they have a narrower orbit than the _Iliad_. Those among them that contain matter enough for a single tragedy, and there are few that have not as much as this in them, may be considered not to fall far short of the standard fixed by Aristotle for the right amount of action to be contained in an heroic poem. They are too hurried, they are wanting in the cla.s.sical breadth and ease of narrative; but at any rate they are comprehensible, they observe an epic unity. They do not, like certain of the endless French poetical histories, remind one of the picture of incomprehensible bulk in Aristotle's _Poetics_, the animal 10,000 stadia long.

Thus, though it is natural at first to imagine that in the old Teutonic poetry one is possessed of such separate lays or ballads as might be the original materials of a larger epic, an epic of the Homeric scale, this impression will hardly remain long after a closer criticism of the workmans.h.i.+p of the poems. Very few of them correspond in the amount of their story to the episodes of the Homeric poems.

Many of them contain in a short s.p.a.ce the matter of stories more complicated, more tragical, than the story of Achilles. Most of them by their unity and self-consistency make it difficult to think of them as absorbed in a longer epic. This is the case not only with those that take in a whole history, like the _Lay of Brynhild_, but also with those whose plot is comparatively simple, like _Hildebrand_ or _Waldere_. It is possible to think of the story of Walter and Hildegund as forming part of a larger story of the fortunes of the Huns. It has this subordinate place in the _Thidreks Saga_. But it is not easy to believe that in such a case it preserves its value.

_Thidreks Saga_ is not an epic, though it is made by an agglutination of ballads. In like manner the tragedy of _Hildebrand_ gains by its isolation from the stories of the other chiefs, Theodoric and Odoacer.

The stories of Walter and of Hildebrand, like the story of Hamlet the Dane, are too strong in themselves to form part of a larger composition, without detriment to its unity and harmony. They might be brought in allusively and in a subordinate way, like the story of Thebes and other stories in the _Iliad_; but that is not the same thing as making an epic poem out of separate lays. So that on all grounds the first impression of the Teutonic epic poetry has to be modified. If ever epic poetry was made by a conglomeration of ballads, it must have had other kinds of material than this. Some of the poems are episodic; others are rather to be described as abridgments of epic than as separate epic scenes. But neither in the one case nor in the other is there to be found the kind of poetry that is required by the hypothesis of composite epic. There are short epics that might conceivably have served as the framework, or the ground-plan, of a more elaborate work, containing, like the _Lay of Helgi_ or the _Lay of Brynhild_, incidents enough and hints of character enough for a history fully worked out, as large as the Homeric poems. If it should be asked why there is so little evidence of any Teutonic attempt to weave together separate lays into an epic work, the answer might be, first, that the separate lays we know are too much separate and individual, too strong in themselves, to be satisfactorily cobbled into a more expansive fabric; and, secondly, that it has not yet been proved that epic poems can be made by process of cobbling. The need of a comprehensive epic of the Niblungs was not imperative. Neither was there any demand in Athens, in the time of Sophocles and Euripides, for a comprehensive work--a _Thebaid_, a _Roman de Thebes_--to include the plots of all the tragedies of the house of Cadmus. It was not a poet, but a prose journeyman, who did this sort of work in the North, and it was not till the old school of poetry had pa.s.sed away that the composite prose history of the Volsungs and Niblungs, of Sigmund and Sinfiotli, Sigurd, Brynhild, Gudrun, and Atli, was put together out of the old poems. The old lays, Northern and Western, whatever their value, have all strong individual characters of their own, and do not easily submit to be regarded as merely the unused materials, waiting for an epic composer who never was born.

III

EPIC AND BALLAD POETRY

The ballads of a later age have many points of likeness to such poems as _Hildebrand_, _Finnesburh_, _Maldon_, and the poems of the Northern collection. The two orders of poetry are, however, not to be confounded. Their affinity indeed is clear. But the older poems in alliterative verse have a character not possessed by the ballads which followed them, and which often repeated the same stories in the later Middle Ages. Even the simplest of the older poems, which is the _Lay of Hildebrand_, is distinguished by evident signs of dignity from even the most ambitious of the rhyming ballads in any of the tongues. Its rhetoric is of a different order.

This is not a question of preferences, but of distinction of kinds.

The claim of an epic or heroic rank for the older poems need not be forced into a denial of all the other excellences of the rhyming ballads.

_Ballad_, as the term is commonly used, implies a certain degree of simplicity, and an absence of high poetical ambition. Ballads are for the market-place and the ”blind crowder,” or for the rustic chorus that sings the ballad burden. The wonderful poetical beauty of some of the popular ballads of Scotland and Denmark, not to speak of other lands, is a kind of beauty that is never attained by the great poetical artists; an unconscious grace. The ballads of the Scottish Border, from their first invention to the publication of the _Border Minstrelsy_, lie far away from the great streams of poetical inspiration. They have little or nothing to do with the triumphs of the poets; the ”progress of poesy” leaves them untouched; they learn neither from Milton nor from Pope, but keep a life of their own that has its sources far remote in the past, in quite another tradition of art than that to which the great authors and their works belong.

The Teutonic epic poems, the Northern poems at any rate, are ballads in respect of their management of the plots. The scale of them is not to be distinguished from the scale of a ballad: the ballads have the same way of indicating and alluding to things and events without direct narrative, without continuity, going rapidly from critical point to point, in their survey of the fable.

But there is this great difference, that the style of the earlier epics is ambitious and self-conscious, an aristocratic and accomplished style. The ballads of _Clerk Saunders_ or _Sir Patrick Spens_ tell about things that have been generally forgotten, in the great houses of the country, by the great people who have other things to think about, and, if they take to literature, other models of style. The lay of the fight at Finnesburh, the lays of the death of Attila, were in their time the poems of the king's or the earl's hall; they were at the height of literary accomplishment in their generation, and their style displays the consciousness of rank. The ballads never had anything like the honour that was given to the older lays.

The difference between epic and ballad style comes out most obviously when, as frequently has happened, in Denmark, Iceland, and the Faroes, the poems of the old school have been translated from their epic verse into the ”eights and sixes” or some other favourite measure of the common ballads. This has been the case, for instance, with the poem of Thor's Hammer, and the poem of the journey of Svipdag in search of Menglad. In other cases, as in that of the return of Helgi from the dead, it is less certain, though it is probable, that there is a direct relation between the two kinds of poetry, between the old Northern poem of Helgi and the Danish ballad of Sir Aage which has the same story to tell; but a comparison of the two styles, in a case like this, is none the less possible and justifiable.

The poems in the older form and diction, however remote they may be from modern fas.h.i.+ons, a.s.sert themselves unmistakably to be of an aristocratic and not a popular tradition. The ballads have many things in common with the other poems, but they have lost the grand style, and the pride and solemnity of language. One thing they have retained almost invariably. Ballad poetry may be trusted to preserve the sense of the tragic situation. If some ballads are less strong than others in their rendering of a traditional story, their failure is not peculiar to that kind of composition. Not every ballad-singer, and not every tragic poet, has the same success in the development of his fable. As a rule, however, it holds good that the ballads are sound in their conception of a story; if some are const.i.tutionally weak or unshapely, and others have suffered from the infirmity of reciters and transcribers, these accidents are not to be counted against the cla.s.s of poetry to which they belong. Yet, however well the ballads may give the story, they cannot give it with the power of epic; and that this power belongs to the older kind of verse, the verse of the _Lay of Brynhild_, may be proved with all the demonstration that this kind of argument allows. It is open to any one to say that the grand style is less attractive than the charm of the ballad burdens, that the airy music of the ballads is more appealing and more mysterious than all the eloquence of heroic poetry; but that does not touch the question.

The rhetoric of the older poems merely claims to be acknowledged for what it is worth.

The Danish ballad of _Ungen Sveidal_, ”Child Sveidal,”[30] does not spoil the ancient story which had been given in the older language and older verse of _Svipdag and Menglad_. But there are different ways of describing how the adventurer comes to the dark tower to rescue the unknown maiden. The ballad uses the common ballad forms, the common easy rhymes and a.s.sonances:--

Out they cast their anchor All on the white sea sand, And who was that but the Child Sveidal Was first upon the land?

His heart is sore with deadly pain For her that he never saw, His name is the Child Sveidal; So the story goes.

[Footnote 30: Grundtvig, _Danmarks gamle Folkeviser_, No. 70. See above, p. 114.]

This sort of story need not be despised, and it is peculiarly valuable when it appears in the middle of one of the least refres.h.i.+ng seasons of literature, like this ballad in the age of the Lutheran Reformation in Denmark. In such an age and among theological tracts and controversies, the simple ballad measures may bring relief from oppression and desolation; and call for thanks to the Danish ladies by whose care this ballad and so many others were written down. But grat.i.tude need not conceal the truth, that the style of the ballad is unlike the style of an heroic poem. The older poem from which _Child Sveidal_ is derived may have left many poetical opportunities unemployed; it comes short in many things, and makes up for them by mythological irrelevances. But it is composed in a style of which it is impossible to mistake the gravity; it has all the advantage of established forms that have been tested and are able to bear the weight of the poetical matter. There is a vast difference between the simplicity of the ballad and the stately measure and rhetorical pomp of the original:--

Svipdag is my name; Sunbright was my Father's name; The winds have driven me far, along cold ways; No one can gainsay the word of Fate, Though it be spoken to his own destruction.

The difference is as great as the difference between the ballad of the _Marriage of Gawayne_ and the same story as told in the _Canterbury Tales_; or the difference between Homer's way of describing the recovery of lifted cattle and the ballad of _Jamie Telfer of the Fair Dodheid_.