These views respecting the zodiacal light and comets are independent in the main of those parts of Dr. Siemens' views which are manifestly inadmissible. They seem to accord well with possibilities if not with probabilities. A similar remark applies to two of the fundamental conditions of Dr. Siemens' ingenious theory. We may admit the possibility that the aqueous vapour and carbon compounds are present in stellar or interplanetary space; we may concede, though not perhaps quite so readily, that these gaseous compounds are capable of being dissociated by radiant solar energy while in a state of extreme attenuation. What we cannot admit, simply because it is inconsistent with human laws, is the third condition, "That these dissociated vapours are capable of being compressed into the solar photosphere by a process of interchange with an equal amount of reassociated vapours, this interchange being effected by the centrifugal action of the sun itself." As this condition is essential to the theory itself, we are compelled, regretfully perhaps, but still unhesitatingly, to give up that satisfaction which, as Dr. Siemens remarks, we should gain, could we believe that our solar system need " no longer impress us with the idea of prodigious waste through the dissipation of energy into space, but rather with that of well-ordered, self-sustaining action, capable of perpetuating solar radiation to the remotest future." Yet though not in this way, to this end all thoughtful study of the mechanism of the universe seems unquestionably to tend; not by centrifugal tendencies of the kind imagined, for none such exist; not by work which, viewed in reference to the universe as we know it, means endless production without exhaustion; but in other ways (associating perhaps our visible universe with others, permeating it as the ether of space permeates the densest solids, and in turn with others so permeated by it) there may be that constant interchange, that perpetual harmony, of which Goethe sung See all things with each other blending, Each to all its being lending, Wagner's "Nibelung" and the Siegfried Tale. BY KARL BLIND. I. IN a few days Richard Wagner's powerful musical drama-The Ring of the Nibelung-will burst upon the London public with all its mythic grandeur and scenic pomp. Siegfried's name will then be on everybody's lips. "Daughters of the Rhine" will sing their spell-songs in the green waves of the gold-glistening river; mocking the love-sick Dark Elf who is to rob them of the glowing hoard. Valkyrs, Virgins of Battle, headed by Brünnhilde, will shake the thunder-clouds with their stormy ride, as heralds of Fate. Giants, the builders of Asgard, who carried away the Goddess of Love in reward for their having reared the Heavenly Hall, will enter into a threatening contest with Wotan and Fricka—a danger from which the divine pair are only rescued by the wiles of the fire-god Loge, who filches the treasure from the Nibelung, and therewith ransoms Freia from the gigantic forces of Nature. But the curse placed by the irate dwarf, Alberich, upon the Ringthe talismanic symbol of power and most valuable part of the hoard— will work evil for Gods and men. Siegfried, the blameless, is destined to forge the main link in the fatal chain of tragic events. He, the offspring of the forbidden love between Siegmund and Sieglinde-who in their turn both hail from All-father when he had assumed Wölsung shape -will, no doubt, destroy the poisonous Dragon Fafner, that guards the hoard. Siegfried will thus become the owner of the treasure, as well as wonderfully wise by having tasted the Worm's blood. But then, in spite of All-father's decree, he will also free the entranced Shield Maiden from the Blazing Rock, and bind himself to her who had disobeyed the God, by vows of eternal love. Having afterwards been made to forget her, in favour of Gutrune, by a magic potion in a King's Hall on the Rhine, Siegfried will unwittingly be the means of forcing Brünnhilde, his own early love, into an unwished-for wedlock with Gunther. Through such complication the Hero will meet with his death by the weapon of Hagen, who professes to avenge the betrayed Valkyr, whilst being in reality bent upon getting possession of the Ring. In these fateful struggles, Siegfried's mighty sword, an heirloom from his divine forebear, shatters the once invincible spear of the God, who in Wanderer's guise had crossed the path of his venturesome descendant. Wotan's power is thus sadly crippled. Over the Heavenly Hall a doom is approaching. Overcome with grief at the death of her own Siegfried whom she had wrongfully thought faithless, Brünnhilde resolves to unite herself with him once more and for aye, by spurring her steed into the flaming pyre on which his body is being consumed. Meanwhile the rapacious Hagen kills her lawful husband Gunther. But as Brünnhilde, before entering the pile, had drawn the charmful ring from Siegfried's hand and thrown it into the Rhine to be lost for ever, the greedy murderer of the Hero madly plunges into the stream, when the Rhine Daughters drag him down into the ever-rising flood. Finally, remembering the injury she once suffered from Wotan, the self-sacrificing Valkyr, seeing All-father's birds rising from the banks of the river, exclaims as she mounts her courser for the death-ride : Fly away, ye ravens ! Whisper to your Lord What here on the Rhine you have heard! By Brünnhilde's rock your road shall lie: The lowe that still burns there, lead up to Walball! For with the Doom of Gods the day is now darkened: Walhall's proud burgh! * Such are the outlines, necessarily very incomplete, of Richard Wagner's grand tetralogy: Rhine-gold; The Valkyr; Siegfried; and The Gloaming of the World of Gods. A who'e array of figures from German and Norse mythology comes up in that tragedy. May I now, without further ado, astonish some of the readers by saying that the hero of this eminently Teutonic drama, Siegfried, or Sigurd, was a Hun, and that as a Hun he is the nearest kinsman of the English? II. This point I will, before all, proceed to make good. In doing so, I begin with the Edda and other Norse records. Their Sigurd tales have by Richard Wagner been combined with the German tradition; and surely, he had the fullest right to do so; for in the Edda, also, the Hero is by no means a Scandinavian, but a "southern" (that is, a German) chief whose feats are performed near the Rhine. On the Rhine is the scene of the Icelandic account of the Killing of the Worm; of Brynhild's fire-encircled Rock of Punishment; as well as of Sigurd's murder by Högni. First, then, to settle the question of the Hero's nationality, or tribal origin: Sigurd's fatherland is, in the Edda and in the Volsunga Saga, called the Land of the Huns. He is described as a Hunic ruler. His forefathers were Hunic Kings. Herborg, who comes to console Gudrun at Sigurd's death, is a widowed Queen from Huna-land, whose seven sons, as well as her husband, had been killed in battle, whilst her father and her mother, together with her four brothers, had been whelmed in the waves of the sea. All this the Hunic Niobe says-had happened within a half-year: none was left to console her; herself she had to raise the pyre for her kinsfolk's death-ride to Hel. And before the six * All the poetical quotations contain my own English version. months even were over, she had become a captive, taken in war, when she had to do humble service, every morning, to the victor's wife; menially adorning the latter's person, and tying her shoes. Thus Hunic Queen conveys sad comfort to the relict of the murdered ruler of Huna-Land. So we read in the first Lay of Gudrun. In the second we find Sigurd's widow and King Theodric grieving together over losses each has suffered. Telling her first feelings of unutterable woe, Gudrun says:— No wail I uttered, nor wrung my hands; No sobs I had, as is women's wont. Again, "Hunic maidens, skilful in weaving tapestry and golden girdles," are promised to Gudrun by Grimhild, after the former had become reconciled with her brothers for the murder of Sigurd. So also Brynhild speaks of the castle of her kinsmen as the "Hall of the Hunic Folk"; and in connection with her, Hunic Shield-Maidens are mentioned.* Do, then, these Hunic designations point to the Hunns of the Mongol Attila, the "Scourge of God"? Most certainly not! III. In the Norse texts, the words "Huna Land," " Hun," and "Hunic," as well as "southern," are meant to describe Germany and the Germans. Sigurd was a Rhenish hero, like the one in the Nibelungen Epic. His father ruled in Frank-Land. In the Rhine-lands, also, according to the Edda, was the original dwelling-place of Völundr, or Wayland the Smith, who, as a mutilated captive in Sweden, speaks thus of his native country, and its gold-carrying river, in comparison with the North : * Volsunga Saga; 2, 19.—The Lay of Sigurd the Dragon Killer; iii. 4, 8, 18, 63, 64.-The Lay of Gudrun; i, 5, 24; and ii. 15, 26.—The Wail of Oddrun, 4.—The Greenland Tale of Atli; 2, 4, 7, 15, 16, 27, 34, 38, 42.-Comp. Wilhelm Grimm's Deutsche Heldensage. + Sinfiötli's End. Grani is Sigurd's horse, but also one of the appellations of Odin; and, as I have It was in the Rhine that the Hunic Sigurd whom the Edda sings, proved the sharpness of his sword Grani, which the skilful dwarf Regin had forged for him. Dipping the blade into the river, he let a flake of wool down the stream, when the good sword cut the fleece asunder as if it were water.* With the same sword he afterwards clove Regin's anvil in twain. In the Rhine, Gunnar and Högni (whose names are identical with those of Gunther and Hagen of the German Epic) hide the golden treasure, the "inheritance from the Dragon." So says Gunnar to Högni, in the third Lay of Sigurd the Fafner's Killer (26) :— Wilt thou help us, Högni, the hero to rob? Good 'tis to possess At ease to rule the gold of the Rhine, over many riches; Right well enjoying them in rest and peace. Thus the scene of the crime plotted against the Hunic chieftain is localised on Germany's great river. The Gnita-Heath, too, on which the Dragon lay, is, in the Norse texts, in the neighbourhood of the Rhine, not far from the "Holy Mountains" over which Sigurd had ridden. We recognise in them the Sieben-Gebirge, or Seven Mountains, whose number is a holy one. To this day, one of those hills is called the Drachen-Fels, the Dragon's Rock. The Seven Mountains lie south of the river Sieg. Its name may be in connection with that of Siegfried; river-names being apt-as we see on Trojan ground-to bear occasionally an heroic or divine meaning. It is on a hill in the German Frankland that Sigurd frees Sigurdrifa (Brynhild) from the magic slumber, into which she had been thrown by Odin, for having killed, as one of his shield-maidens, a Gothic King to whom the Lord of Hosts had promised victory. "In the south, on the Rhine, Sigurd sank down," says the "Fragment of a Brynhild Lay" (5), one of the most touching in the weird cycle of Eddic songs. In a prose note, German men (pýöverskir menn) are quoted for the report that he had been murdered in a forest, whilst others, in the North, had explained elsewhere, "Grani's path" probably means the Rhine, conceived under the image of Odin as a divine Water-Horse. *The second Lay of Sigurd the Dragon-Killer; 14. † Skalda: "The Niflungs and Giukungs;" and "The Tale of Atli ; " 27. The Song of Fafnir; 26. |