98 THE DESCENT OF BALLADS

inspired by Firdausi's account of Sohrab and Rustem, or the Greek
Tsamados'and his Son. The battle of father and son is a theme as
old as the Telegoneia, and its medieval forms are too scattered to
be reduced to one original. In addition to the Hildebrand, Germany
offers the curious Ennanaric's Death, which reads more like an
exercise in the medieval epic style than a ballad. It also appears to
arise from the lost Dietrich* Saga. Between the Wolfdietrich and
the Hunter from Greece (Jdger am Griechenland) there is a con-
nexion, though distant.

The Nibehngenlied and Kudrun offer special cases of ballad and
epic contact, since they existed in both primitive and medieval
forms. The story of the Nibelungs appears in the Edda, the
Volsungasaga^ and the medieval German poem still extant. The
testimony of the Edda is twofold, since it relies on versions already
established in the north, and on later German information. (The
account given by Beowulf lies outside this connexion, since the
author lived before Sigurd-Siegfried was invented.) The legend
has given no German ballads, but several in Scandinavia. Once
again, the Thidrekssaga intervenes, through the incorporation of
the story of the Volsungs. The Faeroese Regin the Smith goes
back, apparently, to a lost twelfth-century original, distinct from
the Eddie Regiminal; the Brinhildar-tdttur depends on the Thid-
rekssagaj Volsungasaga, and some other source; and the Hogna-
tditiir on the Thidrekssaga^ through a west Norse song.1 The
Danish Grimhild's Revenge may owe something to this song, but
has suffered the influence of the twelfth-century Nibelungenlied.
It is one of the ballad-class which aims at summarizing in the
traditional style the material of some more aristocratic romance.
Brynilds Vise differs from the Eddie treatment and from the
Nibelungenlied. The Norse Sigurd Svein maintains an association
with the Eddie Reginsmdl and Fdfnismdl, which is not evident in
the more developed Danish Sward Snarensvend.

Kudrun stands next to the Nibelungenlied for popularity and
merit, as the Odyssey does to the Iliad. An older form of the legend
must have been current under the name of Hilde, the plot of which
is summarized by Snorri at the end of his prose Edda. It is this
Nordic form which is conjectured to be at the base of the Danish
Havsfnin, but the German ballads may derive from Kudrun itself.
The epic is composed of conventional materials, and has only one

1 H. de Boor, Die faroischen Lieder des Nibelungenzyklus, Heidelberg, 1918.