certain that Attila was not personally on the scene.

We can easily imagine what a profound impression this extinction of the
Burgundians would produce upon the minds of their neighbors the Rhine
Franks. Fact, too, would soon become mingled with fiction. This new feat
was ascribed to Attila himself, already too well known as the scourge of
Europe and the subduer of so many German tribes. A very few years later,
however, fate was to subdue the mighty conqueror himself. With the great
battle of Chalons in 451 the tide turned against him, and two years
afterwards he died a mysterious death. The historian Jordanes of the
sixth century relates that on the morning after Attila's wedding with a
German princess named Ildico (Hildiko) he was found lying in bed in a
pool of blood, having died of a hemorrhage. The mysteriousness of
Attila's ending inspired his contemporaries with awe, and the popular
fancy was not slow to clothe this event also in a dress of fiction. The
attendant circumstances peculiarly favored such a process. Historians
soon recorded the belief that Attila had perished at the hands of his
wife, and it was only a step further for the imagination to find the
motive for the deed in the desire of Hildiko to avenge the death of her
German kinsmen who had perished through Attila. The saga of Attila's
death is before long connected with the growing Burgundian saga, Hildiko
becomes the sister of the Burgundian kings Gundahari, Godomar, and
Gislahari, and her deed is vengeance taken upon Attila for his
destruction of her brothers. As is seen at once from the outline I have
already given (Chapter 2.) of the saga as we find it in the Edda, this is
the stage of development it had reached when it began to find its way
northward from the Rhine country to Norway and Iceland.

It is unnecessary here to record the speculations--for beyond
speculations we cannot go--as to how the union of this historical saga of