other literary and historic sources, a reading of the poem would give us
unmistakable hints that it is not, in its present form, a perfect
literary unit. We detect inconsistencies in matter and inequalities of
style that prove it to be a remodelling of material already existing in
some earlier form. What, then, has been the history of its evolution? How
did this primeval Siegfried myth, this historical saga of the Burgundians
and Attila, first come to be part of the poetic stock of the German
people? What was its earliest poetic form, and what series of
transformations did it pass through during seven centuries of growth?
These and many kindred questions present themselves, and the search for
answers to them takes us through many winding labyrinths of the nation's
contemporary history. Few products of German literature have so exercised
and tantalized critics as the Nibelungenlied.

In this connection we have to remind ourselves that comparatively little
of what must have been the large body of native poetry in Germany
previous to the eleventh century has come down to us. Barely enough has
been preserved to show the path of the nation's literary progress. Some
of the important monuments have been saved by chance, while others of
equal or perhaps greater value have been irrecoverably lost. The interest
in the various incidents of the Nibelungen story was sufficient to keep
it alive among the people and hand it down orally through many
generations. If we could observe it as it passed from age to age we
should doubtless see it undergoing continuous change according to the
time and the class of the people that were the preservers of the native
literature in its many ups and downs. Lachmann in the year 1816 was the
first to bring scientific criticism to bear on the question of the
Nibelungenlied and its origin. Applying to it the same methods as had
recently been used by Wolf in his criticism of the Homeric poems, he
thought he was able to discover as the basis of the complete epic a cycle