Sigfrid_, the oldest print of which dates from the year 1726. Of the vast
number of Fairy Tales, those most genuine creations of the poetic
imagination of the people, in which live on, often to be sure in scarcely
recognizable form, many of the myths and sagas of the nation's infancy,
there are several that may with justice be taken as relics of the
Siegfried myth, for instance, The Two Brothers, The Young Giant, The
Earth-Manikin, The King of the Golden Mount, The Raven, The Skilled
Huntsman, and perhaps also the Golden Bird and The Water of Life;[6]
though it would seem from recent investigations that Thorn-Rose or the
Sleeping Beauty, is no longer to be looked upon as the counterpart of the
sleeping Brynhild. Finally, it is probable that several names in Germany
and in Northern countries preserve localized memories of the saga.


[6] These will be found in Grimm's Marchen as numbers 60, 90-93, 111, 57,
and 97.


5. Poem and Saga in Modern Literature

Fundamentally different from the foregoing natural outgrowths of the
Nibelungen saga are the modern dramas and poems founded upon it since the
time of the romanticists at the beginning of the nineteenth century.[7]
Nearly all of these have already vanished as so much chaff from the
winnowing-mill of time: only two, perhaps, are now considered seriously,
namely, Hebbel's _Die Nibelungen_ and Richard Wagner's _Ring des
Nibelungen_. Hebbel in his grandly conceived drama in three parts follows
closely the story as we have it in our epic poem the Nibelungenlied, and
the skill with which he makes use of its tragic elements shows his
dramatic genius at its best. But not even the genius of Hebbel could make