' Gudrun Giuki's daughter stood without, and these were the first
words she spoke: 'Where is now Sigurd, the lord of men, that my kinsmen
ride first?' Hoegni alone made answer: 'We have hewn Sigurd asunder
with the sword; the grey horse still stoops over his dead lord.'"
This agrees with the _Old Gudrun Lay_ and with the Continental German
version, as a prose epilogue points out.
Of the Giuking brothers, Gunnar appears only in a contemptible light:
he gains his bride by treachery, and keeps his oath to Sigurd by a
quibble. Hoegni, who has little but his name in common with Hagen von
Tronje of the _Nibelungen Lied_, advises Gunnar against breaking his
oath, but it is he who taunts Gudrun afterwards. The later poems of
the cycle try to make heroes out of both; the same discrepancy exists
between the first and second halves of the _Nibelungen Lied_. Their
half-brother, Gutthorm, plays no part in the story except as the
actual murderer of Sigurd.
The chief effect of the influences of Christianity and Romance on
the legend is a loss of sympathy with the heroic type of Brynhild,
and an attempt to give more dignity to the figure of Gudrun. The
Shield-maiden of divine origin and unearthly wisdom, with her
unrelenting vengeance on her beloved, and her contempt for her
slighter rival ("Fitter would it be for Gudrun to die with Sigurd,
if she had a soul like mine"), is a figure out of harmony with the new
religion, and beyond the comprehension of a time coloured by romance;
while both the sentiment and the morality of the age would be on the
side of Gudrun as the formally wedded wife.
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