4.

Six years later, in 1877 (English edition), Morris published the long poem, The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and The Fall of the Niblungs, and in it gave the peerless crown of all English poems springing from Old Norse sources. The poet considered this his most important work, and he was prouder of it than of any other literary work that he did. One who studies it can understand this pride, but he cannot understand the neglect by the reading public of this remarkable poem. The history of book-selling in the last decade shows strange revivals of interest in authors long dead; it will be safe to prophesy such a revival for William Morris, because valuable treasures will not always remain hidden. In his case, however, it will not be a revival, because there has not been an awakening yet. That awakening must come, and thousands will see that William Morris was a great poet who have not yet heard of his name. Let us look at his greatest work with some degree of minuteness.

The opening lines are a good model of the meter, and we find it different from any that we have considered so far. There are certain peculiarities about it that make it seem a perfect medium for translating the Old Norse spirit. Most of these peculiarities are in the opening lines, and so we may transfer them to this page: ^[32]

Everybody knows that alliteration was a principle of Icelandic verse. It strikes the ear that hears Icelandic poetry for the first time—or the eye that sees it, since most of us read it silently—as unpleasantly insistent, but on fuller acquaintance, we lose this sense of obtrusiveness. Morris, in this poem, uses alliteration, but so skilfully that only the reader that seeks it discovers it. A less superb artist would have made it stick out in every line, so that the device would be a hindrance to the story-telling. As it is, nowhere in the more than nine thousand lines of Sigurd the Volsung is this alliteration an excrescence, but everywhere it is woven into the grand design of a fabric which is the richer for its foreign workmanship.

Notice that duke and battle and master are the only words not thoroughly Teutonic. This overwhelming predominance of the Anglo-Saxon element over the French is in keeping with the original of the story. Of course it is an accident that so small a proportion of Latin derivatives is found in these six lines, but the fact remains that Morris set himself to tell a Teutonic story in Teutonic idiom. That idiom is not very strange to present-day readers, indeed we may say it has but a fillip of strangeness. Archaisms are characteristic of poetic diction, and those found in this poem that are not common to other poetry are used to gain an Old Norse flavor. The following words taken from Book I of the poem are the only unfamiliar ones: benight, meaning "at night"; "so win the long years over"; eel-grig; sackless; bursten, a participle. The compounds door-ward and song-craft are representative of others that are sprinkled in fair number through the poem. They are the best that our language can do to reproduce the fine combinations that the Icelandic language formed so readily. English lends itself well to this device, as the many compounds show that Morris took from common usage. Such words as roof-tree, song-craft, empty-handed, grave-mound, store-house, taken at random from the pages of this poem, show that the genius of our language permits such formations. When Morris carries the practice a little further, and makes for his poem such words as door-ward, chance-hap, slumber-tide, troth-word, God-home, and a thousand others, he is not taking liberties with the language, and he is using a powerful aid in translating the Old Norse spirit.

One more peculiar characteristic of Icelandic is admirably exhibited in this poem. We have seen that Warton recognized in the "Runic poets" a warmth of fancy which expressed itself in "circumlocution and comparisons, not as a matter of necessity, but of choice and skill." Certainly Morris in using these circumlocutions in Sigurd the Volsung, has exercised remarkable skill in weaving them into his story. Like the alliterations, they are part of an harmonious design. Examples abound, like:

and this other for the same thing, the sea:

Still others for the water are swan-mead, and "bed-gear of the swan."

"The serpent of death" and war-flame, for sword; earth-bone, for rock; fight-sheaves, for armed hosts; seaburg, for boats, are other striking examples.

So much for the mechanical details of this poem. Its literary features are so exceptional that we must examine them at length.

Book I is entitled "Sigmund" and the description is set at the head of it. "In this book is told of the earlier days of the Volsungs, and of Sigmund the father of Sigurd, and of his deeds, and of how he died while Sigurd was yet unborn in his mother's womb."

There are many departures from the Völsunga Saga in this poetic version, and all seem to be accounted for by a desire to impress present-day readers with this story. The poem begins with Volsung, omitting, therefore, the marvelous birth of that king and the oath of the unborn child to "flee in fear from neither fire nor the sword." The saga makes the wolf kill one of Volsung's sons every night; the poem changes the number to two. A magnificent scene is invented by Morris in the midnight visit of Signy to the wood where her brothers had been slain. She speaks to the brother that is left, desiring to know what he is doing:

The dialogue of brother and sister is a mighty conception, and surely the old Icelanders would have called Morris a rare singer. Sigmund tells the story of the deaths of his brothers, adding:

But Signy is reconciled to the workings of Fate:

The day to come shall set their woes right:

In this wise one Christian might hearten another to accept the dealings of Providence to-day. While we do not think that a worshipper of Odin would have spoken all these words, they are not an undue exaggeration of the noblest traits of the old Icelandic religion.

The poem does not record the death of Siggeir's and Signy's son, though the saga does. Morris adds a touch when he makes the imprisoned men exult over the sword that Signy drops into their grave, and he also puts into the mouth of Siggeir in the burning hall words that the saga does not contain. The poem says that the women of the Gothfolk were permitted to retire from the burning hall, but the saga has no such statement. The war of foul words between Granmar and Sinfjötli is left in the saga, and the cause of Gudrod's death is changed from rivalry over a woman to anger over a division of war booty. In Sigmund's lament over his childlessness we have another of the poet's additions, and certainly we find no fault with the liberty:

When the great hero dies, Morris puts into his mouth another of the magnificent speeches that are the glory of this poem. Four lines from it must suffice:

It appears from this study of Book I that Sigurd the Volsung has adapted the saga story to our civilization and our art, holding to the best of the old and supplementing it by new that is ever in keeping with the old. Other instances of this eclectic habit may be seen in the other three books, but we shall quote from these for other purposes.

Book II is entitled "Regin." "Now this is the first book of the life and death of Sigurd the Volsung, and therein is told of the birth of him, and of his dealings with Regin the Master of Masters, and of his deeds in the waste places of the earth."

Morris was deeply read in Old Norse literature, and out of his stores of knowledge he brought vivifying details for this poem. Such, for instance, is the description of Sigurd's eyes, not found just here in the saga:

In the naming of the child by an ancient name, the meaning of that name is indicated:

The festivities over the birth of the child are wonderfully described in the brief lines, and they are a picture out of another book than the saga:

Over and over again in this poem Morris records the Icelanders' desire "to leave a tale to tell," and here are Sigurd's words to Regin who has been egging him on to deeds:

In Book II we have other great speeches that the poet has put into the mouth of his characters with little or no justification in the original saga. Chap. XIV of the saga contains Regin's tale of his brothers, and of the gold called "Andvari's Hoard," and that tale is severely brief and plain. The account in the poem is expanded greatly, and the conception of Regin materially altered. In the saga he was not the discontented youngest son of his father, prone to talk of his woes and to lament his lot. In the poem he does this in so eloquent a fashion that almost we are persuaded to sympathize with him. Certainly his lines were hard, to have outlived his great deeds, and to hear his many inventions ascribed to the gods. The speech of the released Odin to Reidmar is modeled on Job's conception of omnipotence, and it is one of the memorable parts of this book. Gripir's prophecy, too, is a majestic work, and its original was three sentences in the saga and the poem Grípisspá in the heroic songs of the Edda. Here Morris rises to the heights of Sigurd's greatness:

Those who have read William Morris know that he is a master of nature description. The "Glittering Heath" offered a fine opportunity for this sort of work, and in this piece we have another departure from the saga, Morris made hundreds of pictures in this poem, but the pages describing the journey to the "Glittering Heath" are packed with them to an extraordinary degree. Here is Iceland in very fact, all dust and ashes to the eye:

We confess that there is something in the scene that holds us, all shorn of beauty though it is. We do not want to go the length of Thomas Hardy, however, who, in that wonderful first chapter of The Return of the Native has a similar heath to describe. "The new vale of Tempe," says he, "may be a gaunt waste in Thule: human souls may find themselves in closer and closer harmony with external things wearing a sombreness distasteful to our race when it was young.... The time seems near, if it has not actually arrived, when the mournful sublimity of a moor, a sea, or a mountain, will be all of nature that is absolutely consonant with the moods of the more thinking among mankind. And ultimately, to the commonest tourist, spots like Iceland may become what the vineyards and myrtlegardens of South Europe are to him now." Is it not a suggestive thought that England and the nineteenth century evolved a pessimism which poor Iceland on its ash-heap never could conceive? William Morris was an Icelander, not an Englishman, in his philosophy.

In this same scene, a notable deviation from the saga is the conversation between Regin and Sigurd concerning the relations that shall be between them after the slaying of Fafnir. Here Morris impresses the lesson of Regin's greed, taking the un-Icelandic device of preaching to serve his purpose:

In still another place has Morris departed far from the saga story. According to the poem, Sigurd meets each warning of Fafnir that the gold will be the curse of its possessor with the assurance that he will cast the gold abroad, and let none of it cling to his fingers. The saga, however, has this very frank confession: "Home would I ride and lose all that wealth, if I deemed that by the losing thereof I should never die; but every brave and true man will fain have his hand on wealth till that last day." Here, again, we see an adaptation of the story of the poem to modern conceptions of nobility. It remains to be said that the ernes move Sigurd to take the gold for the gladdening of the world, and they assure him that a son of the Volsung had nought to fear from the Curse. The seven-times-repeated "Bind the red rings, O Sigurd," is an admirable poem, but it does not contain information concerning Brynhild, as do the strophes of Reginsmál which are the model for this lay.

Let us look at the art of Morris as it is shown in telling "How Sigurd awoke Brynhild upon Hindfell." As in the saga, so in the English poem, this incident has a setting most favorable to the display of its remarkable beauties. It is a picture as pure and sweet as it has ever entered into the mind of man to conceive. The conception belongs to the poetic lore of many nations, and children are early introduced to the story of "Sleeping Beauty." There are some features of the Old Norse version that are especially charming, and first among them is the address of the awakened Brynhild to the sun and the earth. We are told that this maiden loved the radiant hero that here awoke her from her age-long sleep, but not for him is her first greeting. A finer thrill moves her than love for a man, and in Morris's poem, this feeling finds singularly beautiful expression:

In order to see just what the art of Morris has done for this poem, let us compare this address with the rendering of the Sigrdrifumál, which tell the same story and which Morris and Magnusson have incorporated into their translation of the Völsunga Saga. The verses are not in the original saga:

To get the full benefit of the comparison of the old and the new, let us set in conjunction with these versions a severely literal translation of the Edda strophes themselves:

These stages in the progress of the gold from mine to mint furnish their own commentary. The finished product will pass current with the most exacting of assayers, as well as gladden the hearts of the poor one whose hand seldom touches gold.

If the skill of the poet in this case have merited resemblance to that of the refiner of gold, what name less than alchemy can characterize his achievement in the rest of this scene? From the first words of Brynhild's life-story:

to the tender words that tell of the coming of another day:

there is a succession of beautiful scenes and glorious speeches such as only a master of magic could have gotten out of the original story. The Eddaic account of the Valkyr's disobedience to All-Father, pictures a saucy and self-willed maiden. Sentence has been pronounced upon her, and thus the story continues: "But I said I would vow a vow against it, and marry no man that knew fear." The Völsunga Saga gives exactly the same account, but the poetic version of Morris saves the maiden for our respect and admiration. It is not effrontery, but repentance that speaks in the voice of Brynhild here:

In the Icelandic version, Odin makes no speech at the dooming, but Morris puts into his mouth this magnificent address:

Morris has here again exercised the poet's privilege of adding to the story that was the pride of an entire age, in order to serve his own the better. If he was wise in these additions, he was no less wise in subtractions and in preservations. The saga has a long address by Brynhild, opening with mystical advice concerning the power of runes, and closing grandly with wise words that sound like a page from the Old Testament. The former find no place in Sigurd the Volsung, but the latter are turned into mighty phrases that wonderfully preserve the spirit of the original.

One passage more from Book II:

These ten lines serve to illustrate very well one of the most remarkable powers of Morris. Just consider for a moment the number of details that are crowded into this picture, and then notice how few are the strokes required to put them there. For this rapid painting of a crowded canvas Morris is second to none among English poets. This power to put a whole landscape or a complex personality into a few lines is the direct outcome of his study of Old Norse literature. Icelandic poetry is characterized by this quality. One has but to compare the account of the end of the world as it is found in the last strophes of Völuspá, or in the Prose Edda, with the similar account in Revelations to see how much two languages may differ in this respect. It would seem as if the short verses characteristic of Icelandic poetry forbade lengthy descriptions. The effect must be produced by a number of quick strokes: there is never time to go over a line once made. A simile is never elaborated, a new one is made when the poet wishes to insist on the figure. Take the second strophe of the "Ancient Lay of Gudrun" as an example, in the translation by Morris and Magnusson:

That is the Icelandic fashion; William Morris has caught it in the Story of Sigurd. Matthew Arnold has not seen fit to use it in his "Balder Dead," as these lines show:

These are noble lines, but altogether foreign to Icelandic.

Book III opens with the dream of Gudrun and Brynhild's interpretation of it. This matter is managed in accordance with our own standards of art, and thus differs materially from the saga story. In the latter a most naïve procedure is adopted, for Brynhild prophesies that Sigurd shall leave her for Gudrun, through Grimhild's guile, that strife shall come between them, and that Sigurd shall die and Gudrun wed Atli. The whole later story is thus revealed. This is not a story-teller's art, but it sets clear the Old Norse acceptance of fate's dealings. Of course Morris' poetic action explains the dream perfectly, but the details are not so frankly given.

"Thou shalt live and love and lose, and mingle in murder and war," is the gist of Brynhild's message, and the whole future history is there.

This poem has often been called an epic, and certainly there are many epical characteristics in it. One of them is the recurrence of certain formulas, and in Books III and IV these are rather more abundant than in the first two books. Thus the sword of Sigurd is praised in the same words, again and again:

Then, there is the "cloudy hall-roof" of the Niblungs. Gudrun is "the white-armed"; Grimhild is "the wisest of women"; Hogni is the "wise-heart"; the Niblungs are "the Cloudy People"; their beds are "blue-covered"; "the Godson the hangings" is an expression that recurs very often, and it recalls the fact that Morris was an artisan as well as an artist.

In the preceding books we have noted that Morris lengthened the saga story in his poem by the introduction of speeches that find no place in the original. In this book we see another lengthening process, which, with that already noted, goes far to account for the difference in bulk between the saga and the poem. Chap. XXVI of the saga, tells in less than a thousands words how Sigurd comes to the Giukings and is wedded to Gudrun. His reception is told in one hundred words; his abode with the Giukings is set forth in even fewer words; Grimhild's plotting and administering of the drugged drink are told in two hundred words; his acceptance of Gudrun's hand and her brother's allegiance are as tersely pictured; kingdoms are conquered, a son is born to Sigurd, and Grimhild plots to have Sigurd get Brynhild for her son Gunnar, yet the record of it all is compressed within one hundred and fifty words. Of course, the modern poet can hem himself within no such narrow bounds as this. The artistic value of these various incidents is priceless, and Morris has lingered upon them lovingly and long. He spreads the story over forty pages, or a thousand lines, and I avow, after a third reading of these three sections of the poem, that I would spare no line of them. How we love this Sigurd of the poet's painting! And what a noble gospel he proclaims to the Giukings:

Here, by the way, is the burden of Morris's preaching in the cause of a better society. It recurs a few pages further on in the poem, where the Niblungs bestow praise on this new hero:

It need hardly be remarked that this Sigurd is not the sagaman's ideal. The Icelanders never evolved such high conceptions of man's obligations to man, but in their ignorance they were no worse off than their continental brethren, for these forgot their greatest Teacher's teaching, and modern social science must point them back to it.

This Sigurd that we love becomes the Sigurd that we pity in the drinking of a draught. Sorrow takes the place of joy in his life, and "the soul is changed in him," so that men may say that on this day they saw him die the first time, who was to die a second time by Guttorm's sword. Gloom spreads over all the earth with the quenching of Sigurd's joy:

Here is illustrated the essential difference between the sagaman's art and the modern story-teller's. The Icelander must tell his story in haste; the deeds of men are his care, not their divagations nor their psychologizings. The modern writer must linger on every step in the story until the motive and the meaning are laid bare. In the present-day version Sigurd's mental sufferings are described at length, and our hearts are wrung at his unmerited woes. The saga knows no such woes, and to all appearance Sigurd's life is not unhappy to its very end. Indeed, it appears in more than one place in Morris's poem that Sigurd has become godlike through the hard experiences of his life. Take this passage as an illustration:

Set this by the side of the saga: "This is truer," says Sigurd, "that I loved thee better than myself, though I fell into the wiles from whence our lives may not escape; for whenso my own heart and mind availed me, then I sorrowed sore that thou wert not my wife; but as I might I put my trouble from me, for in a king's dwelling was I; and withal and in spite of all I was well content that we were all together. Well may it be, that that shall come to pass which is foretold; neither shall I fear the fulfilment thereof." (Völunga Saga, Chap. XXIX.) These words are spoken to Brynhild after she has discovered what she regards as Sigurd's treachery. His words are dictated by a noble resignation to fate, but his very next remark shows a moral meanness not at all in keeping with Morris's conception. Sigurd said: "This my heart would, that thou and I should go into one bed together; even so wouldst thou be my wife."

There have been many griefs depicted in this poem, but surely here are set forth the most pitiless of them all. The guile-won Brynhild travels in state to the Cloudy Hall of the Niblungs, and the whole people come out to meet her. They are astonished at her beauty, and give her cordial greeting and welcome to her husband's house. Proud and majestic, the marvelous woman steps from her golden wain, and gives friendly but passionless greeting to Gunnar as she places her hand in his. For each of Gunnar's brothers she has a kindly word, as she has for Grimhild, too. She asks to see the foster-brother of whom such wondrous tales are told, and whose name she heard from Gunnar's lips with never a tremor—"Sigurd, the Volsung, the best man ever born." Grimhild stands between them for a time, but the meeting has to come. Then Brynhild remembers, and Sigurd sees the unveiled past:

There's the note of the whole history—the will of the Norns and the note of a whole Northern literature, as it is of a whole Southern literature. Man, the puppet, in the hands of Fate; however man may think and reason and assure himself that the dispensation of Fate is just, the supreme moment of realization will always be a tragedy:

In such an hour, what are conquests of a glorious past, what are honors, crowns, loves, hates? The mind can think of little matters only:

Is aught to be said to one in such a crisis, the words are weak and commonplace. There is Brynhild's greeting to Sigurd:

The shattered mind of Sigurd tries to grasp the meaning of the harmless words, and like common sounds that are so fearful in the night, the phrases assume a terrible import:

Then again conies the dominant note of this story:

Here is a hint of the end of all—"the death that amendeth," and from this point to the end of the story there is no gleam of happiness for anyone.

Book IV brings to a majestic close this mighty history. We have dwelt so long on the wonderful poetry of the other books that we must refrain from further comment in this strain. As we read these eloquent imaginings, we regret that the English reading public have left this work through fear of its great length or the ignorance of its existence, in the dust of half-forgotten shelves. Gold disused is true gold none the less, and the ages to come may be more appreciative than the present.

For the sake of rounding out this story, be it noted concerning this Book IV, that the poet has taken liberties with the saga story here, as elsewhere. Motives more easily understood in our day are assigned for the deeds of dread that throng these closing scenes. Gudrun weds King Atli at her mother's bidding, and under the influence of a wicked potion, but neither mother nor magic drives the memory of Sigurd from her mind. She lives to bring destruction upon her husband's murderers, and those murderers are her own flesh and blood. Through her appeals to Atli's greed, and through Knefrud's lies in the Niblung court, the visit of her proud brothers to her pliant husband is brought about. The saga makes Atli the arch-plotter, and the motive his desire to possess the gold. This sentence exculpates Gudrun from any wrong intention towards her brothers: "Now the queen wots of their conspiring, and misdoubts her that this would mean some beguiling of her brethren." (Chap. XXXIV.) In Chap. XXXVIII, we are told that Gudrun fights on the side of her brothers. We see at once the superiority of the poet's motive for a modern tragedy.

It is impressed upon the reader of an epic that the plan of its maker does not call for fine analysis of character. The epic poet is concerned necessarily with large considerations, and his personages do not split hairs from the south to the southeast side. One sign of this is seen in the epic formulæ employed to characterize the personages of the story. Such formulas are in Sigurd the Volsung in abundance, as we have noted on another page. But there are also many departures from the epic model in this poem. Some of these we have referred to in the remarks on Book III, where we noted Sigurd's mental sufferings. In Book IV we have a discrimination of character that is not epic, but dramatic in its minuteness. In the speech and the deeds of the Niblungs their pride and selfishness is clearly set forth, but the individual members of that race are distinguished by traits very minutely drawn. Thus Hogni is the wary Niblung, and is averse to accepting Atli's invitation: