the symbol of winter,
the dwarfs of darkness. Siegfried denotes the bright summer, his sword
the sunbeams. The youthful year grows up in the dark days of winder.
When its time has come, it goes forth triumphantly and destroys
the darkness and the cold of winter. Through the symbolization the
abstractions gain form and become persons; the saga is thus not a mere
allegory, but a personification of nature's forces. The treasure may
have entered the saga through the widespread idea of the dragon as the
guardian of treasure, or it may represent the beauty of nature which
unfolds when the season has conquered. In the last act of the saga,
Siegfried's death, Wilmanns, the best exponent of this view, sees again
a symbolic representation of a process of nature. According to him it
signifies the death of the god of the year in winter. In the spring he
kills the dragon, in the winter he goes weary to his rest and is foully
slain by the hostile powers of darkness. Later, when this act was
connected with the story of Gunther's wooing Brunhild, the real meaning
was forgotten, and Siegfried's death was attributed to the grief and
jealousy of the insulted queen.

Opposed now to the mythological interpretation is the other view already
spoken of, which denies the possibility of mythological features, and
does not seek to trace the legend beyond the heroic stage. The best
exponent of this view is R. C. Boer, who has made a remarkable attempt
to resolve the story into its simplest constituents. According to him
the nucleus of the legend is an old story of the murder of relatives
("Verwandienmord"), the original form being perhaps as follows. Attila
(i.e., the enemy of Hagen under any name) is married to Hagen's sister
Grimhild or Gudrun. He invites his brother-in-law to his house, attacks
him in the hope of obtaining his treasure, and kills him. According
to this view Hagen was originally the king, but later sinks to a
subordinate position through the subsequent connection of the story with
the Burgundians. It is of course useless to hunt for the date of such
an episode in history. Such a murder could have frequently occurred, and
can be localized anywhere. Very early we find this Hagen story united
with the Siegfried legend. If the latter is mythological, then we have
a heterogeneous combination, a mythical legend grafted on a purely human
one. This Boer thinks unlikely, and presents a number of arguments to
disprove the mythical charac