ney out of reading Sagas: they have nothing to say about stocks and
shares, nor about Prime Ministers and politics. Nor will they amuse a
man, if nothing amuses him but accounts of races and murders, or gossip
about Mrs. Nokes's new novel, Mrs. Stokes's new dresses, or Lady Jones's
diamonds. The Sagas only tell how brave men--of our own blood very
likely--lived, and loved, and fought, and voyaged, and died, before there
was much reading or writing, when they sailed without steam, travelled
without railways, and warred hand-to-hand, not with hidden dynamite and
sunk torpedoes. But, for stories of gallant life and honest purpose, the
Sagas are among the best in the world.

Of Sagas in English one of the best is the "Volsunga," the story of the
Niflungs and Volsungs. This book, thanks to Mr. William Morris, can be
bought for a shilling. It is a strange tale in which gods have their
parts, the tale of that oldest Treasure Hunt, the Hunt for the gold of
the dwarf Andvari. This was guarded by the serpent, Fafnir, who had once
been a man, and who was killed by the hero Sigurd. But Andvari had
cursed the gold, because his enemies robbed him of it to the very last
ring, and had no pity. Then the brave Sigurd was involved in the evil
luck. He it was who rode through the fire, and woke the fair enchanted
Brynhild, the Shield-maiden. And she loved him, and he her, with all
their hearts, always to the death. But by ill fate she was married to
another man, Sigurd's chief friend, and Sigurd to another woman. And the
women fell to jealousy and quarrelling as women will, and they dragged
the friends into the feud, and one manslaying after another befell, till
that great murder of men in the Hall of Atli, the King. The curse came
on one and all of them--a curse of blood, and of evil loves, and of
witchwork destroying good and bad, all fearless, and all fallen in one
red ruin.

The "Volsunga Saga" has this unique and unparalleled interest, that it
gives the spectacle of the highest epic genius, struggling out of
savagery into complete and free and conscious humanity. It is a mark of
the savage intellect not to discriminate abruptly between man and the
lower animals. In the tales of the lower peoples, the characters are
just as often beasts as men and women. Now, in the earlier and wilder
parts of the "Volsunga Saga," otters and dragons play human parts. Signy
and his son, and the mother of their enemy, put on the skins of