ch of the Germanic race, as we have seen (No. 12 of this series),
and the chief question to be determined is whether they represent,
however altered in form, a mythology common to all the Germans, and
as such necessarily early; or whether they are in substance, as well
as in form, a specific creation of the Scandinavians, and therefore
late and secondary. The heroic poems of the Edda, on the contrary,
with the exception of the Helgi cycle, have very close analogues in
the literatures of the other great branches of the Germanic race,
and these we are able to compare with the Northern versions.

The Edda contains poems belonging to the following heroic cycles:

(_a_) _Weland the Smith_.--Anglo-Saxon literature has several
references to this cycle, which must have been a very popular one;
and there is also a late Continental German version preserved in
an Icelandic translation. But the poem in the Edda is the oldest
connected form of the story.

(_b_) _Sigurd and the Nibelungs_.--Again the oldest reference is in
Anglo-Saxon. There are two well-known Continental German versions
in the _Nibelungen Lied_ and the late Icelandic _Thidreks Saga_,
but the Edda, on the whole, has preserved an earlier form of the
legend. With it is loosely connected

(_c_) _The Ermanric Cycle_.--The oldest references to this are in Latin
and Anglo-Saxon. The Continental German version in the _Thidreks Saga_
is late, and, like that in the Edda, contaminated with the Sigurd
story, with which it had originally nothing to do.

(_d_) _Helgi_.--This cycle, at least in its present form, is peculiar
to the Scandinavian North.

All the above-named poems are contained in Codex Regius of the Elder
Edda. From other sources we may add other poems which are Eddic, not
Skaldic, in style, in which other heroic cycles are represented. The
great majority of the poems deal with the favourite story of the
Volsungs, which threatens to swamp all the rest; for one hero after
another, Burgundian, Hun, Goth, was absorbed into it. The poems in this
part of the MS. differ far more widely in date and style than do the
mythological ones; many of the Volsung-lays are comparatively late, and
lack the fine simplicity which characterises the older popular poetry.

_Voelund_.--The lay of Voelund, the wonderful smith, the Weland of
the Old English poems and the only Germanic hero who survived for
any considerable time in English popular tradition, stands alone in
its cycle,