, 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. So the poem known as the
_Short Sigurd Lay_, which has many marks of lateness, such as the
elaborate description of the funeral pyre and the exaggeration of
the signs of mourning, says nothing of Sigurd's love for Brynhild,
nor do his last words to Gudrun give any hint of it. The _Nibelungen
Lied_ suppresses Sigurd's love to Brynhild, and the magic drink, and
altogether lowers Brynhild, but elevates Gudrun (under her mother's
name); her slow but terrible vengeance, and absolute forgetfulness
of the ties of blood in pursuit of it, are equal to anything in the
original version. The later heroic poems of the Edda make a less
successful attempt to create sympathy for Gudrun; some, such as the
so-called _First Gudrun Lay_, which is entirely romantic in character,
try to make her pathetic by the abundance of tears she sheds; others,
to make her heroic, though the result is only a spurious savagery.

The remaining poems of the cycle, all late in style and tone, deal
with the fates of Gudrun and her brothers, and owe their existence
to a narrator's unwillingness to let a favourite story end. The
curse makes continuation easy, since the Giukings inherit it with the
hoard. Gudrun was married at the wish of her kinsmen to Atli the Hun,
said to be Brynhild's brother. He invited Gunnar and Hoegni to his
court and killed them for the sake of the treasure, in vengeance for
which Gudrun killed her own two sons and Atli; this latter incident
being possibly an imitation of Signy. If we may believe that Gudrun,
like Chriemhild in the _Nibelungen Lied_, married Atli in order to
gain vengeance for Sigurd, we might suppose that there was confusion
here: that she herself incited the murder of her brothers, and killed
Atli when he had served his purpose. This would strengthen the part
of Gudrun, who as the tale stands is rather a futile character. But
in all probability the episode is due to a confusion of Signy's story
with that of the German Chriemhild and Etzel.

One point has still to be considered: the place of the Nibelungs in the
story. In the Edd