the Swedes), the
legend attached to his name in the Norse sources does not survive
elsewhere. The Weland cycle is perhaps common property. None of the
versions localise it, for the names in _Voelundarkvida_, Wolfdale,
Myrkwood, &c., are conventional heroic place-names. It was popular at a
very early date in England, and is probably a Pan-Germanic legend. The
Sigurd and Hild stories, on the contrary, are both, in all versions,
localised on the Continent, the former by the Rhine, the latter in
Friesland or Jutland; both, therefore, in Low German country, whence
they must have spread to the other Germanic lands. To England they were
doubtless carried by the Low German invaders of the sixth century. On
the question of their passage to the North there are wide differences
of opinion. Most scholars agree that there was an earlier and a later
passage, the first taking Hild, Ermanric, and the Volsung story; the
second, about the twelfth or thirteenth century, the Volsungs again,
with perhaps Dietrich and Attila. But there is much disagreement as to
the date of the first transmission. Muellenhoff put it as early as 600;
Konrad Maurer, in the ninth and tenth centuries; while Dr. Golther
is of opinion that the Volsung story passed first to the vikings in
France, and then westward over Ireland to Iceland; therefore also not
before the ninth century. Such evidence as is afforded by the very
slight English references makes it probable that the Scandinavians
had the tales later than the English, a view supported by the more
highly developed form of the Norse version, and, in the case of the
Volsung cycle, its greater likeness to the Continental German. The
earliest Norse references which can be approximately dated are in the
Skald Bragi (first half of the ninth century), who knew all three
stories: the Hild and Ermanric tales he gives in outline; his only
reference to the Volsungs is a kenning, "the Volsungs' drink," for
serpent. With the possible exception of the Anglo-Saxon fragments,
the Edda preserves on the whole the purest versions of those stories
which are common to all, though, as might be expected, the Continental
sources sometimes show greater originality in isolated details. These
German sources have entangled the different cycles into one involved
mass; but in the Norse the extraneous elements are easily detached.

The motives of heroic tales are limited in number and more or less
common to different races. Heroic cycles