Publisher's Synopsis
This volume contains the principal hero-lays of the six great epic cycles of the Teutonic Middle Ages, and to them we have added the great mythical Carolingian cycle, which centred round the persons of Charlemagne and his heroes. The latter is mostly of Romance origin, and was composed by court troubadours for the delight of the royal palace, wherefore it never became the true inheritance of the masses. Beside these French poems, stand the Breton ones of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, which later on took up the legend of the Holy Grail into their very heart, and at this period found their way to Germany, where they met with a more romantic and poetic treatment at the hands of the court minnesingers. But these foreign importations never found a true home amongst the German people; they never became popular. The native hero-lays on the other hand, even though less beautiful in conception and in form, lived on through centuries, and even to this day exist, though disguised and degraded. For in the market-places of Germany, and at the few old English fairs that yet remain, the pedlar bookseller gives in exchange for the farthing piece printed versions of many of these old legendary tales: Siegfried's battle with the Dragon, the Rose-garden, Alberic and Elbegast's adventures, and other wondrous histories of Teutonic epical origin. But this literature is fast dying out, if, indeed, it may not by this time be said to be already dead. In Iceland, however, and in the Faroe Isles, tradition still holds her throne unconquered.
