Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1914 edition. Excerpt: ... The king surrenders the child to the faithful Berchtung, who is to kill it, but exposes it instead, in the forest, near the water, in the hope that it will fall in of its own accord and thus find its death. But the frolicking child remains unhurt, and even the wild animals, lions, bears, wolves, which come at night to the water, do not harm it. The astonished Berchtung resolves to save the boy, and he surrenders him to a game keeper who, together with his wife, raises him and names him Wolfdietrich." The following later hero epics may still be quoted in this connection. In the thirteenth century, the saga of Horn, the son of Aluf, who after having been exposed on the sea, finally reaches the court of King Hunlaf, and after numerous adventures wins the king's daughter, Rimhilt, for his wife. Furthermore, a detail suggestive of Siegfried, from the saga of the skilfull smith Wieland, who, after avenging his foully murdered father, floats down the river Weser, artfully enclosed in the trunk of a tree, and loaded with the tools and treasures of his teachers. Finally the Arthur legend contains the commingling of divine and human paternity, the exposure and the early life with a lowly man. Lohengr1n The widely distributed group of sagas which have been woven around the mythic knight with the swan (the old French Chevalier au eigne) can be traced back to very ancient Keltic traditions. The following is the version which has been made familiar by nucleus of the story of Genovefa and her son Schmerzenreich, as told, for example, by the Grimm brothers, in their German Sagas, II, Berlin, 1818, pp. 280 et seq. Here, again, the faithless calumniator proposes to drown the countess with her child in the water. For literary and historical orientation, ...
