HILDEBRANDSLIED. This invaluable example of Old German alliterative poetry is contained in a MS. originally belonging to the library of Fulda, and now preserved at Cassel. It is written on the first and last pages of a volume of Biblical and theological contents by two contemporary hands apparently belonging to the beginning of the 9th century. The conclusion of the poem is unfortunately wanting, evidently from want of space. From such misreadings as man for inan, axApuas for wuas or was (with p for the Runic w sign sometimes used here as in Old English MSS.), it is manifest that our text was not written down from memory,—as has often been assumed,—but is a transcript from an older original. This conclusion is confirmed by the state of the language of the fragment, which shows a curious mixture of Low and High German forms that can never have existed in any living dialect of Germany, but can only be explained as the result of an attempt made by a Low German scribe to adapt the forms of a High German original to his vernacular idiom....
The fragment is mostly taken up with a dialogue between Hildebrand and his son Hadubrand. When Hildebrand followed his master Theodoric the Great, exiled from Italy by Odoacer, he left his young wife and an infant child behind him. At his return to his old home, after thirty years’ absence at the Hunnic court, he is met by a young warrior and challenged to single combat. Before the fight begins, Hildebrand, asking for the name of his opponent, and discovering his own son in him, tries to avert the fight, but in vain. “Then they let their horses run with their sharp spears, and then they hewed their white shields until they were beaten to pieces with their weapons.” With these words the fragment stops abruptly, giving no clue as to the issue of the combat. It is certain, however, from allusions to the tale made in the Old Norse Asmundar Saga, that it must have been fatal to Hadubrand. But in the later traditions both of the Old Norse Thidrika Saga (13th century), and the so-called Jüngere Hildebrandslied—o. German popular song preserved in several versions dating from the 15th to the 17th century, but evidently originating at an earlier time, — Hadubrand is represented as defeated simply, and obliged to recognize his father.
The Ηildebrαηdslied was discovered and published for the first time as a prose story, as early as 1729; but it was not till 1812 that its metrical character was recognized by the brothers Grimm. Since that time numerous reprints and critical editions have been published, among which Lachmann’s text holds the foremost rank as to critical exactness and sagacity, although some of the metrical rules laid down by Lachmann, and followed in his text, have since been shown not to be applicable to the Old German alliterative verse in which the Hilctebrandslied is written. ®
[498 words — estimated reading time: 3 minutes]