The Story of Sigurd the Volsung written by William Morris
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William Morris >> The Story of Sigurd the Volsung
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11 THE STORY OF SIGURD THE VOLSUNG
Written In Verse By
WILLIAM MORRIS
With Portions Condensed Into Prose by Winifred Turner, B.A.
Late Assistant Mistress, Ware Grammar School For Girls
And
Helen Scott, M.A.
1922
BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION
By J. W. Mackail
William Morris, one of the most eminent imaginative writers of the
Victorian age, differs from most other poets and men of letters in
two ways--first, he did great work in many other things as well as in
literature; secondly, he had beliefs of his own about the meaning and
conduct of life, about all that men think and do and make, very
different from those of ordinary people, and he carried out these
views in his writings as well as in all the other work he did
throughout his life.
He was born in 1834. His father, a member of a business firm in the
City of London, was a wealthy man and lived in Essex, in a country
house with large gardens and fields belonging to it, on the edge of
Epping Forest. Until the age of thirteen Morris was at home among a
large family of brothers and sisters. He delighted in the country
life and especially in the Forest, which is one of the most romantic
parts of England, and which he made the scene of many real and
imaginary adventures. From fourteen to eighteen he was at school at
Marlborough among the Wiltshire downs, in a country full of beauty and
history, and close to another of the ancient forests of England, that
of Savernake. He proceeded from school to Exeter College, Oxford,
where he soon formed a close friendship with a remarkable set of young
men of his own age; chief among these, and Morris's closest friend for
the rest of his life, was Edward Burne-Jones, the painter. Study of
the works of John Ruskin confirmed them in the admiration which they
already felt for the life and art of the Middle Ages. In the summer
vacation of 1855 the two friends went to Northern France to see the
beautiful towns and splendid churches with which that country had been
filled between the eleventh and the fifteenth centuries; and there
they made up their minds that they cared for art more than for
anything else, such as wealth or ease or the opinion of the world,
and that as soon as they left Oxford they would become artists.
By art they meant the making of beauty for the adornment and
enrichment of human life, and as artists they meant to strive against
all that was ugly or mean or untruthful in the life of their own time.
Art, as they understood it, is one single thing covering the whole
of life but practised in many special forms that differ one from
another. Among these many forms of art there are two of principal
importance. One of the two is the art which is concerned with the
making and adorning of the houses in which men and women live; that is
to say, architecture, with all its attendant arts of decoration,
including sculpture, painting, the designing and ornamenting of
metal, wood and glass, carpets, paper-hangings, woven, dyed and
embroidered cloths of all kinds, and all the furniture which a house
may have for use or pleasure. The other is the art which is concerned
with the making and adorning of stories in prose and verse. Both of
these kinds of art were practised by Morris throughout his life. The
former was his principal occupation; he made his living by it, and
built up in it a business which alone made him famous, and which has
had a great influence towards bringing more beauty into daily domestic
life in England and in other countries also. His profession was thus
that of a manufacturer, designer, and decorator. When he had to
describe himself by a single word, he called himself a designer. But
it is the latter branch of his art which principally concerns us now,
the art of a maker and adorner of stories. He became famous in this
kind of art also, both in prose and verse, as a romance-writer and a
poet. But he spoke of it as play rather than work, and although he
spent much time and great pains on it, he regarded it as relaxation
from the harder and more constant work of his life, which was carrying
on the business of designing, painting, weaving, dyeing, printing and
other occupations of that kind. In later life he also gave much of his
time to political and social work, with the object of bringing back
mankind into a path from which they had strayed since the end of the
Middle Ages, and creating a state of society in which art, by the
people and for the people, a joy to the maker and the user, might be
naturally, easily, and universally produced.
Even as a boy Morris had been noted for his love of reading and
inventing tales; but he did not begin to write any until he had been
for a couple of years at Oxford. His earliest poems and his earliest
written prose tales belong to the same year, 1855, in which he
determined to make art his profession. The first of either that he
published appeared in the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, which was
started and managed by him and his friends in 1856. In 1858, after he
had left Oxford, he brought out a volume of poems called, after the
title of the first poem in the book, "The Defence of Guenevere." Soon
afterwards he founded, with some of his old Oxford friends and others
whom he had made in London, among whom Dante Gabriel Rossetti was the
leading spirit, the firm of Morris and Company, manufacturers and
decorators. His business, in which he was the principal and finally
the sole partner, took up the main part of his time. He had also
married, and built himself a beautiful small house in Kent, the
decoration of which went busily on for several years. Among all these
other occupations he almost gave up writing stories, but never ceased
reading and thinking about them. In 1865 he came back to live in
London, where, being close to his work, he had more leisure for other
things; and between 1865 and 1870 he wrote between thirty and forty
tales in verse, containing not less than seventy or eighty thousand
lines in all. The longest of these tales, "The Life and Death of
Jason," appeared in 1867. It is the old Greek story of the ship Argo
and the voyage in quest of the Golden Fleece. Twenty-five other tales
are included in "The Earthly Paradise," published in three parts
between 1868 and 1870.
During these years Morris learned Icelandic, and his next published
works were translations of some of the Icelandic sagas, writings
composed from six to nine hundred years ago, and containing a mass of
legends, histories and romances finely told in a noble language. These
translations were followed in 1876 by his great epic poem, "Sigurd the
Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs." In that poem he retold a story
of which an Icelandic version, the "Volsunga Saga," written in the
twelfth century, is one of the world's masterpieces. It is the great
epic of Northern Europe, just as the "Iliad" and "Odyssey" of Homer
are the chief epics of ancient Greece, and the "AEneid" of Virgil the
chief epic of the Roman Empire. Morris's love for these great stories
of ancient times led him to rewrite the tale of the Volsungs and
Niblungs, which he reckoned the finest of them all, more fully and on
a larger scale than it had ever been written before. He had already,
in 1875, translated the "AEneid" into verse, and some ten years later,
in 1886-87, he also made a verse translation of the "Odyssey." In 1873
he had also written another very beautiful poem, "Love is Enough,"
containing the story of three pairs of lovers, a countryman and
country-woman, an emperor and empress, and a prince and peasant girl.
This poem was written in the form of a play, not of a narrative.
To write prose was at first for Morris more difficult than to write
poetry. Verse came naturally to him, and he composed in prose only
with much effort until after long practice. Except for his early tales
in the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine and his translations of Icelandic
sagas, he wrote little but poetry until the year 1882. About that time
he began to give lectures and addresses, and wrote them in great
numbers during the latter part of his life. A number of them were
collected and published in two volumes called "Hopes and Fears for
Art" and "Signs of Change," and many others have been published
separately. He thus gradually accustomed himself to prose composition.
For several years he was too busy with other things, which he thought
more important, to spend time on storytelling; but his instinct forced
itself out again, and in 1886 he began the series of romances in prose
or in mixed prose and verse which went on during the next ten years.
The chief of these are, "A Dream of John Ball," "The House of
Wolfings," "The Roots of the Mountains," "News from Nowhere," "The
Glittering Plain," "The Wood beyond the World," "The Well at the
World's End," "The Water of the Wondrous Isles," and "The Sundering
Flood." During the same years he also translated, out of
Icelandic and old French books, more of the stories which he had
long known and admired. "The Sundering Flood" was written in his last
illness, and finished by him within a few days of his death, in the
autumn of 1896.
INTRODUCTION TO SIGURD
By The Editors
The story of Sigurd is important to English people not only for its
wondrous beauty, but also on account of its great age, and of what it
tells us about our own Viking ancestors, who first knew the story.
The tale was known all over the north of Europe, in Denmark, in
Germany, in Norway and Sweden, and in Iceland, hundreds of years
before it was written down. Sometimes different names were given to
the characters, sometimes the events of the story were slightly
altered, but in the main points it was one and the same tale.
If we look at a map of Europe showing the nations as they were rather
more than a thousand years ago, we see the names of Saxons, Goths,
Danes, and Frisians marked on the lands around the Baltic Sea. Those
who bore these names were the makers of the tale of Sigurd. The name
of the Saxons is, of course, the best known to us, and next in
importance come the people we call Danes, or Northmen, or Vikings, who
attacked the coasts of the Saxon kingdoms in England. The Saxons came
from part of the land that is now known as Germany, and the Vikings
from Denmark and from Scandinavia.
A third important tribe was that of the Goths, who dwelt first in
South Sweden, and then in Germany.
All these people resembled one another in their way of life, in their
religion, and in their ideas of what deeds were good and what were
evil. Their lands were barren--too mountainous or too cold to bring
forth fruitful crops, and their homes were not such as would tempt men
never to leave them. So, though they built their little groups of
wooden houses in the valleys of their lands, and made fields and
pastures about them, these were often left to the care of the women
and the feeble men, while the strong men made raids over the sea to
other countries, where they engaged in the fighting which they loved,
and whence they brought back plunder to their homes. North, South,
East, and West they went, till few parts of Europe had not learnt to
know and fear them.
Their ships were long and narrow, driven often by oars as well as
sails, and outside them, along the bulwarks, the crew hung their round
shields made of yellow wood from the lime-tree. The men wore byrnies
or breast-plates, and helmets, and they were armed with swords, long
spears, or heavy battle-axes. They were enemies none could afford to
despise, for they had great stature and strength of body, joined to
such fierceness and delight in war that they held a man disgraced if
he died peacefully at home. Moreover, they knew nothing of mercy to
the conquered.
Courage, not only to fight, but also to bear suffering without
impatience or complaint, and the virtue of faithfulness were the
qualities they most honoured. To be wanting in courage was disgraceful
in their eyes, but it was equally disgraceful to refuse to help
kinsfolk, to lie, to deceive, or to desert a chief.
If they put their enemies to death with fearful tortures, they did not
treat them more severely than the traitors they discovered among
themselves, and if they had no pity for those they conquered, yet they
knew well how to admire great leaders, and how to serve them
faithfully. But we can best realise their ideas on these matters by
considering their religion and their stories.
They worshipped one chief god, Odin, and other gods and goddesses who
were his children. Odin was often called All-father because he was the
helper and friend of human beings, and appeared on earth in the form
of an old man, "one-eyed and seeming ancient," with cloud-blue hood
and grey cloak. He had courage, strength, and wondrous wisdom, for he
knew all events that happened in the world, and he understood the
speech of birds, and all kinds of charms and magic arts. Men served
him by brave fighting in a good cause, and when they perished in
battle he received their souls in his dwelling of Valhalla in the city
of Asgard, where they spent each day in warfare, and where at evening
the dead were revived, the wounded healed, and all feasted together in
Odin's palace. There they fed upon the flesh of the boar Saehrimner,
which was renewed as fast as it was eaten. Certain maidens called
Valkyrie, or Choosers of the Slain, were Odin's messengers whom he
sent forth into the battles of the world to find the warriors whom he
had appointed to die, and to bring them to Valhalla.
In the story of Sigurd Odin has a very important part to play, but
for the understanding of the tale it is necessary to know something
about another of the gods. This is Loki, who, though sprung from the
race of the giants, yet lived with the sons of Odin in Asgard,
behaving sometimes as their trusty helper, but more often as their
cunning enemy. He caused much wretchedness, not only among the gods,
but on earth also, for he delighted in the sight of misery. His vices
were all those most hateful to the Norse people, for he was before
all things a liar, a deceiver, a faith-breaker, a skilful worker of
mischief by guile instead of by fair fight. There are many stories of
his cunning thefts, of the miseries he wrought among his companions,
and of his envy of the beloved god Balder, whom he slew by a trick.
His children were terrible monsters, as hated as himself. Yet,
strange to say, Loki was Odin's companion in many of his adventures.
The gods inhabited Asgard, a city standing on a high mountain in the
middle of the world. Odin's palace of Valhalla was there, and other
palaces for his sons and daughters. All round Asgard lay Midgard, or
the ordinary world of men and women. Its caves and waste places were
inhabited by dwarfs, whom Odin had banished from the light of day for
various ill deeds. They were a spiteful and cunning race, jealous of
mankind, and eager to recover their lost power. Their strength lay in
their wondrous skill in handicraft, for they could forge more deadly
weapons, and fashion more lovely jewels than any made by the hands of
men. But, though possessed of wisdom, they had no spirit of kindness,
no respect for right, and no dislike of wrong.
Around Midgard lay the sea, and beyond that Utgard, a hideous frozen
country inhabited by giants, enemies of the gods.
But this arrangement of the world was only for a season. The gods
themselves looked forward to a time of defeat and death, when Asgard
should perish in flames and the world with it, and the sun and moon
should be darkened, and they themselves should be slain. This great
day was called Ragnarok, or sometimes the Twilight of the Gods. Then
Loki would gather giants and monsters to a great battle against the
gods, who would slay their enemies, but who would themselves fall in
the struggle. The sea would drown the earth, the stars would fall,
and all things would pass away.
This terrible fate the gods awaited with calm and cheerfulness,
showing even greater courage than in their many deeds of war. They
had to submit to this fate, for there were three beings even greater
than they. These were the Norns, deciders of the fate of gods and men
alike. They were three giant maidens who dwelt by a sacred,
wisdom-giving fountain, and who controlled the lives of men, giving
to each sickness and health, success and failure and death when they
would. No man or god might escape what the Norns decreed for him.
Many stories of these gods, together with tales of famous men, were
told among the northern peoples. These stories were passed on from
one to another by word of mouth, till they grew much longer and
fuller, and the happening of certain historical events helped to take
them from country to country.
As we have seen, all the races of the North were warlike and eager
for adventure, and so when trouble came upon them in their own homes,
they readily took to the sea to plunder the coasts or to conquer
other lands. Between 800 and 900 A.D., when the Danes were invading
England, many were driven from Norway because they refused to submit
to a king called Harold Fairhair, and when he pursued them to the
Orkney and Faroe Islands they took refuge on the coasts of Iceland.
There they settled, built themselves wooden houses, planted such
crops as would grow in that bleak land, and founded a commonwealth.
Little by little they left the old Viking life, and it lived only in
their songs and stories.
They had come to Iceland with a vast stock of tales in poetry, which
were related or sung by professional poets, called skalds, at all
kinds of feasts and gatherings. The skalds arranged and improved the
old stories, but they were not written down until about the time of
our King Stephen, when some unknown writer collected them into one
book called the Elder Edda. Very soon after this another book was
written containing the same stories in prose and called the Younger
or Prose Edda. In this way many of the old poems, and a great many
stories containing much information about the religion which the
people took with them to Iceland, have been preserved.
But it was from neither of the Eddas that William Morris took his
story of Sigurd.
All through the period from 800 A.D. till about the time of Henry III.
of England, the skalds had been re-telling many of the poetic stories
in prose, and as the people grew more civilised, one tale after
another was written down in its new form.
These prose tales were called Sagas, and among the very greatest is
the Volsunga Saga, or Story of Sigurd. It is a tale which has been
told in other lands besides Iceland. We read part of the same story
in the Old English poem of Beowulf, and in Germany it was made into
a great poem called the Nibelungenlied. The German musician, Richard
Wagner, set it to music in a famous series of operas called the
Nibelungen Ring. But his tale differs in many points from that
contained in Morris's poem, for Morris chose the old saga as it was
written in Iceland, not the German story. On this he founded his poem,
adding much beautiful description, and greatly lengthening the whole.
The story deals first with a certain King Volsung, to whose son,
Sigmund, Odin presented a magic sword.
But Siggeir, the jealous king of the Goths, slew Volsung, and took
Sigmund prisoner that he might have the sword for himself. Only after
many toils and perils did Sigmund win it back and reign in his
father's kingdom. At last in his old age he fell in battle and the
sword of Odin was shattered. But his wife, Queen Hiordis, kept the
fragments for the son who was born to her soon after in Denmark,
whither she fled for safety. This son of Sigmund and Hiordis was
Sigurd the Volsung. He was brought up in Denmark and grew strong
and beautiful, brave, kind of heart, and utterly truthful in word
and deed.
When he became a man he longed to win fame and kingship by mighty
deeds, and when his tutor told him of a great dragon that guarded a
hoard of ill-gotten gold in the mountains, he resolved to kill it. So
the fragments of Odin's sword were forged into a new blade, and
Sigurd slew the dragon and took the gold, but with it he brought on
himself a curse which had been put upon the treasure by the dwarf
from whom it had been stolen.
Sigurd then found and wakened Brynhild, a maiden who lay in an
enchanted sleep upon a high mountain. They loved one another, and
Sigurd gave her a ring from the dragon's treasure, promising to
return and marry her.
Then the curse led him to join with the fierce and treacherous
Niblungs or Cloudy People. Their king and his mother grew jealous
when they saw Sigurd more mighty and more beloved than themselves,
and by enchantments they caused him to forget Brynhild, to wed the
princess Gudrun, and at last to aid the Niblung king, Gunnar, to win
Brynhild for his own wife.
Then the curse of the gold brought death to many, for Sigurd and
Brynhild discovered all the treachery of the Niblungs, who, in their
anger, slew Sigurd, and Brynhild killed herself that she might not
live and sorrow for him.
Such is the story of Sigurd as it was told a thousand years ago in
distant Iceland, and as it is retold in this poem by William Morris.
THE STORY OF
SIGURD THE VOLSUNG.
BOOK I.
SIGMUND.
_Of the dwelling of King Volsung, and the wedding of Signy his
daughter._
There was a dwelling of Kings ere the world was waxen old;
Dukes were the door-wards there, and the roofs were thatched with gold:
Earls were the wrights that wrought it, and silver nailed its doors;
Earls' wives were the weaving-women, queens' daughters strewed its floors,
And the masters of its song-craft were the mightiest men that cast
The sails of the storm of battle adown the bickering blast.
There dwelt men merry-hearted, and in hope exceeding great
Met the good days and the evil as they went the way of fate:
There the Gods were unforgotten, yea whiles they walked with men,
Though e'en in that world's beginning rose a murmur now and again
Of the midward time and the fading and the last of the latter days,
And the entering in of the terror, and the death of the People's Praise.
Thus was the dwelling of Volsung, the King of the Midworld's Mark,
As a rose in the winter season, a candle in the dark;
And as in all other matters 'twas all earthly houses' crown,
And the least of its wall-hung shields was a battle-world's renown,
So therein withal was a marvel and a glorious thing to see,
For amidst of its midmost hall-floor sprang up a mighty tree,
That reared its blessings roofward, and wreathed the roof-tree dear
With the glory of the summer and the garland of the year.
I know not how they called it ere Volsung changed his life,
But his dawning of fair promise, and his noontide of the strife,
His eve of the battle-reaping and the garnering of his fame,
Have bred us many a story and named us many a name;
And when men tell of Volsung, they call that war-duke's tree,
That crowned stem, the Branstock; and so was it told unto me.
So there was the throne of Volsung beneath its blossoming bower,
But high o'er the roof-crest red it rose 'twixt tower and tower,
And therein were the wild hawks dwelling, abiding the dole of their lord;
And they wailed high over the wine, and laughed to the waking sword.
Still were its boughs but for them, when lo, on an even of May
Comes a man from Siggeir the King with a word for his mouth to say:
"All hail to thee King Volsung, from the King of the Goths I come:
He hath heard of thy sword victorious and thine abundant home;
He hath heard of thy sons in the battle, the fillers of Odin's Hall;
And a word hath the west-wind blown him, (full fruitful be its fall!)
A word of thy daughter Signy the crown of womanhood:
Now he deems thy friendship goodly, and thine help in the battle good,
And for these will he give his friendship and his battle-aid again:
But if thou wouldst grant his asking, and make his heart full fain,
Then shalt thou give him a matter, saith he, without a price,
--Signy the fairer than fair, Signy the wiser than wise."
Now the message gladdened Volsung and his sons, but no word spake
Signy, till the king asked her what her mind might be. Then said
Signy, "I will wed the Goth king, and yet shall I rue my lot in his
hall." And Volsung urged her with kind words to do nought against her
will, but her mind was fixed, and she said she wrought but what the
gods had fore-ordained. So the earl of Siggeir went his way with
gifts and fair words, bidding the Goth king come ere a month was over
to wed the white-handed Signy and bear her home.
So on Mid-Summer Even ere the undark night began
Siggeir the King of the Goth-folk went up from the bath of the swan
Unto the Volsung dwelling with many an Earl about;
There through the glimmering thicket the linked mail rang out,
And sang as mid the woodways sings the summer-hidden ford:
There were gold-rings God-fashioned, and many a Dwarf-wrought sword,
And many a Queen-wrought kirtle and many a written spear;
So came they to the acres, and drew the threshold near,
And amidst of the garden blossoms, on the grassy, fruit-grown land,
Was Volsung the King of the Wood-world with his sons on either hand;
Therewith down lighted Siggeir the lord of a mighty folk,
Yet showed he by King Volsung as the bramble by the oak,
Nor reached his helm to the shoulder of the least of Volsung's sons.
And so into the hall they wended, the Kings and their mighty ones;
And they dight the feast full glorious, and drank through the death of the
day,
Till the shadowless moon rose upward, till it wended white away;
Then they went to the gold-hung beds, and at last for an hour or twain
Were all things still and silent, save a flaw of the summer rain.
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