Attila in this year added one more to his many wives (innumerabiles uxores in Jordanes’ words: the Huns were highly polygamous). His wife was a very beautiful girl named Ildico (it has been commonly thought probable that her name shows her to have been of Germanic origin – a diminutive form of Hild, or any name ending in -hild; perhaps a Burgundian). At the wedding feast Attila became hugely drunk and took to his bed, ‘heavy with wine and sleep’; and there as he lay on his back he suffered a violent nose-bleeding, and was choked to death by the blood passing down his throat. Late on the following day his servants broke down the doors and found him lying dead and covered with blood ‘without a wound’, his bride weeping, covered by her veil.
Jordanes described the funeral of Attila, clearly still following the lost narrative of Priscus. His body was laid in a silken tent out on the plain, and the finest horsemen of the Huns rode round in circles, ‘after the manner of the circus-games’; and they told of his deeds in a funeral song. After wild extremes of grief and joy his body was buried at night, covered in gold, and silver, and iron, with weapons taken from his enemies and many treasures; and then, ‘in order that human curiosity should be kept away from such riches’, those who performed the work of burial were killed. In the same way, after the death of Alaric king of the Visigoths in 410, the captives were made to divert the mountain-river Busento in Calabria from its bed, and then after the burial of the king and the returning of the river to its ordinary course they were all put to death.
But the figure of Attila rose from his tomb and took different shapes in the centuries that followed. Among Latin-speaking peoples he was taken up into what has been called ‘ecclesiastical mythology’, and became Flagellum Dei, the Scourge of God, divinely appointed to the devastation of a wicked world. In the lands of Germania there were two radically distinct traditions concerning him: he appears in a double light, generous patron and monstrous foe, and it is not difficult to see how this should have come about. On the Catalaunian plains there was a colossal conflict between men of many Germanic nations. As I have said, in the hosts of Attila went men of many East Germanic peoples subject to the Huns, most notably the Ostrogoths, and for them Attila was the great King and overlord, to whom their own kings paid allegiance: indeed his very name Attila looks like a diminutive form of the Gothic word atta, ‘father’. In South German (High German) tradition Attila, his name changed in the course of time through phonetic movement to Etzel, is a benevolent monarch, hospitable and ineffectual, far removed from the Attila of history.
But in more northerly lands his legendary image was derived from his enemies, and thence, by whatever route it came, the Scandinavians derived their grim and covetous king Atli, murderer of the Burgundians for the sake of the Nibelung hoard.
The story that Jordanes, following Priscus, told of the manner of Attila’s death is beyond question the historical fact; and the knowledge that that was how he died was known to Chaucer more than nine hundred years later. His scoundrelly Pardoner finds in the death of Attila an anecdote to illustrate the evil of drunkenness:
Looke, Attila, the gret? conqueróur,
Deyde in his sleepe, with shame and dishonóur,
Bledynge ay at his nose in dronkenesse;
A capitayn sholde lyve in sobrenesse.
But a chronicler named Marcellinus Comes, writing in Constantinople at about the same time as Jordanes, knew a different story: Attila was stabbed in the night by a woman. It may well be that this story originated almost as soon as the true report – it was lying ready to hand.
In very brief remarks on this matter, my father sketched out his view of the further evolution of the Burgundian legend when the story that Attila was murdered by his bride had taken root. Such a deed must have a motive, and no motive is more likely than that it was vengeance for the murder of the bride’s father, or kinsmen. Attila had come to be seen as the leader of the Huns in the massacre of the Burgundians in 437 (see p.341); now, the murder was done in vengeance for the destruction of Gundahari and his people. Whether or not Ildico was a Burgundian, her r?le in the evolving drama must make her so. And she avenges her brother, Gundahari.
The essential features of the Burgundian story are then present. Gundahari-Gunnar, vin Borgunda, was killed by Attila-Atli, and for this he was murdered, in his bed, by a woman. And the woman was Gudrún. But where the gold came from is of course a different question.
§ II Sigmund, Sigurd and the Nibelungs
As the story of the Burgundians evolved it became intertwined with a legend (or legends) distinct in nature and origin: the dragon-slayer and his golden hoard, and the mysterious Nibelungs (German Nibelungen, Norse Niflungar). When that conjunction and combination took place cannot be said, but it seems plain that it was made in Germany, and not in Scandinavia.
This is a matter that raises many questions that cannot be certainly resolved, and its study has been marked by severe disagreements. My father took a deep interest in it; but in his lectures at Oxford he approached it primarily from his desire to convey an idea of the largely vanished heroic poetry of ancient England. Since in this book my object is to present his poems expressly in terms of his own beliefs and opinions, it seems best to introduce this sketch of the subject in the same way, with the same question: what can be learned of it from the scraps and fragmentary references of Old English poetry?
In fact, there is only one text from which to look for an answer to that question, namely, a passage in Beowulf. I give this passage here in my father’s translation of the poem, which he made, I incline to think, at some time not far distant from that in which he wrote the Lay of the V?lsungs and the Lay of Gudrún.
Returning from their riding from the hall of Heorot to see the mere into which Grendel had plunged dying, the knights were entertained by a minstrel of the king.
At whiles a servant of the king, a man laden with proud memories who had lays in mind and recalled a host and multitude of tales of old – word followed word, each truly linked to each – this man in his turn began with skill to treat in poetry the quest of Beowulf and in flowing verse to utter his ready tale, interweaving words.
He recounted all that he had heard tell concerning Sigemund’s works of prowess, many a strange tale, the arduous deeds of the W?lsing and his adventures far and wide, deeds of vengeance and of enmity, things that the children of men knew not fully, save only Fitela who was with him. In those days he was wont to tell something of such matters to his sister’s child, even as they ever were comrades in need in every desperate strait – many and many of the giant race had they laid low with swords. For Sigemund was noised afar after his dying day no little fame, since he, staunch in battle, had slain the serpent, the guardian of the Hoard. Yea he, the son of noble house, beneath the hoar rock alone did dare the perilous deed. Fitela was not with him; nonetheless it was his fortune that the sword pierced through the serpent of strange shape and stood fixed in the wall, goodly blade of iron; the dragon died a cruel death. The fierce slayer had achieved by his valour that he might at his own will enjoy that hoard of rings; the boat upon the sea he laded and bore to the bosom of his ship the bright treasures, the offspring of W?ls was he. The serpent melted in its heat.
He was far and wide of adventurers the most renowned throughout the people of mankind for his works of prowess, that prince of warriors – thereby did he aforetime prosper – after the valour and might of Heremod, his might and prowess, had failed...
The remainder of the passage concerns the Danish king Heremod and does not bear on the question at issue here. In a lecture on the subject my father set down what he called ‘preliminary points’ – considerations arising from the Old English evidences alone, without looking further afield. In what follows I give them in abbreviated form but almost entirely in his own words.
There cannot be any serious doubt that the reference in Beowulf is to a story related to the V?lsung and Nibelung legends of other lands. The names Sigemund, W?lsing, Fitela (and his relation nefa to eam [nephew to uncle] of Sigemund), and the dragon with his hoard, must on grounds of philology and legend be ultimately the same as Old Norse Sigmundr son of V?lsung, with his sister-son Sin-fj?tli. This remains true in spite of the serious discrepancies: e.g. that Sigemund (not his son: no hint of whose existence is given) slew the dragon; or that a boat, not a horse, is the vehicle for the treasure.
The Burgundians are not referred to at all in Beowulf. Neither are many, certainly renowned, figures of Germanic story. The argument from silence is peculiarly perilous in dealing with remnants so haphazard and tattered as those we possess of Old English heroic traditions; and might seem absurd when applied to Beowulf, which is a poem, not a catalogue. Yet it actually has some point in this case. The Burgundian names were known to Old English, and the subjects of verse and tale. We cannot be certain that such a connexion was not present to the mind of the author of Beowulf. But it does not look like it.
The Burgundians are indee