The Eldridge knight, is his own cousin, Whom a knight of thine hath shent, (shent, disgraced. And he is come to avenge his wrong, And to thee, all thy knights among, But yet he will appease his wrath, And, but thou yield him that fair maid, Thy halls and towers must brenne. Thy head, Sir King, must go with Or else within these lists so broad, Thou must find him a peer. (brenne, burn. me, The king he turned him round about, And in his heart was woe: Is there never a knight of my round table, Is there never a knight amongst ye all, For he shall have my broad lay-lands, And he shall win fair Christabelle But every knight of his round table For whenever they looked on the grim Soldan, All woe-begone was that fair lady, When she saw no help was nigh; She cast her thought on her own true love, Up then starts the Stranger knight, Said, Lady be not afraid, I'll fight for thee with this grim Soldan, Tho' he be unmackly made. (peer, equal. (unmackly, unshapely. And if thou wilt lend me the Eldridge sword That lieth within thy bower, I trust in Christ for to slay this fiend, (lettest, hinderest. Go fetch him down the Eldridge sword! Now Heaven assist thee, courteous knight! The giant he stepped into the lists, And said, Away! away! I swear, as I am the hend Soldan, Then forth the Stranger knight he came, In his black armour dight; The lady sighed a gentle sigh, And now the giant and knight be met And now with swords so sharp of steel The Soldan struck the knight a stroke The Soldan struck a second stroke, The Soldan struck a third fell stroke, And she shrieked loud shriekings three. The knight he leapt upon his feet, All reckless of the pain; Quoth he, But Heaven be now my speed, Or else I shall be slain ! He grasped his sword with main and might, He drave it into the Soldan's side, Then all the people gave a shout And now the king with all his barons, And down he stepped into the lists, And he for pain and lack of blood And there all weltering in his gore, Lay lifeless on the ground. Come down, come down, my daughter dear! Thou art a leech of skill, Far lever had I lose half my lands Than this good knight should spill. (spill, come to harm. Down then steppeth that fair lady, To help him if she may; But when she did his beaver raise, Then giving her one parting look, But when she found her comely knight She laid her own pale cheek to his, O stay, my dear and only lord, 'Tis meet that I should follow thee, but very insufficient data for establishing the certainty of political events; they afford, nevertheless, the only pictures which remain of the ages which gave rise to, and which preceded them. If we see how things are at present, and feel a laudable desire to know from what origin they arose, through what gradations they have passed, and how they came to be moulded into the form in which we find them, we must look, for the state of our forefathers, into their ancient rhymes, which served as their memorials and annals." If it is not possible to separate the sober truth of things from the exaggerations and inventions of the bards, we can judge of the tastes and habits of the people (whose main and almost only intellectual delight was found in these ballads and romances) from the nature of the old compositions that have been preserved to us. In the same way,-to omit many others of different times and nations,—the ' Iliad' and Odyssey' of Homer, produced some hundreds of years before the Christian era, the 'Legends of Antar,' which preceded the birth of Mahomet in the seventh century, and the poem of the 'Cid,' which was written in the eleventh century, may all serve as indexes of the prevailing tastes and customs in Greece, Arabia, and Spain at those different periods, and the times that preceded them. In one capital feature all these present a monotonous resemblance, for all agree in extolling brute force, war, bloodshed, rapine, and cunning; but as they reflect the predilections of various races of men, living at periods remote from each other, they thus help us to a great historical truth, while some of their minor details present generic differences that distinguish race from race, and country from country. The lays of our fierce northern ancestors are as blood-stained and as ancient asmany of these national records, and in number exceed those of most countries. Tacitus, writing in the first century of the Christian era, makes mention of the songs of the ancient German bards; many of which, six centuries later, are said to have been collected by the order of the Emperor Charlemagne. The oldest existing specimen of Teutonic poetry is a creed entitled 'De Poeta Kazungali,’ which appears to be considerably older than the time of Charlemagne. A few other fragments, half chronicle, half legend, and in the vernacular tongue of the old Germans, which are still preserved in continental libraries, may be safely assigned to the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries. The celebrated Niebelungen Lay, as it now exists, appears to have been written about 800 years ago, but, like many others of the romances and heroic ballads, it is evidently a rifacciamento of something much older. It was indeed the common custom of the minstrels of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries to revive and modernize the ancient lays, loading them with marvellous fictions, and introducing sentiments and references to customs and discoveries of their own age, to render them more acceptable to their contemporaries. The Song of the Niebelungen, of which we are about to give an abstract, seems, however, to have been less altered by later hands, and to have preserved more of its rude, fierce, original character than any of the rest. In it we find no trace of that chivalrous spirit which grew up in a later and (bad as it was) a more civilized and better age. The most savage and ferocious of the warriors are those who are most praised-there is none of that |