An ensign all golden
    High o’er the hoard,
    Of hand wonders greatest,
    Wrought by spells of song,
    From which shot a light
    So that he the ground surface
    Might perceive,
    The wonders overscan.”
                  Beowulf (Metcalfe’s tr.).

[Sidenote:  Death of Beowulf.] The mighty treasure was all brought forth to the light of day, and the followers, seeing that all danger was over, crowded round their dying chief.  He addressed them affectionately, and, after recapitulating the main events his career, expressed a desire to be buried in a mighty mound on a projecting headland, which could be seen far out at sea, and would be called by his name.

                            “’And now,

Short while I tarry here—­when I am gone,
Bid them upon yon headland’s summit rear
A lofty mound, by Rona’s seagirt cliff;
So shall my people hold to after times
Their chieftain’s memory, and the mariners
That drive afar to sea, oft as they pass,
Shall point to Beowulf’s tomb.’”

          
                                          Beowulf(Conybeare’s tr.).

These directions were all piously carried out by a mourning people, who decked his mound with the gold he had won, and erected above it a Bauta, or memorial stone, to show how dearly they had loved their brave king Beowulf, who had died to save them from the fury of the dragon.

CHAPTER II.

GUDRUN.

Maximilian I., Emperor of Germany, rendered a great service to posterity by ordering that copies of many of the ancient national manuscripts should be made.  These copies were placed in the imperial library at Vienna, where, after several centuries of almost complete neglect, they were discovered by lovers of early literature, in a very satisfactory state of preservation.  These manuscripts then excited the interest of learned men, who not only found therein a record of the past, but gems of literature which are only now beginning to receive the appreciation they deserve.

[Sidenote:  Origin of poem of Gudrun.] Among these manuscripts is the poem “Gudrun,” belonging to the twelfth or thirteenth century.  It is evidently compiled from two or more much older lays which are now lost, which are alluded to in the Nibelungenlied.  The original poem was probably Norse, and not German like the only existing manuscript, for there is an undoubted parallel to the story of the kidnaping of Hilde in the Edda.  In the Edda, Hilde, the daughter of Hoegni, escapes from home with her lover Hedin, and is pursued by her irate father.  He overtakes the fugitives on an island, where a bloody conflict takes place, in which many of the bravest warriors die.  Every night, however, a sorceress recalls the dead to life to renew the strife, and to exterminate one another afresh.