Chapter 7

        In H. H., I, 7, we read: 'He (Helgi) seemed to the courtiers to be of the race of a king (literally, of the race of Dag)': drótt þótti sá döglingr vera. As to Cormac, his father's friend says directly after his birth that he is the true king's son. He repeats the same statement just before the boy Cormac makes his way to Tara; and this is the cry of all the people when Cormac first speaks in an assembly there.
        It is said of Helgi in I, 7, 'they said that good times had come among men' (viz. with him): 'kváðu með gumnum góð ár komin.' (37) When Cormac was born, his father's friend sang: 'A king's birth; increase of grain ...... grain and milk shall be a result of Art's visit to Olc's house,' and in different stories we learn of the good times which the people enjoyed under Cormac's rule: the water was full of fish, and the forest of acorns. Wild game was abundant, and from the heavens streamed honey. In the Norse poem, the statement that Helgi's birth was to bring good times is somewhat idle, since we nowhere learn that such happy days really came. (38) This inconsistency is readily explained by the theory that the poet, in his treatment of Helgi's birth and youth, took motives from the story which influenced the tale of Cormac's Birth, while the Helgi-lay as a whole was not based on this latter account.
        The Helgi-poet continues (I, 7): 'The king himself went out of the tumult of battle to bring the young prince magnificent gifts.' In the following strophe we hear that the king gave his son the name Helgi, several different places, the names of which are given, and a splendid sword. In the Irish tale, King Art decides before his death what name his child is to have, and tells the boy's mother that her son shall become king of Ireland. According to another Irish MS., (39) Art gives his son's mother (of course, for the son) his sword, his golden ring, and his state-dress. The supposition that the Helgi-poet took this motive of a father's giving his new-born son a sword from an AS poem on Wolf-Theodoric, is supported by the fact that Hugdietrich according to A 245, says before his death that he has kept a coat of armour and a sword for his son Wolfdietrich.
        I have already shown (pp. 13 ff, above) that lávc, H. H., I, 7, used of the gifts which the father presents his son, was doubtless borrowed from lác in an English poem. We see now that in all probability that poem was one which had Wolf-Theodoric for its hero. As Helgi's father, when he gives his son a name, gives him also different places which are enumerated in the poem (I, 8), so Hugdietrich, who also (according to German B) decides upon his unborn son's name, presents his sons before his death certain places which are expressly mentioned. To Wolfdietrich he says: Kunstnopel sol wesen dîn. The ON poet, however, introduced new names, most of which presuppose the conception of Helgi as a Danish king.
        If we combine the prose passage On Sinfjötli's Death with what is related in the Helgi-lay, we must conclude that the father Sigmund was still alive after all the events in the First Lay took place. But one gets a different impression from the poem itself. After the bestowal of the name and the gifts, Sigmund is not mentioned. The next strophe relates how Helgi grew up among his friends, just as if his father were dead. And there is, moreover, no mention of Sigmund in the following strophe, where we learn that Helgi, when fifteen years of age, killed Hunding, who had ruled long over the lands and people. The Lay seems therefore to indicate that Helgi's father was dead before the boy was grown up. We may suppose that Hunding killed Sigmund, and then took it upon himself to rule the kingdom. He occupied the throne until slain by Helgi, who thus avenged his father's death.
        This remarkable disappearance of Sigmund from the poem after he has given a name to his son, is evidently to be explained by the fact that the Helgi-story, as we know it from the Edda, is made up of different component parts. We can here trace their joining. In the prose On Sinfjötli's Death, Sigmund is represented as living long after Helgi's birth. This seems to be due to a combination of saga-material; Sigmund was also the father of Sigurth Fáfnisbani, and Helgi was thought to be Sigurth's elder brother, and to have died before him. The author of the First Helgi-lay, however, followed the story of Wolf-Theodoric, in which the hero's father dies when the boy is in his infancy. As we have seen, Cormac's father dies before his son's birth. This motive was not borrowed from the Wolfdietrich-story, but was in the original Irish tale.
        We read of Helgi in I, 9: 'Then grew up before his friends' breast (i.e. in the midst of his friends) the noble elm, radiant with gladness (ynðis ljóma).' It is said of Cormac that he grew up at the house of his father's friend, and the passage runs: 'The lad verily was a pasture of the eyes of many,' and all good qualities were ascribed to him. In the lay sung after Cormac's birth, he is called the 'manchild of splendour.' (40)
        When Helgi was fifteen years old, he slew Hunding, who had ruled long over land and people (I, 10). Cormac's father fell the morning after he had begotten Cormac, in a battle against a certain Mac Con, or properly Lugaid (Lugid) surnamed mac Con. This Mac Con thereupon became king in Tara, where he ruled until Cormac came thither in early manhood. Then the people, recognising from Cormac's wise aspect and just judgment that he was the true son of the king, drove away Mac Con and made Cormac king in his stead.
        Mac Con means Hound's son. This corresponds exactly to Hunding, for while the derivative ending –ing in historical Old Norse means 'the descendant of,' the same ending –ing in AS means 'the son of.' (41)
        It is certain that the name Mac Con was in the Irish story before the latter borrowed anything from the Germanic story of Wolf-Theodoric. I am of the opinion that Wolf-Theodoric's enemy in an AS peom was called Hunding. This opinion is strengthened by the fact that Hundingum (dat. pl.) occurs in the AS poem Wîdsîð, v. 23 and 81 (in v. 23, directly before the Frankish hero Theodoric).
        The agreement in meaning between Hunding and Mac Con was doubtless the chief reason why the Cormac story borrowed features from the story of Wolf-Theodoric.
        Helgi and the sons of Hunding challenge one another to do battle; then, as we read in the First Lay (st. 13):
                        sleit Fróða frið
                        fjánda á milli.
'The peace of Fróthi was broken between the enemies.' An Irish record in the same MS. (42) as that which contains the tale of Cormac's Birth, says of Cormac's rule: 'There was peace and quiet and happiness. There was neither murder nor robbery in that time.' And in a somewhat later MS. (43) we read of Cormac: 'He made Ireland into a Land of Promise; for there was there in this time neither theft nor robbery nor violence.' (44) Now, the 'peace of Fróthi' is described in Old Norse saga as follows: 'No man did any other man harm at that time, even if he met his father's or his brother's murderer; at that time there was no thief nor robber either.' It seems to me improbable, therefore, that the author of the Helgi-lay used the expression, the 'peace of Fróthi,' because the foreign story, which he was imitating, ascribed to its hero a similarly peaceful reign. (45)
        So far, then, as I have been able to trace it, it is only the beginning of the First Helgi-lay---up to and including the account of Helgi's fight with Hunding---which shows the influence of a story about a saga-hero corresponding to Wolfdietrich. This story had points of agreement with both German accounts of Wolfdietrich, sometimes with A, sometimes with B, and with the Irish tale of Cormac's Birth. The motive of the thunderstorm at Helgi's birth, and the name Hunding, show particular agreement with the last-named story.
        Apparently, therefore, the only explanation of the relation of the Old Norse lay to the stories of Wolfdietrich in other languages, lies in the supposition that the former was influenced by an Anglo-Saxon heroic poem, which in its turn was a working-over of some Frankish epic.
        From this we may infer that the author of the First Helgi-lay lived in a circle where Englishmen, Irishmen, and Norsemen associated with one another, and where he became familiar with both English and Irish stories. This discussion of the relations between the Helgi-lay and the Wolfdietrich-story leads us, therefore, to the same results as to the personal and literary position of the Norse poet at which I have already arrived by means of other combinations.
        Unlike the older extant verses on Helgi Hundingsbani, the author of the First Lay dwells at length on the hero's birth and on the events which immediately follow it. In this he doubtless took as a model the AS poem on Wolf-Theodoric. The Irish tale which was influenced by this same poem, is not, however, an isolated example in Irish literature of a poet's emphasising the birth of his hero. It is, on the contrary, but one example of an oft-recurring class of tales which formed a part of the repertory of every Irish storyteller---namely, that class which consists of stories about a certain person's birth (genemain, also compeirt, literally: how a person was begotten).
        While Icelandic sagas, in agreement with Irish tales and Celtic stories in general, usually describe the birth and early boyhood of their heroes, mediæval Danish stories, as Axel Olrik remarks, (46) which develop in accordance with traditional tales and prefer to recount separate disconnected episodes, show reluctance to describe the youth of their chief personages. Starkath, for example, was really an East-Scandinavian hero; but the stories of his birth and early youth arose later and in West Scandinavia.
        I would, however, make one reservation as regards the relation between the account of Helgi's birth and the Wolfdietrich-story. In what follows I shall try to prove that the author of the First Helgi-lay in its present form was not the first Norse poet who transferred saga features from the Wolf-Theodoric to Helgi, and that not merely Norse but also Danish poets in Britain have had to do with the development of the Helgi-lays. Therefore, although I believe that the description of Helgi's birth belongs in its essentials to the Norwegian poet who was the author of the whole lay, yet I dare not deny the possibility that the poet in this description may have relied on some older Scandinavian (Danish or Norwegian) poem in which Helgi was already identified with Wolfdietrich.
        The striking contrast in poetic merit between the two poor strophes on Helgi's fight with Hunding and Hunding's sons, and the splendid stanzas which begin the poem, might in that way be more easily explained. These opening strophes form a very vivid and effective picture. Day is breaking. Thunder-clouds recede in the distance. Rain-drops sparkle in the morning light. The radiant prince, but one night old, yet with the flashing eyes of a hero and birnie-clad, is the central figure. Above him hover the Norns, who have tied for him the golden threads of fate to the corners of the heavens. By his side is his young mother. The ravens in the tree near by greet the dawn and the new-born warrior who is to bring them food. Wolves play (so it is hinted) about the child. Around him stand faithful followers, who hail with rejoicing the offspring of an heroic race. In the background we catch a glimpse of surging hosts of warriors in the tumult of battle, while from the midst of them emerges the old hero Sigmund, to gaze for the first time on his infant son. In his hand he bears a sword---a gift for the new-born babe, who has already been heralded as a famous warrior, destined to reign in his father's stead.



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