TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY. - Centrostudirpinia.it

388 HEROES.
so is Hagano one-eyed, Walthari one-handed, Gunthari and Wie-
lant lame, of blind and dumb heroes there are plenty.
One thing seems peculiar to heroes, that their early years
should be clouded by some defect, and that out of this darkness
the bright revelation, the reserved force as it were, should suddenly
break forth. Under this head we may even place the blind birth
of the Welfs, and the vulgar belief about Hessians and Swabians
(p. 373). In Saxo Gram., p. 63, Ujffb is dumb, and his father
Vermund blind ; to him corresponds the double Offa in the line of
Mercia, and both of these Offas are lame and dumb and blind.
According to the vita Offae prirni, Varmundi filii, he was of hand
some figure, but continued blind till his seventh year, and dumb
till his thirtieth ; when the aged Varmund was threatened with
war, all at once in the assembly Offa began to speak. The vita
Offae secundi says, 1 the hero was at first called Vinered (so we must
emend Pineredus), and was blind, lame and deaf, but when he
came into possession of all his senses, he was named Offa secundus.
HiorvarSr and Sigurlinn have a tall hand
Exactly so, in Soem. 14.2 a .
some son, but hann var jjogull, ecki nafn festiz vi5 liann . Only
after a valkyrja has greeted him by the name of Helgi, does he
and is content to answer to that name. StarkaSr
begin to speak,
too was ];ogull in his youth (Fornald. sbg. 3, 3G), and Halfdan was
reckoned stupid (Saxo, p. 134) ; just as slow was the heroism of
Dietleib in unfolding itself (Vilk. saga cap. 91), and that of Iliya in
the Kussian tales. Our nursery-tales take up the character as
dscherling, aschenbrodcl, askcfis (cinderel) : the hero-youth lives
inactive and despised by the kitchen-hearth or in the cattle-stall,
out of whose squalor he emerges when the right time comes. I
do not recollect any instance in Greek mythology of this exceed
ingly favourite feature of our folk-lore.
Unborn children, namely those that have been cut out of the
womb, usually grow up heroes. Such was the famous Persian
Ptustem in Ferdusi, as well as Tristan according to the old story in
Eilhart, or the Russian hero Dobruna Nikititch, and the Scotch
Macduff. But Volsungr concerns us more, who spoke and made
vows while yet unborn, who, after being cut out, had time to kiss
his mother before she died (Volsungas. cap. 2. 5). An obscure
1 These remarkable vitae Offae prirni ct sccuncli are printed after Watts s
Matth. Paris, pp. 8, 9.