Northern mythology

224 EPITOME OF GERMAN MYTHOLOGY.
—
Popular narratives branch into three classes : I. Heroic
Traditions (Heldensagen) ; II. Popular Traditions (Yolkssagen);
III. Popular Talcs (Marchen). That they all
in common—though traceable only in Christian times
have preserved much of heathenism^ is confirmed by the
circumstance, that in them many beings make their appearance
who incontestably belong to heathenism, viz. those
subordinate beings the dwarfs, water-sprites, etc., who are
w^anting in no religion w^iich, like the German, has developed
conceptions of personal divinities ^
The principal sources of German Heroic Tradition
are a series of poems, which have been transmitted from
the eighth, tenth, but chiefly from the twelfth down to the
fifteenth century. These poems are founded, as has been
satisfactorily proved, on popular songs, collected, arranged
and formed into one whole, for the most part by professed
singers. The heroes, who constitute the chief personages
in the narrative, were probably once gods or heroes, whose
deep-rooted myths have been transmitted through Christian
times in an altered and obscured form. With the
great German heroic tradition—the story of Siegfried and
the Nibelunge, this assumption is the more surely founded,
as the story, even in heathen times, was spread abroad in
Northern song^.
If in the Heroic Traditions the m)i:hic matter, particularly
that which forms the pith of the narrative, is frequently
concealed, in the Popular Traditions (Yolkssagen)
it is often more obvious. By the last-mentioned
title we designate those narratives which, in great number
and remarkable mutual accordance, are spread over all Germany,
and which tell of rocks, mountains, lakes and other
prominent objects. The collecting of those still preserved
among the common people has, since the publication of
the ' Deutsche Sagen ^ by the Brothers Grimm, made con-
'
W, Miiller, Altdeutsclie Religion, p. 12. - lb.