ABSTRACT
CHAPTER V: THE LANGOBARDIAN CYCLE The Langobards and Gepidae ALTHOUGH the following tales of mythical heroes have some slight historical basis, they have
been so adorned by the fancy of medireval bards, and so frequently remodelled with utter disregard to all chronological sequence, that the kernel of truth is very hard to find. The stories must therefore be considered as depicting customs and times rather than as describing actual events. They are recorded in the" Heldenbuch," or "Book of Heroes," edited in the fifteenth century by Kaspar von der Rhl>n from materials which had been embellished by Wolfram von Eschenbach and Heinrich von Ofterdingen in the twelfth century. The poem ot " Ortnit," for instance, is known to have existed as early as the ninth century.
