ABSTRACT
It is an undeniable fact recognised by all researchers in this area that historical figures and references penetrated our national popular heroic poetry (I am thinking of Germanic heroic legend in its widest extent) already at an early stage: they present themselves to us partly dissolved into perfect unity with the mythical basis and surrounded by the legend’s transfiguring gleam, but also appear partly worked into the material as mere reminiscences by cursory reworkers and almost always recognisably interpolated. Arminius, the liberator of Germany, who according to the evidence of Tacitus (Annals II, 88) was still celebrated in songs by our forefathers up to the time of the famous historian, surely did not appear in those heroic songs without far-reaching dependence on the divine Irmin [note refers to Grimm 1848:614], and the historical figures and references especially in the last reworkings of our great national epics, the Nibelungenlied and the Kudrun, have been repeatedly stripped of their mythical character by researchers of our own day and established in their identity with historical events. Where the historical reference is not specially rooted in and by the legend, where a reworker brings forward his memories from folk-tradition or other sources available to him well or badly, then our work is made more or less easy for us: we find ourselves here confronting the most excellent source, healthy folk-tradition, whose poetic ingredient is never hard to recognise. One thing is however naturally to be maintained above all with reference to both of the types just mentioned of historical tradition associated with legend, namely that folk-legend never proceeds historically and chronologically: dominating figures and events, often separated by time, are grouped togther and blended with each other only in their value and meaning for the apt and poetic folk-consciousness, which regards its hero-figures devoutly and enthusiastically; in
shimmering exterior of legend, and to test the result of research partly against the touchstone of historical source-tradition, and partly to enrich and support the latter conversely out of the fullness of the liveliest folk-consciousness and healthy folkoutlook.
