King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table were also
important figures in medieval legend. Arthur was said to have reigned in
Britain early in the sixth century and to have fought against the Anglo-Saxons.
Whether he ever lived or not we do not know. In the Arthurian romances this
Celtic king stands forth as the model knight, the ideal of noble chivalry. The
Norman conquerors of England carried the romances to France, and here, where
feudalism was so deeply rooted, they found a hearty welcome. Sir Thomas
Malory's Morte d' Arthur, one of the first books to be printed in
England, contains many of the narratives from which Tennyson, in his Idylls
of the King, and other modern poets have drawn their inspiration.
THE NIBELINGENLIED
The greatest epic composed in Germany during the Middle
Ages is the Nibelungenlied. The poem begins in Burgundy, where three
kings hold court at Worms, on the Rhine. Thither comes the hero, Siegfried,
ruler of the Netherlands. He had slain the mysterious Nibelungs and seized
their treasure, together with the magic cloud-cloak which rendered its wearer
invisible to human eyes. He had also killed a dragon and by bathing in its
blood had become invulnerable, except in one place where a linden leaf touched
his body. Siegfried marries Kriemhild, a beautiful Burgundian princess, and
with her lives most happily. But a curse attached to the Nibelung treasure, and
Siegfried's enemy, the "grim Hagen," treacherously slays him by a
spear thrust in the one spot where he could be hurt. Many years afterwards
Kriemhild marries Attila, king of the Huns, on condition that he help her to
vengeance. Hagen and his Burgundians are invited to Hunland, where Kriemhild
causes them all to be put to death. The name of the poet who compiled and
probably wrote much of the Nibelungenlied remains unknown, but his work
has a place among the classics of German literature.
