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which astrological terminology has passed over into nonastrological usage (e.g., jovial, mercurial, saturnine, ascendant, influence, etc.) might have been both apposite and illuminating. But these are small blemishes. The work is conveniently provided with a bibliography and an index.

The University of Illinois

ARTHUR STANLEY PEASE

THE PEARL: AN INTERPRETATION. By Robert Max Garrett. University of Washington Publications in English iv.1. Seattle, Wash. Published by the University. 1918. 8vo, pp. 45.

In this volume Professor Garrett has made a notable contribution to the study and interpretation of The Pearl. He begins by reminding us of the tremendous importance in the Middle Ages of the Eucharist—a fact which it is very easy for non-Catholic students to lose sight of. For the Eucharist, both in theory and in practice, is well nigh meaningless unless it be understood in the Catholic sense: that the true believer therein actually receives the true body and blood of the Savior, to his own healing and purification. The belief is a logical survival of the savage theory of the sacrifice. The Communion of Saints is the community of those who have by participation in the Eucharist entered into the mystic, eternal fellowship of the saints.

The connection between the Eucharist and the pearl seems to have been first suggested by the whiteness and roundness of the Host. It is not strange, then, that before the eighth century the word meris, "a particle of the consecrated Bread," is found also, in the Byzantine Liturgy, in the sense of "pearl." From this, Rabanus Maurus, for example, went on to identify the pearl with one of the spiritual sacraments (not the Eucharist alone, as Garrett, p. 19, implies). But more common is the linking of the pearl with the Savior as the Pearl of Great Price. And if Christ is the Great Pearl, then those who have received Him unto themselves become members of His Body-lesser pearls. One of these is the subject of the poem.

In The Pearl, then, a great anonymous poet-priest writes an In Memoriam to the memory of his lost two-year old Margaret or Pearl. She is either his little sister or his daughter; in the latter case, since he is probably now vowed to celibacy, we may think of him as speaking dramatically. Proof that his point of view is that of a real mourner and not that of one who is primarily exalting a symbolical pearl seems to be afforded by the wealth of imagery which the poet lavishes on the dear lost She is a pearl that rolled away from him through the

one.

grass into the ground; a rose that bloomed and faded naturally; a lovely flower; a special spice; a seemly seed.

Professor Garrett's view of the poem is inconsistent neither with this view nor with the one which regards The Pearl as wholly impersonal (as the late Professor Schofield held); and we believe he has amply demonstrated the correctness of his statement: that "within the frame of a great pearl, the poet sees his lost Pearl in the presence of the Lamb of God, a very member incorporate in the mystical body of Christ; and she teaches him that through the grace of God as granted in the Eucharist it is given him to become a member of this body, thus to be forever united with his Pearl as parts of the great pearl, the mystical body of Christ."

Cornell University

CLARK S. NORTHUP

STUDIES IN THE SYNTAX OF the linDISFARNE GOSPELS. By Morgan Callaway, Jr. Baltimore. The Johns Hopkins Press.

Persons who are interested in Anglo-Saxon syntax are well acquainted with the qualities which characterize the special studies of Dr. Morgan Callaway in that field. They are aware that these studies have been excelled by none in painstaking thoroughness and accuracy and that they have been made to yield all the results of which the material was capable. It goes without saying that any new study by Dr. Callaway will be greeted with the confidence that another substantial contribution has been made to our knowledge of the subject. The present work does not fall below its predecessors in laborious research, methodical classification, minuteness of analysis, and completeness of tabulation. If there is any disappointment felt by a reader it is that the ground covered by Dr. Callaway runs so entirely parallel to what he has previously been over, that in the very nature of things there can be no new results. Having in former dissertations exhaustively analyzed the constructions of the Absolute Participle, Appositive Participle, and the Infinitive as they occur in West-Saxon literature, Dr. Callaway has here addressed himself to examining the same constructions in the Lindisfarne Gospels of the Northumbrian dialect. It was a cause of gratification to him, though it should not have been a cause of surprise, that his statistical conclusions in all cases showed the closest correspondence to those he had previously arrived at. The Lindisfarne Gospels, being an interlinear gloss, show rather more of the influence of Latin syntax than the West-Saxon translations, and occasionally have combinations which occur nowhere else in Anglo-Saxon,

though some of these, such as the use of a subject nominative with participle in absolute constructions, are apparently due to a temporary confusion of the glossator and are perhaps treated with too great respect by Dr. Callaway. Dr. Callaway further reinforces the strength of his conclusions by bringing into play all the studies of these points made for the various Germanic languages since his own last published discussion of the material. His volume carries down to date all that has been said on the constructions in question and concludes with a long bibliography supplementary to those in the earlier volumes. JACOB ZEITLIN

University of Illinois

THE NIBELUNGEN LEGEND AND ITS HISTORICAL BASIS1

The Legend of the Nibelungen, dealing with the heroic age of that group of nations called Teutonic, Germanic, or Gothonic, is to these races what the Homeric poems are to the Greeks. Though less perfect than they in structure, still the legend is the most venerable common treasure of ancient Germanic poetry.

If we include the latest additions to the compact Nibelungen block, the legend contains elements from about 350 A.D. to about 1000 A. D. The first great epic climax is reached in 436 with the defeat and death of the Burgundian king Gunther in the battle against the Huns, before the close of the Roman epoch, and before the culmination of the great migration age. The second and more dramatic climax is reached in 575, when the Franconian king Sigbert was slain by the brother of king Gunthram of Burgundy, a murder later attributed to Queen Brunhild. As a postlude, in 630 comes the defeat of king Dagbert by king Samo's heathen Slavs.

Sung for ages, the legend finally died out on the lips of the people. When the German composer Wagner revived it in the 19th Century, young Sigfrid of the Nibelungen legend became a sort of modern German national hero, and the original history of the legend became the subject of animated discussions among German scholars.

No one denies that the chief persons in the second act of the drama are historical; that was well known even in the earlier part of the Middle Ages. Godfred di Viterbo in the 12th century says: "It is not true that Dietrich von Bern and Ermanic and Attila were contemporaries, as it is related." It was rather the overture and the first act which caused the

1 The ingeniously elaborated theory concerning the historical basis of the Nibelungenlegend which Dr. Schütte presents in this paper was suggested first by Gottsched (De temporibus Teutonicorum vatum mythicis 1752, p. x) and again advanced in the 19th century by A. Giesebrecht (von der Hagen's Germania, 1837; II, 237 ff.) without receiving, however, the general approval of scholars. A careful perusal of the passages quoted from Gregory of Tours' Historia Francorum and from Fredegar's Chronicle will enable the reader to judge for himself whether the author's interpretations and deductions are warranted and the coincidence of certain names and situations is more than merely accidental.-Editor.

dispute. They seemed totally obscure and mere fancy. The hoard-guarding fire-dragon, the Valkyrie Brynhild wakened from magic sleep by the hero of divine origin, the visitation of the curse of the hoard upon him, these were matters of debate.

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The first explorers of the Nibelungen story could see nothing historical in all this. To them, Sigfrid was a sun-hero awakening the sleeping day (Brynhild), and at sunset he was overcome by the Nibelungs, the demons of mist and night. (German Nebel mist.) This was largely supported by the success of Wagner's Nibelungen-Ring, for the whole construction fitted in well with the tendency toward reviving the ancient Gothonic mythology as a sort of modern German national religion. Kroll even went so far as to attempt to establish in real earnest "Wodanism," the cult of Wodan.

Certainly some elements of the Nibelungen legend have assumed a more or less mythical form, especially in the northern countries where heathendom survived much longer than in Germany; and where mythical metaphors became forever a predominating feature of the poetical language. Such elements are, for example, the "king of the dwarfs," Alberich (cf. the old Celtic god, Mars Albiorix) and the tale of the young hero who awakens a sleeping princess. This latter is preserved in Germany as a separate fairy tale, the famous story of Dorn

röschen.

Again, an entire stratum of mythical figures is represented by the ancestors of the same young hero, the family of Völsungs in the Scandinavian version. The original ancestor, Sigi, is obviously a hypostasis of Odin, who was known also as Sigfadir and Sigtyr, the god of victory, and whose principal sanctuary in Sweden, according to the Snorra Edda, was Sigtuna, "the town of Sig." Sigi's grandson Sigmund, according to Norwegian folk-lore, is the leader of the Asgaardrei.3

In the Norwegian catalogue of heroes fighting at Bravellir, Sigmund is localised at the Odinic sanctuary, Sigtuna. His sister and wife, Signy, marries Siggeir, the slayer of Sigmund's

'Dr. Schütte here overrates the influence of Wagner's music-drama. What kept the mythological interpretation of the legend really alive was the predominance of the Lachmann-Müllenhoff school of philologians with whom it had become a fixed dogma.-Editor.

'See Ross, Norsk Ordbog, art. Sigmund.

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