The Heroic Poetry of the Germans

Over many great races an enthusiastic movement seems at a certain period to sweep, carrying them during a few years to success, alike in arms and song, till the stream sinks back into its old channel, and the nation continues a career, honourable, it may be, but wanting in the peculiar ardour of its great age. Such a spirit as came upon the Athens of Pericles, or the England of Elizabeth, seems to have animated the widely scattered Germanic tribes which, in the fifth and sixth centuries, plundered and drank and sang amid the ruins of imperial Rome.

To the cultured Roman provincial, trying to lead an elegant and lettered existence amid reminiscences of the great ages of Classical history, the drinking seemed immoderate, and the song dissonant. One such has told us how his soul was vexed at the barbarous songs of his long-haired Burgundian neighbours, how he had to suppress his disgust, and praise these German lays, though with a wry face. How gladly now would we give all his verses for ten lines of the songs in which these “long-haired, seven foot high, onion-eating barbarians” celebrated, it may be, the open-handedness of Gibica, or perhaps told how, in that last terrible battle, their fathers had fallen fighting around Gundahari. But the Roman, far from caring to record these things, was anxious to shut his ears to them.