class="c6">114

The Volsung dialogues 115 The Western and Northern poems compared, with respect to their scale 116 The old English poems (Beowulf, Waldere), in scale, midway between the Northern poems and Homer 117 Many of the Teutonic epic remains may look like the "short lays" of the agglutinative epic theory; but this is illusion 117 Two kinds of story in Teutonic Epic—(1) episodic, i.e. representing a single action (Hildebrand, etc.);
(2) summary, i.e. giving the whole of a long story in abstract, with details of one part of it (Weland, etc.)  
118 The second class is unfit for agglutination 119 Also the first, when it is looked into 121 The Teutonic Lays are too individual to be conveniently fused into larger masses of narrative 122

III

Epic and Ballad Poetry

Many of the old epic lays are on the scale of popular ballads	123
Their style is different	124
As may be proved where later ballads have taken up the epic subjects	125
The Danish ballads of Ungen Sveidal (Svipdag and Menglad) and of Sivard (Sigurd and Brynhild)	126 127
The early epic poetry, unlike the ballads, was ambitious and capable of progress	129

IV

The Style of the Poems

Rhetorical art of the alliterative verse	133
English and Norse	134
Different besetting temptations in England and the North	136
English tameness; Norse emphasis and false wit (the Scaldic poetry)	137
Narrative poetry undeveloped in the North; unable to compete with the lyrical forms	137
Lyrical element in Norse narrative	138
Volospá, the greatest of all the Northern poems	139
False heroics; Krákumál (Death-Song of Ragnar Lodbrok)	140
A fresh start, in prose, with no rhetorical encumbrances	141

V

The Progress of Epic

Various renderings of the same story due (1) to accidents of tradition and impersonal causes; (2) to calculation and selection of motives by poets, and intentional modification of traditional matter	144
The three versions of the death of Gunnar and Hogni compared—Atlakviða, Atlamál, Oddrúnargrátr	147
Agreement of the three poems in ignoring the German theory