Читать книгу Women of the Teutonic Nations - Hermann Schoenfeld - Страница 5

"'Woe is me! Other cares than feasting oppress my heart.

All-father has betrothed me to an unbeloved man.

Fierce Hodbroddr will carry me off in a few nights, if you,

O hero, shining in the beauty of youth, will not save me and challenge him to mortal combat.'"

With these words she entwines caressingly her white arms around the neck of Helgi, whose heart melts and inclines to her. He challenges the hated rival, and on the morning of the combat he stands against the countless host of Hodbroddr, who is aided by Sigrun's father and brothers, who are resentful of the bold Helgi's suit. The earth trembles and shakes under the onslaught, but Helgi's resistless sword mows down his enemies. Beasts and birds of the field hold a rich repast. When the tumult of the battle subsides, Sigrun rides over the field, and her lamentation for her slain father and brothers is heard amid the exultations of victory. Only one brother, Dag, survives, and he weds her to Helgi. But impelled by the sacred duty of blood revenge, he breaks the peace which he has sworn. Odin himself, wrathful against the Volsung, offers Dag his invincible spear. In the ensuing combat Helgi falls. Before his sister, Helgi's loving wife, the slayer pleads the will of Odin and the Norns, goddesses of immutable fate, and offers rich compensation to her. But Sigrun breaks out in bitter woe, cursing her brother: he shall be a wolf out in the forest, all joy shall be far away from him, no horse shall carry him, the ship which may save him from his enemies shall stand still under him.

The tomb is piled up over Helgi's corpse. When Sigrun's maid goes to the grave, the dead master comes riding along and bids her ask his wife to soothe his wounds. Before he can lay aside his bloody armor, Sigrun embraces him, lamenting how cold are his hands, how wet he is with the dew of the night. Helgi replies: "Thine is the blame; for every tear which thou weepest falls as a cold and piercing drop of blood upon my bosom. But let us be of good cheer and drink the sweet mead, let no one complain of the wound on my breast, since, though dead am I, my wife is with me." Sigrun prepares the couch to sleep on the breast of the beloved dead, as she did when he was still alive. Helgi, touched by so much love, exclaims: "It has happened what no one ever deemed possible: the white daughter of Hagen, the living one, sleeps in the arms of the dead." At the morning dawn, before the cock crows, Helgi is obliged to return to Valhalla, and Sigrun returns to her solitary palace. In the evening she awaits him, but waits in vain, and in her sorrow her heart breaks.

The motive of this legend lives in German literature in varied forms. Burger has reawakened it in Lenore, the greatest German ballad.

But, to conclude the chapter on the Teutonic women of antiquity, it is necessary to return once more to the prose of history, where, for the first time, the women of the Teutons, in their general aspect, enter into the bright light of historical observation, in this instance so much the more valuable, since it is the observation of the enemy. In conformity with our other sources, the Greek-Roman historians, Plutarch, Dion Cassius, and Strabo, have to report regarding Teutonic womanhood only traits of tremendous strength, power, and love of liberty. Savage virtue and heroism are there, but not a single trait of grace and loveliness appears in their accounts. And if there is exaggeration, it simply proves the terror the furor Teutonicus which was inculcated by the Teutons into the hearts of the Romans at their very first encounter. The years B. C. 113-101 witnessed the first Titanic clash and conflict between the Cimbri and the Teutones, mere splinters of the Teutonic race, and the world power of the Roman Republic at the height and zenith of its greatness. For the first time, Teutons thundered at the gates of the Alpine entrance to Rome, and thus began the incessant struggle which continued for nearly six centuries between the two most powerful races in the history of the world, until the Empire finally succumbed.

When one legionary army after another, led by the foremost commanders of Rome, had been destroyed under the onslaught of the two combined tribes, the Cimbri and the Teutones, it was only the military genius of Marius which finally succeeded in stemming the tide of the Teutonic flood, and then only after the tribes had divided their forces and, thus weakened, hurled their naked bodies against the phalanx of the overwhelming Roman army. When the legionaries of Rome pursued the defeated Teutones to their camp, Plutarch relates: "the Teuton women met them with swords and axes, and making a terrible outcry, drove the fugitives as well as the pursuers back, the first as traitors, the others as enemies, and mixing among the warriors, with their bare arms pulling away the shields of the Romans and laying hold on their swords, endured the wounds and slashing of their bodies invincible unto death with undaunted resolution."

An account by Valerius Maximus emphasizes not only the bravery, but also the chastity of the Teuton women. When captured, they requested of the victor Marius to consecrate them to the service of Vesta's sacred virgins, promising to keep themselves as pure and immaculate as the goddess and her servants. Upon the refusal of their request they strangled themselves the following night. Thus ended the battle of Aquas Sextise in B. C. 102, with the annihilation of the Teutones root and branch.

In the subsequent year Marius destroyed the Cimbri also, on the Raudian fields near Vercellas. Among their women were prophetesses, hoary with age, barefooted, clothed in white garments with iron girdles, and fine flaxen cloaks. Thus apparelled they went sword in hand to meet the prisoners of war in camp, whom, after wreathing them, they conducted to a large iron kettle. Then one of them mounted a high step and bending over the kettle, cut the throat of the prisoner who had been lifted over the edge, and prophesied from the blood which streamed into the brass vessel.

During the battle they drummed on hides fastened over the wagons, and made a horrible noise. When the largest and most warlike part of the Cimbri had been annihilated, and the Romans pursued the rest within the wall of the camp, they were astounded by a highly tragic spectacle. The Cimbri women standing in black garments of mourning on the wagons, inflicted death upon the fugitives: one upon her husband, another upon her brother, another again upon her father. But their own children they strangled and hurled under the wheels of the wagons and under the hoofs of the horses. Finally they laid hands upon themselves. One, it is said, was hanging from the top of a wagon with her children, tied with ropes, dangling from her ankles.

The later struggles, too, between the Teuton and the Roman offer many examples of the German woman's absolute contempt of a life which could be preserved only in shame and servitude.

When Drusus battled with the Cherusci, Suevi, and Sigambri, it happened that their women, besieged by the Romans in their wagon fortifications (Wageriburg), instead of surrendering, desperately defended themselves with everything that might serve as a weapon. Finally despairing, they struck their children against the ground and hurled their dead bodies in the face of the enemy. The most perfect model of heroic stoicism in connection with those wars, Princess Thusnelda, whose fate we discussed above, was only the first woman among her equals. Teutonic women in those primitive times invariably followed their husbands to war, carrying food and encouragement to the warriors in battle, counting proudly the wounds of their husbands and sons, and nursing the wounded. Through threats or entreaties they restored many a tottering battle array, inciting the men to heroism.