GUDGEON (_Gobio fluviatilis_), a small fish of the Cyprinid family. It is nearly related to the barbel, and has a small barbel or fleshy appendage at each corner of the mouth. It is the _gobione_ of Italy, _goujon_ of France (whence adapted in M. English as _gojon_), and _Grassling_ or _Grundling_ of Germany. Gudgeons thrive in streams and lakes, keeping to the bottom, and seldom exceeding 8 in. in length. In China and Japan there are varieties differing only slightly from the common European type. GUDRUN (KUDRUN), a Middle High German epic, written probably in the early years of the 13th century, not long after the _Nibelungenlied_, the influence of which may be traced upon it. It is preserved in a single MS. which was prepared at the command of Maximilian I., and was discovered as late as 1820 in the Castle of Ambras in Tirol. The author was an unnamed Austrian poet, but the story itself belongs to the cycle of sagas, which originated on the shores of the North Sea. The epic falls into three easily distinguishable parts--the adventures of King Hagen of Ireland, the romance of Hettel, king of the Hegelingen, who woos and wins Hagen's daughter Hilde, and lastly, the more or less parallel story of how Herwig, king of Seeland, wins, in opposition to her father's wishes, Gudrun, the daughter of Hettel and Hilde. Gudrun is carried off by a king of Normandy, and her kinsfolk, who are in pursuit, are defeated in a great battle on the island of Wulpensand off the Dutch coast. The finest parts of the epic are those in which Gudrun, a prisoner in the Norman castle, refuses to become the wife of her captor, and is condemned to do the most menial work of the household. Here, thirteen years later, Herwig and her brother Ortwin find her washing clothes by the sea; on the following day they attack the Norman castle with their army and carry out the long-delayed retribution. The epic of _Gudrun_ is not unworthy to stand beside the greater _Nibelungenlied_, and it has been aptly compared with it as the _Odyssey_ to the _Iliad_. Like the _Odyssey_, Gudrun is an epic of the sea, a story of adventure; it does not turn solely round the conflict of human passions; nor is it built up round one all-absorbing, all-dominating idea like the _Nibelungenlied_. Scenery and incident are more varied, and the poet has an opportunity for a more lyric interpretation of motive and character. _Gudrun_ is composed in stanzas similar to those of the _Nibelungenlied_, but with the essential difference that the last line of each stanza is identical with the others, and does not contain the extra accented syllable characteristic of the _Nibelungen_ metre.