to his goal, steadily rising with his theme to its magnificent climax. It is in this second part that the mythical element is largely superseded by the historical. 2. _The Historical Element_. The Siegfried myth is supposed to have taken shape as a connected story, as a sort of primitive epic, somewhere about the fifth century, among that German tribe known as the Rhine Franks, who lived between the east of Belgium and the Rhine and Moselle, Cologne being about the middle of their territory. Their next neighbours up the Rhine were another Germanic tribe, the Burgundians, dwelling in a more mountainous district, of which Worms may have been the middle point. Among these the Niblungs of the original story seem to have been located; and it is curious that in ancient Burgundian records may be found the names of three kings, Gundahar, Godomer and Gislahar, the resemblance of whose names to those in the _Lied_ is sufficiently suggestive. In the year 437 A.D. this Burgundian tribe, with its king, whose name (as latinized by the chronicler) was Gundicarius, was utterly defeated and practically annihilated by an invasion of the Huns in the reign of Attila. This disaster preceded, and perhaps gave the most powerful impulse to, that general break-up of the old {P. xii} Germanic settlements, and the period of stormy wanderings and wars, which lasted through nearly two hundred years, and is known as the Migration of the Peoples. The destruction of the Burgundians by Attila's host became incorporated with the story as the destruction of the Niblungs by Atli. Its locality was shifted (perhaps for the honour of the race) from a German district invaded by Huns to the capital of Hunland into which the heroes are entrapped by treachery.