The body bled at his touch, and he was the chief object of Chriemhilt’s vengeance, more especially after he had taken the treasure away from her, placed it in a cave beneath the Rhine, and jealously guarded the secret of the spot. When she invited the brothers to Hungary he was much averse to the journey, till he found that his disclination was imputed to fear, when he became vehemently set upon going, in spite of the omens against it. Taunts and injuries passed between him and Chriemhilt, and the next day the fierce and furious battle began, which raged till Gunther and Haghen alone were left. After Gunther had been killed, Chriemhilt offered Haghen his life, on condition that he would disclose the place where the treasure was, but he refused, and died by her hand.
There is a curious poem, called the Duke of Aquitaine, which is evidently another version of the same notion of Haghen. Hagano, a descendant of the Trojans, is there sent to deprecate the invasion of Attila, and afterwards assists the Burgundian king Gunther of Wurms in an attack on Duke Walther of Aquitaine, and Hildegunna, sister to Gunther, in order to recover a treasure that they had carried off from Attila’s court, where they had been hostages. This version of the great central story of Europe named Hagen, Count of Aquitaine, the uncle of Charles the Bald; but the North has used it more, in the form of Hogen.
The name is either from hagr, deft or handy, or else from hagi, a hook; most probably the latter, perhaps in connection with the other meaning, a thorn or prickle, so that here we may find a personification of the thorn destroying the victor. The word hag is seldom found in names, and is probably imitated from Hagen, without much regard to the meaning. It occurs only in the Danish, as Hagbrand, Hagbart, contracted as Habaar, or Habor; Hagthor, which is incorrectly modernized as Hector; and Hagny. The more usual form in Denmark is Hogne, probably from the German Hagano.
But there has been a confusion between this Hagan, or Hogni, and Haagan, properly Haakvin, from haa, high, and kyn, meaning of high kin, the well-known Norwegian and Danish name of many a fierce viking; sometimes Latinized as Haquinus, Frenchified as Haquin, and called in the North Haaken, or Hakon. Domesday has it as Kaco, Hacon, Hacun, and Hakena; and Hacon still lingers among the fishermen of the Orkneys. Other northern names, with the same opening, haa (pronounced ho), are Haamund, no doubt the parent of our Hammond, and Haavard, whence our Hayward, both alike meaning high protection.[[133]]
[133]. Lettsom; Nibelungenlied; Weber and Jamieson; Munch; Anderson, Royal and Noble Genealogies.
Section VI.—Ghiseler.
Ghiseler is one of the brothers of Gunther, an inoffensive personage, and the only one of the party of whom Chriemhild took any civil notice, when she had decoyed them to her court to their destruction. Nevertheless he did not escape, but died in combat with Wolfhart, of Bern, when the champions of Dietrich could not be withheld from the fray.
His name is tolerably clear—Giselhar, the pledged warrior. The first syllable is from gildan, geldan, keltan, to owe, or to pay what was due. The terms ran through all the Gothic tongues, and caused the Anglo-Saxons to call all the offerings due to the gods gield and ghëlstar.
A pledge of mutual obligation was, in Anglo-Saxon, gisel, and is still gidsel in the North; in the German, geissel. Thence, far more probably than from the older word geisli, a beam, or nimbus, was derived the Frank Gisel, as a maiden’s name. A daughter of Pepin, so called, was offered to Leo X. of Constantinople; and afterwards the daughter of Charles the Simple, who became the pledge of amity between the Karlingen and Northmen, by her marriage with Rollo. She was called by the French Gisèle, by the Normans Gisla, in which same form it has lived on in Friesland and in Norway. The commencement is not, however, a very common one in the North, though Giselher is repeated in Gissur Isleifson, Bishop of Iceland, in the eleventh century. Gislaug, the pledge drink, is likewise northern, but though gils is an extremely common termination, almost all the names where it is a commencement are Frankish, or German, and thus probably Giselfrid came to the North as Gisrod.