As in the Nibelungenlied, Atli invited her kin to Hungary, where they arrived after burying the golden hoard in a secret spot in the Rhine, a spot they pledged themselves never to reveal. Once more we have a ride to Hungary, but Gudrun, seeing her husband means treachery, fights by her brother's side. Throughout this battle Gunnar sustains the courage of the Niblungs by playing on his harp, but, when only he and Högni are left, they are overpowered and flung into prison. There Atli vainly tries to make them confess the hiding-place of the hoard, and, hearing Gunnar will not speak as long as Högni lives, finally orders this warrior slain and his heart brought into Gunnar's presence.
Convinced at last that the momentous secret now lies with him alone,
Gunnar flatly refuses to reveal it.
Then was Gunnar silent a little, and the shout in the hall had died,
And he spoke as a man awakening, and turned on Atli's pride.
"Thou all-rich King of the Eastlands, e'en such a man might I be
That I might utter a word, and the heart should be glad in thee,
And I should live and be sorry: for I, I only am left
To tell of the ransom of Odin, and the wealth from the toiler reft.
Lo, once it lay in the water, hid deep adown it lay,
Till the gods were grieved and lacking, and men saw it and the day:
Let it lie in the water once more, let the gods be rich and in peace!
But I at least in the world from the words and the babble shall cease."
In his rage Atli orders the bound prisoner cast into a pit full of venomous serpents, where, his harp being flung after him in derision, Gunnar twangs its strings with his toes until he dies. To celebrate this victory, Atli orders a magnificent banquet, where he is so overcome by his many potations that Gudrun either stabs him to death with Sigurd's sword, or sets fire to the palace and perishes with the Huns, according to different versions of the story.
A third version claims that, either cast into the sea or set adrift in a vessel in punishment for murdering Atli, Gudrun landed in Denmark, where she married the king and bore him three sons. These youths, in an attempt to avenge the death of their fair step-sister Swanhild, were stoned to death. As for Gudrun, overwhelmed by the calamities which had visited her in the course of her life, she finally committed suicide by casting herself into the flames of a huge funeral pyre.
This saga is evidently a sun myth, the blood of the final massacres and the flames of the pyre being emblems of the sunset, and the slaying of Fafnir representing the defeat of cold and darkness which have carried off the golden hoard of summer.
Ye have heard of Sigurd aforetime, how the foes of God he slew;
How forth from the darksome desert the Gold of the Waters he drew;
How he wakened Love on the Mountain, and wakened Brynhild the Bright,
And dwelt upon Earth for a season, and shone in all men's sight.
Ye have heard of the Cloudy People, and the dimming of the day,
And the latter world's confusion, and Sigurd gone away;
Now ye know of the Need of the Niblungs and the end of broken troth,
All the death of kings and of kindreds and the Sorrow of Odin the Goth.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 34: See the author's "Myths of Northern Lands.">[
[Footnote 35: All the quotations in this chapter are from Wm. Morris'
"Sigurd the Volsung.">[