Hildebrand is, as his very name shows, a Hilding,[31] like Hildeger who appears in the patriarch saga (Saxo, Hist., 356-359). Hildeger was, according to the tradition in Saxo, the half-brother of Halfdan Borgarson. They had the same mother Drot, but not the same father; Hildeger counted himself a Swede on his father's side; Halfdan, Borgar's son, considered himself as belonging to the South Scandinavians and Danes, and hence the dying Hildeger sings to Halfdan (Hist., 357):
Danica te tellus, me Sveticus edidit orbis.
Drot tibi maternum, quondam distenderat uber;
Hac genitrici tibi pariter collacteus exto.[32]
In the German tradition Hildebrand is the son of Herbrand. The Old High German fragment of the song,
about Hildebrand's meeting with his son Hadubrand, calls him Heribrantes sunu. Herbrand again is, according to the poem "Wolfdieterich," Berchtung's son (concerning Berchtung, see No. 6). In a Norse tradition preserved by Saxo we find a Hilding (Hildeger) who is Borgar's stepson; in the German tradition we find a Hilding (Herbrand) who is Borgar-Berchtung's son. This already shows that the German saga about Hildebrand was originally connected with the patriarch saga about Borgar, Halfdan, and Halfdan's sons, and that the Hildings from the beginning were akin to the Teutonic patriarchs. Borgar's transformation from stepfather to the father of a Hilding shall be explained below.
Hildeger's saga and Hildebrand's are also related in subject matter. The fortunes of both the kinsmen are at the same time like each other and the antithesis of each other. Hildeger's character is profoundly tragic; Hildebrand is happy and secure. Hildeger complains in his death-song in Saxo (cp. Asmund Kæmpebane's saga) that he has fought with and slain his own beloved son. In the Old High German song-fragment Hildebrand seeks, after his return from the East, his son Hadubrand, who believed that his father was dead and calls Hildebrand a deceiver, who has taken the dead man's name, and forces him to fight a duel. The fragment ends before we learn the issue of the duel; but Vilkinasaga and a ballad about Hildebrand have preserved the tradition in regard to it. When the old "master" has demonstrated that his Hadubrand is not yet equal to him in arms, father and son ride side by side in peace and happiness to their home. Both the conflicts between father and son, within the Hilding family, are pendants and each other's antithesis. Hildeger, who passionately loves war and combat, inflicts in his eagerness for strife a deep wound in his own heart when he kills his own son. Hildebrand acts wisely, prudently, and seeks to ward off and allay the son's love of combat before the duel begins, and he is able to end it by pressing his young opponent to his paternal bosom. On the other hand, Hildeger's conduct toward his half-brother Halfdan, the ideal of a noble and generous enemy, and his last words to his brother, who, ignorant of the kinship, has given him the fatal wound, and whose mantle the dying one wishes to wrap himself in (Asmund Kæmpebane's saga), is one of the touching scenes in the grand poems about our earliest ancestors. It seems to have proclaimed that blood revenge was inadmissible, when a kinsman, without being aware of the kinship, slays a kinsman, and when the latter before he died declared his devotion to his slayer. At all events we rediscover the aged Hildebrand as the teacher and protector of the son of the same Halfdan who slew Hildeger, and not a word is said about blood revenge between Halfdan's and Hildeger's descendants.
The kinship pointed out between the Teutonic patriarchs and the Hildings has not, however, excluded a relation of subordination of the latter to the former. In "Wolfdieterich" Hildebrand's father receives land and fief from Dieterich's grandfather and carries his banner in war. Hildebrand himself performs toward Dieterich those duties which are due from a foster-father, which, as a rule, show a relation of subordination to the real father of the foster-son. Among the kindred families to which Dieterich and Hildebrand belong there was the same difference of rank as between those to which Hadding and Hamal belong. Hamal's father Hagal was Halfdan's foster-father, and, to judge from this, occupied the position of a subordinate friend toward Halfdan's father Borgar. Thus Halfdan and Hamal were foster-brothers, and from this it follows that Hamal, if he survived Halfdan, was bound to assume a foster-father's duties towards the latter's son Hadding, who was not yet of age. Hamal's relation to Hadding is therefore entirely analagous to Hildebrand's relation to Dieterich.
The pith of that army which attached itself to Dieterich are Amelungs, Amalians (see "Biterolf"); that is to say, members of Hamal's race. The oldest and most important hero, the pith of the pith, is old master Hildebrand himself, Dieterich's foster-father and general. Persons who in the German poems have names which refer to their Amalian birth are by Hildebrand treated as members of a clan are treated by a clan-chief. Thus Hildebrand brings from Sweden a princess, Amalgart, and gives her as wife to a son of Amelolt serving among Dieterich's Amelungs, and to Amelolt Hildebrand has already given his sister for a wife.
The question as to whether we find threads which connect the Hildebrand of the German poem with the saga of the mythic patriarchs, and especially with the Hamal (Amala) who appears in this saga, has now been answered. Master Hildebrand has in the German saga-cycle received the position and the tasks which originally belonged to Hamal, the progenitor of the Amalians.
The relation between the kindred families—the patriarch family, the Hilding family, and the Amal family—has certainly been just as distinctly pointed out in the German saga-cycle as in the Norse before the German met with a crisis, which to some extent confused the old connection. This crisis came when Hadding-thjódrekr of the ancient myth was confounded with the historical king of the East Goths, Theoderich. The East Goth Theoderich counted himself as belonging to the Amal family, which had grown out of the soil of the myth. He was, according to Jordanes (De Goth. Orig., 14), a son of Thiudemer, who traced his ancestry to Amal (Hamal), son of Augis (Hagal).[33] The result of the confusion was: