This volume contains the principal hero-lays of the six great epic cycles of the Teutonic Middle Ages, and to them we have added the great mythical Carolingian cycle, which centred round the persons of Charlemagne and his heroes. The latter is mostly of Romance origin, and was composed by court troubadours for the delight of the royal palace, wherefore it never became the true inheritance of the masses. Beside these French poems, stand the Breton ones of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, which later on took up the legend of the Holy Grail into their very heart, and at this period found their way to Germany, where they met with a more romantic and poetic treatment at the hands of the court minnesingers. But these foreign importations never found a true home amongst the German people; they never became popular. The native hero-lays on the other hand, even though less beautiful in conception and in form, lived on through centuries, and even to this day exist, though disguised and degraded. For in the market-places of Germany, and at the few old English fairs that yet remain, the pedlar bookseller gives in exchange for the farthing piece printed versions of many of these old legendary tales: Siegfried's battle with the Dragon, the Rose-garden, Alberic and Elbegast's adventures, and other wondrous histories of Teutonic epical origin. But this literature is fast dying out, if, indeed, it may not by this time be said to be already dead. In Iceland, however, and in the Faroe Isles, tradition still holds her throne unconquered.
About the Author: Johann Wilhelm Ernst Wägner (born September 16, 1800 in Darmstadt - December 4, 1886 in Kettenheim ), often just Wilhelm Wagner, was a German writer, translator and evangelical theologian.Johann Wilhelm Ernst Wagner was born the son of a court hunter in Darmstadt. First, a private school, then attended the high school . In the years 1820 to 1823 he studied theology in Giessen . He then became tutor to the French ambassador, Count of Fenelon, in his hometown. From January 1824 to May 1827 Wägner was the head of a private school for boys, later a teacher at a junior high school and at a higher vocational school . In 1832 he graduated as Dr. phil. In November 1842, Wägner took over a pastorate in Ginsheim and moved in 1859 as a pastor to Kettenheim, In 1877 he was awarded the title of church council.