Rune Poems - House of Dubhros

INTRODUCTION
WALDHERE
In the year 1860 Professor E. C. Werlauff of the Royal
Library, Copenhagen, was looking through some odds and
ends of parchment brought back from England by the
Icelandic scholar Grimur J. Thorkelin, the first editor of
Beowulf, when he came upon two leaves of Anglo-Saxon
MS. which had evidently been used in the binding of a
book. Upon examination they proved to contain fragments
of the Waltharius story, hitherto unknown from English
sources, and in the same year Professor George Stephens
brought out the editio princeps styled Two Leaves of King
Waldere's Lay.
It was a popular story on the continent and several
versions of it are preserved ; cf. especially Learned, The
Saga of Walther of Aquitaine (Baltimore, 1892), and Althof,
Waltharii Poesis, I. 17-23 (Leipzig, 1899).
1. By far the most complete, as also the earliest, of
the continental forms is the Latin epic of Waltharius by
Ekkehard of St Gall, the first of that name, ob. 973. It is
a poem of 1456 hexameter lines, composed according to a
later namesake of the author (usually known as Ekke
hard IV) as an academic exercise in the Vergilian mood,
dictamen magistro debitum. An occasional phrase or turn
of syntax betrays its Teutonic origin ; cf. Althof, W. P. I.
28-32, 44-57, etc.: and Ker, The Dark Ages, pp. 222 ff.
(Edinburgh, 1904).
Briefly summarised, the story runs as follows: At the
time of the great Hunnish invasions there ruled in Gaul
three princes of Teutonic blood : (1) Gibicho, king
of the
Franks, at Worms; his son was called Guntharius. (2) Here-