"God created the Giants, that they might kill the wild beasts, and the great dragons (_würm_), that the Dwarfs might thereby be more secure. But in a few years the Giants would too much oppress the Dwarfs, and the Giants became altogether wicked and faithless.
"God then created the Heroes; 'and be it known that the Heroes were for many years right true and worthy, and they then came to the aid of the Dwarfs against the faithless Giants;'--God made them strong, and their thoughts were of manhood, according to honour, and of combats and war."
We will divide the objects of German popular belief at the present day, into four classes:--1. Dwarfs; 2. Wild-women; 3. Kobolds; 4. Nixes.
[245] The only remnant is _Alp_, the nightmare; the _elfen_ of modern writers is merely an adoption of the English _elves_.
[246] The edition of this poem which we have used, is that by Schönhuth, Leipzig, 1841.
[247] Tarn from _taren_, to dare, says Dobenek, because it gave courage along with invisibility. It comes more probably we think from the old German _ternen_, to hide. Kappe is properly a cloak, though the Tarnkappe or Nebelkappe is generally represented as a cap, or hat.
[249] _Horny Siegfred_; for when he slew the dragon, he bathed himself in his blood, and became horny and invulnerable everywhere except in one spot between his shoulders, where a linden leaf stuck. In the Nibelungen Lied, (_st. 100_), Hagene says,
Yet still more know I of him--this to me is certaín, A terrible Lind-dragon the hero's hand hath slain; He in the blood him bathed, and horny grew his skin; Hence woundeth him no weapon, full oft it hath been seen.
[250] MM. Grimm thought at one time that this name was properly Engel, and that it was connected with the chances of Alp, Alf, to Engel (see above, p. 67). They query at what time the dim _Engelein_ first came into use, and when the angels were first represented under the form of children--a practice evidently derived from the idea of the Elves. In Otfried and other writers of the ninth and tenth centuries, they say, the angels are depicted as young men; but in the latter half of the thirteenth, a popular preacher named Berthold, says: _Ir schet wol daz si allesamt sint juncliche gemälet; als ein kint daz dá vünf jâr all ist swâ man sie mâlet._