THE VIGIL OF
BRUNHILD
A NARRATIVE POEM
BY FREDERIC MANNING
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
1907
PRINTED BY
HAZELL, WATSON AND VINEY, LD.,
LONDON AND AYLESBURY.
Brunhild, died A.D. 613
The intervention of women in the course of theworld’s history has nearly always been attendedby those events upon which poets delight tomeditate: events of sinister and tragic significance,the chief value of which is to show in rudecollision the ideals and the realities of life; thecommon humanity of the central figures in directconflict with the inhuman march of circumstance;and the processes through which these centralfigures, like Lady Macbeth or Cleopatra, are madeto transcend all conventional morality, and, thoughcompletely evil in the ordinary sense, to redeemthemselves and win our sympathy by a moment ofheroic fortitude, or of supreme and consuminganguish. Such events and processes, however,[iv]belong properly to dramatic art; narrativepoetry, being of a smoother and easier textureallowing more scope to the subjective play ofideas: in short, it is more spiritual than real.The Queen of Austrasia and Burgundy, whom Ihave made the subject of my poem, is essentiallya figure of tragedy. Perhaps it might havebeen better to treat her as a subject of dramaticaction; but in order to do so it would have beennecessary to limit her personality, to define hercharacter, to treat only a part of her variousand complex psychology. I preferred to showher at the moment of complete renunciation, aprisoner in her own castle of Orbe on the banksof the lake of Neuchâtel, after she had beenbetrayed by her own army, and had become theprey of her own rebellious nobles; and the poemis but a series of visions that come to her inthe stress of her final degradation, while she isawaiting the brutal death which the victorsreserved for her. Indeed, so entirely spiritualwas my intention, I have scarcely thought itworth while to enumerate the ironies of her[v]situation. The squalor of her cell, the triumphof her foes, the prospect of her own immediatedeath become entirely insignificant beside thepageantry, the splendour, the romance of a pastwhich her memories evoke and clothe with faint,reflected glories. She hears, in the charmingphrase of Renan, “les cloches d’une ville d’Is.”
In a note at the end of the volume I havegiven some extracts from the Histoire de France,edited by M. Ernest Lavisse, which show theprincipal events of her life.
F. M.