page_title: Hildebrandslied
section_title: Description
hierarchical_section_title: Hildebrandslied / The manuscript / Description
caption_attribution_description: English: The first page of the Hildebrandslied. Facsimile published by Wilhelm Grimm in 1830 (from the Landes- und Murhardsche Bibliothek, Kassel, Germany, 2° Ms. theol.54, Bl. 1r). This is the first published facsimile of the manuscript and it shows the page before the damage caused by the use of chemical reagents in the later 19th Century.
context_page_description: The Hildebrandslied is a heroic lay written in Old High German alliterative verse. It is the earliest poetic text in German, and it tells of the tragic encounter in battle between a father and a son who does not recognize him. It is the only surviving example in German of a genre which must have been important in the oral literature of the Germanic tribes.
  The text was written in the 830s on two spare leaves on the outside of a religious codex in the monastery of Fulda. The two scribes were copying from an unknown older original, which itself must ultimately have derived from oral tradition. The story of Hildebrand and Hadubrand almost certainly goes back to 7th or 8th century Lombardy and is set against the background of the legendary conflict between Theodoric and Odoacer in 5th century Italy. The fundamental story of the father and son who fail to recognize each other on the battlefield is much older and is found in a number of Indo-European traditions.
context_section_description: The manuscript of the Hildebrandslied is now in the Murhardsche Bibliothek in Kassel (signature 2° Ms. theol. 54). The codex consists of 76 folios containing two books of the Vulgate Old Testament (the Book of Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus) and the homilies of Origen. It was written in the 820s in Anglo-Saxon minuscule and Carolingian minuscule hands. The text of the Hildebrandslied was added in the 830s on the two blank outside leaves of the codex (1ʳ and 76ᵛ).
  The poem breaks off in the midst of the battle and there has been speculation that the text originally continued on a third sheet (now lost) or on the endpaper of the (subsequently replaced) back cover. However, it is also possible that the text was being copied from an incomplete original or represented a well-known episode from a longer story.
  The Hildebrandslied text is the work of two scribes, of whom the second wrote only seven and a half lines (11 lines of verse) at the beginning of the second leaf. The scribes are not the same as those of the body of the codex. The hands are mainly Carolingian minuscule. However, a number of features, including the wynn-rune (ƿ) used for w suggest Old English influence, not surprising in a house founded by Anglo-Saxon missionaries.
  The manuscript pages now show a number of patches of discoloration. These are the results of attempts by earlier scholars to improve the legibility of the text with chemical agents.
caption: Grimm's 1830 facsimile of the first page of the Hildebrandslied. Some damage from the use of chemical reagents is already apparent, but much more was to follow.
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