The modern German poet, Wilhelm Jordan, in his Sigfridsage, clothes
Volker with the attributes of a violin king he loved, and represents him
tenderly handling the violin. His noble portrayal of a violinist
testifies no more fully to the mission of the musician than the creation
of the Nibelungen bard. In August Wilhelmj, once hailed by Henrietta
Sontag as the coming Paganini, Richard Wagner saw "Volker the Fiddler
living anew, until death a warrior true." So he wrote in a dedicatory
verse beneath a portrait of himself, presented to "Volker-Wilhelmj as a
souvenir of the first Baireuth festival."
The idea of a magic fiddle and a wonderworking fiddler was strongly
rooted in the popular imagination of many peoples, through many ages.
Typical illustrations are the Wonderful Musician of Grimm's Fairy Tales,
whose fiddling attracted man and beast, and the lad of Norse folk-lore
who won a fiddle that could make people dance to any tune he chose. In
Norway the traditional violin teacher is the cascade-haunting musical
genius Fossegrim, who, when suitably propitiated, seizes the right hand
of one that seeks his aid and moves it across the strings until blood
gushes from the finger-tips.
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