Part 39

HEL, or _Hela_, in Scandinavian mythology, the goddess of the dead. She was a child of Loki and the giantess Angurboda, and dwelt beneath the roots of the sacred ash, Yggdrasil. She was given dominion over the nine worlds of Helheim. In early myth all the dead went to her: in later legend only those who died of old age or sickness, and she then became synonymous with suffering and horror. Her dwelling was _Elvidnir_ (dark clouds), her dish _Hungr_ (hunger), her knife _Sullt_ (starvation), her servants _Ganglate_ (tardy feet), her bed _Kor_ (sickness), and her bed-curtains _Blikiandabol_ (splendid misery).

HELDENBUCH, DAS, the title under which a large body of German epic poetry of the 13th century has come down to us. The subjects of the individual poems are taken from national German sagas which originated in the epoch of the Migrations (_Volkerwanderung_), although doubtless here, as in all purely popular sagas, motives borrowed from the forces and phenomena of nature were, in course of time, woven into events originally historical. While the saga of the Nibelungs crystallized in the 13th century into the _Nibelungenlied_ (q.v.), and the Low German Hilde-saga into the epic of _Gudrun_ (q.v.) the poems of the _Heldenbuch_, in the more restricted use of that term, belong almost exclusively to two cycles, (1) the Ostrogothic saga of Ermanrich, Dietrich von Bern (i.e. Dietrich of Verona, Theodorich the Great) and Etzel (Attila), and (2) the cycle of Hugdietrich, Wolfdietrich and Ortnit, which like the _Nibelungen_ saga, was probably of Franconian origin. The romances of the _Heldenbuch_ are of varying poetic value; only occasionally do they rise to the height of the two chief epics, the _Nibelungenlied_ and _Gudrun_. Dietrich von Bern, the central figure of the first and more important group, was the ideal type of German medieval hero, and, under more favourable literary conditions, he might have become the centre of an epic more nationally German than even the _Nibelungenlied_ itself. Of the romances of this group, the chief are _Biterolf und Dietlieb_, evidently the work of an Austrian poet, who introduced many elements from the court epic of chivalry into a milieu and amongst characters familiar to us from the _Nibelungenlied_. _Der Rosengarten_ tells of the conflicts which took place round Kriemhild's "rose garden" in Worms--conflicts from which Dietrich always emerges victor, even when he is confronted by Siegfried himself. In _Laurin und der kleine Rosengarten_, the Heldensage is mingled with elements of popular fairy-lore; it deals with the adventures of Dietrich and his henchman Witege with the wily dwarf Laurin, who watches over another rose garden, that of the Tyrol. Similar in character are the adventures of Dietrich with the giants Ecke (_Eckenlied_) and Sigenot, with the dwarf Goldemar, and the deeds of chivalry he performs for queen Virginal (_Dietrichs erste Ausfahrt_)--all of these romances being written in the fresh and popular tone characteristic of the wandering singers or _Spielleute_. Other elements of the Dietrich saga are represented by the poems _Alpharts Tod_, _Dietrichs Flucht_ and _Die Rabenschlacht_ ("Battle of Ravenna"). Of these, the first is much the finest poem of the entire cycle and worthy of a place beside the best popular poetry of the Middle High German epoch. Alphart, a young hero in Dietrich's army, goes out to fight single-handed with Witege and Heime, who had deserted to Ermanrich, and he falls, not in fair battle, but by the treachery of Witege whose life he had spared. The other two Dietrich epics belong to a later period, the end of the 13th century--the author being an Austrian, Heinrich der Vogler--and show only too plainly the decay that had by this time set in in Middle High German poetry.

The second cycle of sagas is represented by several long romances, all of them unmistakably "popular" in tone--conflicts with dragons, supernatural adventures, the wonderland of the East providing the chief features of interest. The epics of this group are _Ortnit_, _Hugdietrich_, _Wolfdietrich_, the latter with its pathetic episode of the unswerving loyalty of Wolfdietrich's vassal Duke Berchtung and his ten sons. Although many of the incidents and motives of this cycle are drawn from the best traditions of the _Heldensage_, its literary value is not very high.

This collection of popular romances was one of the first German books to be printed. The date of the first edition is unknown, but the second edition appeared in the year 1491 and was followed by later reprints in 1509, 1545, 1560 and 1590. The last of these forms the basis of the text edited by A. von Keller for the Stuttgart _Literarische Verein_ in 1867. In 1472 the _Heldenbuch_ was adapted to the popular tastes of the time by being remodelled in rough _Knittelvers_ or doggerel; the author, or at least copyist, of the MS. was a certain Kaspar von dor Roen, of Munnerstadt in Franconia. This version was printed by F. von der Hagen and S. Primisser in their _Heldenbuch_ (1820-1825). _Das Heldenbuch_, which F. von der Hagen published in 2 vols, in 1855, was the first attempt to reproduce the original text by collating the MSS. A critical edition, based not merely on the oldest printed text--the only one which has any value for this purpose, as the others are all copies of it--but also on the MSS., was published in 5 vols. by O. Janicke, E. Martin, A. Amelung and J. Zupitza at Berlin (1866-1873). A selection, edited by E. Henrici, will be found in Kurschner's _Deutsche Nationalliteratur_, vol. 7 (1887). Recent editions have appeared of _Der Rosengarten_ and _Laurin_, by G. Holz (1893 and 1897). All the poems have been translated into modern German by K. Simrock and others. See F. E. Sandbach, _The Heroic Saga-Cycle of Dietrich of Bern_ (1906). The literature of the _Heldensage_ is very extensive. See especially W. Grimm, _Die deutsche Heldensage_ (3rd ed., 1889); L. Uhland, "Geschichte der deutschen Poesie im Mittelalter," _Schriften_, vol. i. (1866); O. L. Jiriczek, _Deutsche Heldensage_, vol. i. (1898); and especially B. Symons, "Germanische Heldensage," in Paul's _Grundriss der germanischen Philologie_ (2nd ed., 1898).

HELDER, a seaport town at the northern extremity of the province of North Holland, in the kingdom of Holland, 51 m. by rail N.N.W. of Amsterdam. Pop. (1900) 25,842. It is situated on the Marsdiep, the channel separating the island of Texel from the mainland, and the main entrance to the Zuider Zee, and besides being the terminus of the North Holland canal from Amsterdam, it is an important naval and military station. On the east side of the town, called the Nieuwe Diep, is situated the fine harbour, which formerly served, as Ymuiden now does, as the outer port of Amsterdam. In this neighbourhood are the naval wharves and magazines, wet and dry docks, and the naval cadet school of Holland, the name Willemsoord being given to the whole naval establishment. From Nieuwe Diep to Fort Erfprins on the west side of the town, a distance of about 5 m., stretches the great sea-dike which here takes the place of the dunes. This dike descends at an angle of 40 deg. for a distance of 200 ft. into the sea, and is composed of Norwegian granite and Belgian limestone, strengthened at intervals by projecting jetties of piles and fascines. A circle of forts and batteries defends the town and coast, and there is a permanent garrison of 7000 to 9000 men, while 30,000 men can be accommodated within the lines, and the province flooded from this point. Besides several churches and a synagogue, there are a town hall (1836), a hospital, an orphan asylum, the "palace" of the board of marine, a meteorological observatory, a zoological station and a lighthouse. The industries of the town are sustained by the garrison and marine establishments.

HELEN, or HELENA (Gr. [Greek: Elene]),in Greek mythology, daughter of Zeus by Leda (wife of Tyndareus, king of Sparta), sister of Castor, Pollux and Clytaemnestra, and wife of Menelaus. Other accounts make her the daughter of Zeus and Nemesis, or of Oceanus and Tethys. She was the most beautiful woman in Greece, and indirectly the cause of the Trojan war. When a child she was carried off from Sparta by Theseus to Attica, but was recovered and taken back by her brothers. When she grew up, the most famous of the princes of Greece sought her hand in marriage, and her father's choice fell upon Menelaus. During her husband's absence she was induced by Paris, son of Priam, with the connivance of Aphrodite, to flee with him to Troy. After the death of Paris she married his brother Deiphobus, whom she is said to have betrayed into the hands of Menelaus at the capture of the city (_Aeneid_, vi. 517 ff.). Menelaus thereupon took her back, and they returned together to Sparta, where they lived happily till their death, and were buried at Therapnae in Laconia. According to another story, Helen survived her husband, and was driven out by her stepsons. She fled to Rhodes, where she was hanged on a tree by her former friend Polyxo, to avenge the loss of her husband Tlepolemus in the Trojan War (Pausanias iii. 19). After death, Helen was said to have married Achilles in his home in the island of Leuke. In another version, Paris, on his voyage to Troy with Helen, was driven ashore on the coast of Egypt, where King Proteus, upon learning the facts of the case, detained the real Helen in Egypt, while a phantom Helen was carried off to Troy. Menelaus on his way home was also driven by stress of winds to Egypt, where he found his wife and took her home (Herodotus ii. 112-120; Euripides, _Helena_). Helen was worshipped as the goddess of beauty at Therapnae in Laconia, where a festival was held in her honour. At Rhodes she was worshipped under the name of Dendritis (the tree goddess), where the inhabitants built a temple in her honour to expiate the crime of Polyxo. The Rhodian story probably contains a reference to the worship connected with her name (cf. Theocritus xviii. 48 [Greek: sebou m', Helenas phyton eimi]). She was the subject of a tragedy by Euripides and an epic by Colluthus. Originally, Helen was perhaps a goddess of light, a moon-goddess, who was gradually transformed into the beautiful heroine round whom the action of the _Iliad_ revolves. Like her brothers, the Dioscuri, she was a patron deity of sailors.

See E. Oswald, _The Legend of Fair Helen_ (1905); J. A. Symonds, _Studies of the Greek Poets_, i. (1893); F. Decker, _Die griechische Helena in Mythos und Epos_ (1894); Andrew Lang, _Helen of Troy_ (1883); P. Paris in Daremberg and Saglio's _Dictionnaire des antiquites_; the exhaustive article by R. Engelmann in Roscher's _Lexikon der Mythologie_; and O. Gruppe, _Griechische Mythologie_, i. 163, according to whom Helen originally represented, in the Helenephoria (a mystic festival of Artemis, Iphigeneia or Tauropolos), the sacred basket ([Greek: helene]) in which the holy objects were carried; and hence, as the personification of the initiation ceremony, she was connected with or identified with the moon, the first appearance of which probably marked the beginning of the festivity.

HELENA, ST (c. 247-c. 327) the wife of the emperor Constantius I. Chlorus, and mother of Constantine the Great. She was a woman of humble origin, born probably at Drepanum, a town on the Gulf of Nicomedia, which Constantine named Helenopolis in her honour. Very little is known of her history. It is certain that, at an advanced age, she undertook a pilgrimage to Palestine, visited the holy places, and founded several churches. She was still living at the time of the murder of Crispus (326). Constantine had coins struck with the effigy of his mother. The name of Helena is intimately connected with the commonly received story of the discovery of the Cross. But the accounts which connect her with the discovery are much later than the date of the event. The Pilgrim of Bordeaux (333), Eusebius and Cyril of Jerusalem were unaware of this important episode in the life of the empress. It was only at the end of the 4th century and in the West that the legend appeared. The principal centre of the cult of St Helena in the West seems to be the abbey of Hautvilliers, near Reims, where since the 9th century they have claimed to be in possession of her body. In England legends arose representing her as the daughter of a prince of Britain. Following these Geoffrey of Monmouth makes her the daughter of Coel, the king who is supposed to have given his name to the town of Colchester. These legends have doubtless not been without influence on the cult of the saint in England, where a great number of churches are dedicated either to St Helena alone, or to St Cross and St Helena. Her festival is celebrated in the Latin Church on the 18th of August. The Greeks make no distinction between her festival and that of Constantine, the 21st of May.

See _Acta sanctorum_, Augusti iii. 548-580; Tixeront, _Les Origines de l'eglise d'Edesse_ (Paris, 1888); F. Arnold-Forster, _Studies in Church Dedications or England's Patron Saints_, i. 181-189, iii. 16, 365-366 (1899). (H. De.)

HELENA, a city and the county-seat of Phillips county, Arkansas, U.S.A., situated on and at the foot of Crowly's Ridge, about 150 ft. above sea-level, in the alluvial bottoms of the Mississippi river, about 65 m. by rail S.W. of Memphis, Tennessee. Pop. (1890) 5189, (1900) 5550, of whom 3400 were negroes; (1910) 8772. It is served by the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley (Illinois Central), the St Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern (Missouri Pacific), the Arkansas Midland, and the Missouri & North Arkansas railways. Built in part upon "made land," well protected by levees, and lying within the richest cotton-producing region of the south, the rich timber country of the St Francis river, and the Mississippi "bottom lands," Helena concentrates its economic interests in cotton-compressing and shipping, the manufacture of cotton-seed products, lumbering and wood-working. The city was founded about 1821, but so late as 1860 the population was only 800. During the Civil War the place was of considerable strategic importance. It was occupied in July 1862 by the Union forces, who strongly fortified it to guard their communications with the lower Mississippi; on the 4th of July 1863, when occupied by General Benjamin M. Prentiss (1819-1901) with 4500 men, it was attacked by a force of 9000 Confederates under General Theophilus H. Holmes (1804-1880), who hoped to raise the siege of Vicksburg or close the river to the Union forces. The attack was repulsed, with a loss to the Confederates of one-fifth their numbers, the Union loss being slight.

HELENA, a city and the county-seat of Lewis and Clark county, Montana, U.S.A., and the capital of the state, at the E. base of the main range of the Rocky Mountains, 80 m. N.E. of Butte, at an altitude of about 4000 ft. Pop. (1880) 3624; (1890) 13,834; (1900) 10,770, of whom 2793 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 12,515. It is served by the Great Northern and the Northern Pacific railways. Helena is delightfully situated with Mt Helena as a background in the hollow of the Prickly Pear valley, a rich agricultural region surrounded by rolling hills and lofty mountains, and contains many fine buildings, including the state capitol, county court house, the Montana club house, high school, the cathedral of St Helena, a federal building, and the United States assay office. It is the seat of the Montana Wesleyan University (Methodist Episcopal), founded in 1890; St Aloysius College and St Vincent's Academy (Roman Catholic); and has a public library with about 35,000 volumes, the Montana state library with about 40,000 volumes, and the state law library with about 24,000 volumes. The city is the commercial and financial centre of the state (Butte being the mining centre), and is one of the richest cities in the United States in proportion to its population. It has large railway car-shops, extensive smelters and quartz crushers (at East Helena), and various manufacturing establishments; the value of the factory product in 1905 was $1,309,746, an increase of 68.7% over that of 1900. The surrounding country abounds in gold- and silver-bearing quartz deposits, and it is estimated that from the famous Last Chance Gulch alone, which runs across the city, more than $40,000,000 in gold has been taken. The street railway and the lighting system of the city are run by power generated at a plant and 40 ft. dam at Canyon Ferry, on the Missouri river, 18 m. E. of Helena. There is another great power plant at Hauser Plant, 20 m. N. of Helena. Three miles W. of the city is the Broadwater Natatorium with swimming pool, 300 ft. long and 100 ft. wide, the water for which is furnished by hot springs with a temperature at the source of 160 deg. Fort Harrison, a United States army post, is situated 3 m. W. of the city. Helena was established as a placer mining camp in 1864 upon the discovery of gold in Last Chance Gulch. The town was laid out in the same year, and after the organization of Montana Territory it was designated as the capital. Helena was burned down in 1869 and in 1874. It was chartered as a city in 1881.

HELENSBURGH, a municipal and police burgh and watering-place of Dumbartonshire, Scotland, on the N. shore of the Firth of Clyde, opposite Greenock, 24 m. N.W. of Glasgow by the North British railway. Pop. (1901) 8554. There is a station at Upper Helensburgh on the West Highland railway, and from the railway pier at Craigendoran there is steamer communication with Garelochhead, Dunoon and other pleasure resorts on the western coast. In 1776 the site began to be built upon, and in 1802 the town, named after Lady Helen, wife of Sir James Colquhoun of Luss, the ground landlord, was erected into a burgh of barony, under a provost and council. The public buildings include the burgh hall, municipal buildings, Hermitage schools and two hospitals. On the esplanade stands an obelisk to Henry Bell, the pioneer of steam navigation, who died at Helensburgh in 1830.

HELENUS, in Greek legend, son of Priam and Hecuba, and twin-brother of Cassandra. He is said to have been originally called Scamandrius, and to have received the name of Helenus from a Thracian soothsayer who instructed him in the prophetic art. In the _Iliad_ he is described as the prince of augurs and a brave warrior; in the _Odyssey_ he is not mentioned at all. Various details concerning him are added by later writers. It is related that he and his sister fell asleep in the temple of Apollo Thymbraeus and that snakes came and cleansed their ears, whereby they obtained the gift of prophecy and were able to understand the language of birds. After the death of Paris, Helenus and his brother Deiphobus became rivals for the hand of Helen. Deiphobus was preferred, and Helenus withdrew in indignation to Mount Ida, where he was captured by the Greeks, whom he advised to build the wooden horse and carry off the Palladium. According to other accounts, having been made prisoner by a stratagem of Odysseus, he declared that Philoctetes must be fetched from Lemnos before Troy could be taken; or he surrendered to Diomedes and Odysseus in the temple of Apollo, whither he had fled in disgust at the sacrilegious murder of Achilles by Paris in the sanctuary. After the capture of Troy, he and his sister-in-law Andromache accompanied Neoptolemus (Pyrrhus) as captives to Epirus, where Helenus persuaded him to settle. After the death of Neoptolemus, Helenus married Andromache and became ruler of the country. He was the reputed founder of Buthrotum and Chaonia, named after a brother or companion whom he had accidentally slain while hunting. He was said to have been buried at Argos, where his tomb was shown. When Aeneas, in the course of his wanderings, reached Epirus, he was hospitably received by Helenus, who predicted his future destiny.

Homer, _Iliad_, vi. 76, vii. 44, xii. 94, xiii. 576; Sophocles, _Philoctetes_, 604, who probably follows the _Little Iliad_ of Lesches; Pausanias i. 11, ii. 23; Conon, _Narrationes_, 34; Dictys Cretensis iv. 18; Virgil, _Aeneid_, iii. 294-490; Servius on _Aeneid_, ii. 166, iii. 334.

HELGAUD, or HELGALDUS (d. c. 1048), French chronicler, was a monk of the Benedictine abbey of Fleury. Little else is known about him save that he was chaplain to the French king, Robert II. the Pious, whose life he wrote. This _Epitoma vitae Roberti regis_, which is probably part of a history of the abbey of Fleury, deals rather with the private than with the public life of the king, and its value is not great either from the literary or from the historical point of view. The only existing manuscript is in the Vatican, and the _Epitoma_ has been printed by J. P. Migne in the _Patrologia Latina_, tome cxli. (Paris, 1844); and by M. Bouquet in the _Recueil des historiens des Gaules_, tome x. (Paris, 1760).

See _Histoire litteraire de la France_, tome vii. (Paris, 1865-1869); and A. Molinier, _Les Sources de l'histoire de France_, tome ii. (Paris, 1902).

HELGESEN, POVL,[1] Danish humanist, was born at Varberg in Halland about 1480, of a Danish father and a Swedish mother. Helgesen was educated first at the Carmelite monastery of his native place and afterwards at another monastery at Elsinore, where he devoted himself to humanistic studies and adopted Erasmus as his model. None had a keener eye for the abuses of the Church; long before the appearance of Luther, he denounced the ignorance and immorality of the clergy, and, as lector at the university of Copenhagen, gathered round him a band of young enthusiasts, the future leaders of the Danish Reformation. But Helgesen desired an orderly, methodical, rational reformation, and denounced Luther, whose ablest opponent in Denmark he subsequently became, as a hot-headed revolutionist. Christian II. was also an object of Helgesen's detestation, and so boldly did he oppose that monarch's measures that, to save his life, he had to flee to Jutland. Under Frederick I. (1523-1533) he returned to Copenhagen and resumed his chair at the university, becoming soon afterwards provincial of the Carmelite Order for Scandinavia. But like all moderate men in a time of crisis, Helgesen could gain the confidence of neither party, and was frequently attacked as bitterly by the Catholics as by the Protestants. From 1530 to 1533 he and the Protestant champion Hans Tausen exhausted the whole vocabulary of vituperation in their fruitless polemics. In October 1534, however, Helgesen issued an eirenicon in which he attempted to reconcile the two contending confessions. After that every trace of him is lost. For a long time he was unjustly regarded as a turn-coat, but he was too superior to the prejudices of his age to be understood by his contemporaries. His ideal was a moral internal reformation of the Church on a rational basis, conducted not by ill-informed fanatics, but by an enlightened and well-educated clergy; and from this standpoint he never diverged. Helgesen was indisputably the greatest master of style of his age in Denmark, and as a historian he also occupies a prominent position. He always endeavours to probe down to the very soul of things, though his passionate nature made it very difficult for him to be impartial. His chief works are _Danmark's Kongers Historie_ and _Skibby Kroniken_.

See Ludwig Schmitt, _Der Karmeliter Paulus Helia_ (Freiburg, 1893); _Danmarks Riges Historie_ (Copenhagen, 1897-1905), vol. iii.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] He wrote his name Heliae or Eliae.