Heroic lay
The heroic lay is a genre of Germanic epic poetry characteristic of the Migration Period and the Early Middle Ages. A lay is a short narrative poem of between 80 and 200 lines concerning a single heroic episode in the life of a warrior from Germanic legend. It is distinct from the heroic epic which combines a sequence of episodes into a longer narrative.
Examples
- Old High German
- *The Hildebrandslied
- Old Norse
- *Atlakviða
- *Hamðismál
- Old English
- *The Finnesburg Fragment