Owing to diversities of race and speech, there are in southern and northern Germany various epic cycles which cluster around such heroes as Ermanrich the Goth, Dietrich von Bern, Theodoric the East Goth, Attila the Hun, Gunther the Burgundian, Otfried the Langobardian, and Sigfried--perchance a Frisian, or, as some authorities claim, the famous Arminius who triumphed over the Romans.
The Hildebrandslied relates how Hildebrand, after spending thirty years in Hungary, returns to North Italy, leaving behind him a wife and infant son Hadubrand.

A false rumor of Hildebrand's death reaches Hungary when Hadubrand has achieved great renown as a warrior, so, when in quest for adventure the young man meets his father, he deems him an impostor and fights with him until the poem breaks off, leaving us uncertain whether father or son was victorious.

But later poets, such as Kaspar von der Rhoen, give the story a happy ending, thus avoiding the tragic note struck in Sorab and Rustem (p.

410).
There existed so many of these ancient epic songs that Charlemagne undertook to collect them, but Louis I, his all too pious son, destroyed this collection on his accession to the throne, because, forsooth, these epics glorified the pagan gods his ancestors had worshipped! Still not all the Teutonic epics are of pagan origin, for in the second period we find such works as Visions of Judgment (Muspilli), Lives of Saints, and biblical narratives like Heliant (the Saviour), Judith, the Exodus, der Krist by Otfried, and monkish-political works like the Ludwigslied, or history of the invasion of the Normans.

There is also the epic of Walter von Aquitanien, which, although written in Latin, shows many traces of German origin.
In Walther von Aquitanien we have an epic of the Burgundian-Hunnish cycle written by Ekkehard of St.Gall before 973.