Chapter 15

He seemed like a portreiture,So noble was he of his stature.

(St. XXVIII.) In the last verse of this stanza Lachmann thinksmagetlîchen, notminnelîchen, was the original word; "We have," says he rather austerely, "love enough and to spare in St. XXX, Fifth Adventure;" and certainly, if he be justified in rejecting St. CCXCVIII, and consequently in putting St. CCXCIX next to St. CCXCVII, there is rather a superabundance of the tender passion withminnelîchen, in two successive lines, andminnein a third. On the other hand, it may be said that this very superabundance is produced by Lachmann's own rejection of St. CCXCVIII, and that to alter the text of the preceding stanza in consequence of that rejection, is something like what lawyers call taking advantage of one's own wrong. But however that may be, it cannot be denied, thatmagetlîchenis in St. CCXCVII far more appropriate thanminnelîchen, and its suits my convenience as a translator infinitely better. I have therefore gladly adopted it.

(St. XL.)

In fame's eternal beadroll worthy to be fil'd."Faerie Queene."

In fame's eternal beadroll worthy to be fil'd.

"Faerie Queene."

SIXTH ADVENTURE

(St. II.) Lachmann's Fourth Lay begins here, and ends with St. LXXXVIII. The poem, which we now possess under the name of the Nibelungenlied, throws into the shade the early history of Siegfried and Brunhild, and retains only a few obscure allusions to the fact that they were old acquaintances. See the Preface.

Issland, the Kingdom of Brunhild, which I have thus written to distinguish it from our English wordisland, is identified by von der Hagen with Iceland; Wackernagel, in the Glossary to his "Alt-deutsches Lesebuch" prefers to derive it fromItisland(itis, woman in old German), the land of women or Amazons. It is however against this derivation,that, though Brunhild was a "Martial Maid" herself, her kingdom was not a kingdom of Amazons, like that of Radigund in the "Faerie Queene." Her female attendants were like other women, and her knights and the officers of her court were of the other sex.

(St. XVI.) In this stanza and those that follow we may clearly discern that several versions of the same tale have been huddled together. The same thing may be observed in other parts of the poem, but nowhere so clearly as here. For thetarnkappesee the note to St. CI.

(St. XXXVIII.) tuus, O Regina, quid optesExplorare labor, mihi jussa capessere fas est.

(St. XLV.) Zazamanc, according to von der Hagen, is a city in Asia Minor; Lachmann seems to place it in the Land of Romance.

(St. XLVI.) The hides here meant, according to von der Hagen, are the hairy ones of warm-blooded marine animals rather than the skins of fishes properly so called.

(St. LII.) This stanza (not to mention some others) must have been interpolated by a poetical tailor.

(St. LXIII.) According to von der Hagen, the best Rhenish wine is produced about Worms. It is called "Our Lady's Milk," and is superior to Lacryma Christi.

SEVENTH ADVENTURE

(St. XII.) The Ballad of Lord Thomas and Fair Annet has something similar of the lady's horse:

Four and twenty siller bellsWer a' tyed till his mane,And yae tift of the norland wind,They tinkled ane by ane.

(St. XVI.) This description of a castle (burc) does not materially differ from those which occur elsewhere in the poem. The castle was not one building, however large and complex, but included in the same ample circuit of its walls several extensive buildings, and afforded sufficient accommodation for a very great number of persons. The most conspicuous of the buildings within the castle seem to have been large detached erections, to which in this poem are applied the wordshûs(house),palas(palace),sal(hall), andgadem(room). In the passage before us,palasandsalare distinguished from one another; the same is the case at St. LXXXIV, Twenty-fourth Adventure (palas unde sal), and at St. XXXVII, Ninth Adventure, where Etzel's and Gunther's dwellings are respectively spoken of. On the other hand, the hall where the Burgundians feast with Etzel, and where the repeated conflicts take place, is calledpalasat St. XIX, Thirty-sixth Adventure,salat St. XX, same Adventure,hûsat St. IX, same Adventure, andgademat St. XX, Thirty-ninth Adventure, not to mention other passages; and the large building in Etzel's castle, where Gunther and his knights sleep, is calledsalat stanzas VII and XVI,hûsat stanzas XV and XVII, andgademat St. XIX, of the Thirtieth Adventure. These terms therefore seem nearly synonymous, or at least equally applicable to the large detached buildings in question, which resembled our public halls, such as Westminster hall and Guild-hall, and the halls of colleges and Inns of Court. Some of the halls in this poem seem to have been of truly poetical dimensions. Gunther (St. XXVI, of the Thirteenth Adventure) entertains in his hall twelve hundred knights of Siegfried's, besides his own Burgundians. Etzel's circle was still more numerous. The Burgundian knights were morethan a thousand in number; Rudeger's five hundred or more: Dietrich had many a stately man, no doubt the six hundred mentioned at St. IV, of the Thirty-second Adventure, and we learn from stanza V, of the Thirty-fourth Adventure, that 7,000 Huns were massacred by the Burgundians; all these made up a dinner party of about 9,000 guests. The less aristocratic followers of Gunther, 9,000 in number, seem also to have been feasting in one immense room, when the Huns took advantage of their unarmed condition to massacre them. The term, indeed, applied to the building ishûs, but this, we have seen, is one of the words used to designate great public halls. The hall, where Gunther and his knights lay so splendidly (St. IX, Thirtieth Adventure), seems to have been an Eton Long Chamber on a gigantic scale. After allowing for the twelve knights with Dankwart and the yeomen, he must have had more than a thousand warriors in his train. Treachery and violence were so common in the Middle Ages, that a great man was not safe except with a multitude of dependents about him, and the peculiar circumstances of Gunther's case required peculiar precaution. Yet even Siegfried took a thousand warriors of his own, and a hundred of Siegmund's, when they went together to visit his brother-in-law. These large halls were used for feasting, dancing, conversation, and sleeping, but there were other smaller separate buildings (kemenaten) for the residence of people of consequence, which no doubt contained several rooms. These also formed the bowers, or private apartments, of high-born ladies. Thekamere(chamber) seems to have been a room used for all sorts of purposes, among others for keeping stores and treasure as well as for living and sleeping. There seem to have been no private chapels within the walls of the castles described in this poem, none, for instance, such as St. George's Chapel in Windsor Castle, or the chapels in our Inns of Court and Colleges. Everybody went for his divinity to the minster. Kriemhild, who was in the habit of going to matins before daybreak, took her way to the minster, though it was so far from the castle at Worms that the ladies (St. XXXIV, Thirteenth Adventure) rode on horseback from one to the other. Gunther's castle was connected with the city of Worms, but seems to have communicated with the surrounding country, like the citadels of our present fortified towns. At stanzas XXXII, XXXIII, Thirteenth Adventure, the ladies view from the castle windows a tournament held in the country outside the walls. Etzel's castle, as far as I remember, is not represented as connected with any town.

(St. XXII.) All this description of the adventurers bears a resemblance to the passage in the Iliad where Helen points out the Greek chiefs to Priam; it reminds us also of the imitation of Homer in the "Jerusalem Delivered."

(St. XXXIV.) Siegfried here seems to apologize to Brunhild for presenting himself before her.

(St. XLIII.) Compare stanzas LXXXIV, Seventh Adventure—LXXXV, Tenth Adventure—XXXI, Nineteenth Adventure, and the observations.

(St. XLVI.) I cannot understand how the skin could be seen under a silken surcoat, which was so strong as never to have been cut by weapon, and which was moreover worn over a breastplate. Lachmann has reason to say "die Brunne ist vergessen."

(St. LXX.)

So did Sir Artegal upon her lay,As if she had an iron anvil been,That flakes of fire, bright as the sunny ray,Out of her steely arms were flashing seen,That all on fire you would her surely ween."Faerie Queene," V, v. 8.

So did Sir Artegal upon her lay,As if she had an iron anvil been,That flakes of fire, bright as the sunny ray,Out of her steely arms were flashing seen,That all on fire you would her surely ween.

"Faerie Queene," V, v. 8.

(St. LXX.) Forder helt, the hero, Lachmann conjecturesder helde, the concealed one.

(St. LXXXVIII.) According to Lachmann the Fourth Lay concludes with this stanza (L. St. XLII). What follows between this stanza and St. XLI, Tenth Adventure (L. St. XXVII, Ninth Adventure) he considers to consist of two continuations by different authors. Among other matters, they contain the two marriages of Brunhild and Kriemhild, events which I can scarcely imagine to have been passed over without notice, though I admit that they are not related in the clearest manner.

EIGHTH ADVENTURE

(St. I.) Lachmann observes that this stanza is inconsistent with St. LXXXIV, Seventh Adventure, where Siegfried is said to have taken the cloak back to the ship.

(St. XVIII.) Siegfried, I suppose, was not recognized from being in complete armor, but his shield might have identified him, as in the battle with the Saxons. Nothing is said here of what he had done with histarnkappe.

(St. XXIII.) Thelûtertranc(clear drink) was wine passed through spices, and afterward strained.

(St. XLV.) Our common participlebound(bound for such and such a place) seems in this sense to be derived from the old northern verbbown, to make ready, and not frombind.

And Jedburgh heard the Regent's order,That each should bown him for the border."Lay of the Last Minstrel."

And Jedburgh heard the Regent's order,That each should bown him for the border.

"Lay of the Last Minstrel."

NINTH ADVENTURE

(St. I.) According to Lachmann (L. St. XCV, Seventh Adventure) another continuation begins here. He thinks this addition is by another author than the composer of the first, and that it resembles in several respects the Third Lay of his edition, which answers to the Fifth Adventure ("How Siegfried first saw Kriemhild") of other editions.

(St. III.) Hagan here speaks ironically, but with good nature, as to a friend. He exhibits the same turn, but with the bitterness that suits the change of circumstances and the person whom he addresses, in his dialogues with his enemy Kriemhild, when he meets her in Hungary.

(St. XXVII, Ninth Adventure.) The lady supplies the place of the modern pocket handkerchiefmit snêblanken gêrenin the original. The Germangêreis evidently the Englishgore, a word which puzzled no less a person than Tyrwhitt, and which Johnson, who writes itgoar, has confounded with thegusset. The latter is the piece under the arm of a shirt; the gore, as Tyrwhitt was afterward accurately informed by "a learned person," is a common name for a slip, which is inserted to widen a garment in any particular part. It is a wedge-shaped piece, as the German commentators say of theirgêre. Shirts at present, however it may have been in Chaucer's or in Tyrwhitt's time, are not made with gores; the opening on each side renders gores unnecessary; but in the female of the shirt and in the smockfrock, gores are, I believe, still used. The passage in Chaucer illustrates the passage before us. The poet says of the Carpenter's Wife (Canterbury Tales, 3235)—

A seint (girdle) she wered, barred all of silk,A barme-cloth (apron) eke white as morwe (morning) milkUpon hire lendes (loins) full of many a gore.

In the last line the expression "full of many a gore" means, probably, full made, spread out by means of many a gore; otherwise "full of gores" would have been sufficient, and the addition of "many" an inelegant piece of surplusage. However that may be, it is clear that the apron stuck out and extended round the person of the wearer in consequence of the number of these gores, or wedge-shaped pieces, which made the bottom much wider than the top. An apron, thus made up of a multitude of gores, might not unaptly be itself called in the plural a woman's gores, and this seems to have been formerly the case in Germany. Kriemhild is here said to wipe her eyes with snow-white gores, and, in the Gudrun, the heroine of that name is rated by the tyrannical Gerlind for wrapping up her hands indolently in her gores. It is of course impossible for a translator to render these two passages literally, at least if he wishes to be intelligible.

(St. XLVIII.) The commentators are not particularly clear as to what these garments, called in the original "noble Ferrans robes," really were. Von der Hagan says there must have been a city of that name in the East, from which these robes came, while Lachmann says there is a stuff composed of silk and wool, which still goes by the name offerrandine. The Dictionary of the French Academy mentions a silk stuff asformerlygoing by that name.

TENTH ADVENTURE

(St. XLI.) Lachmann's Fifth Lay begins here, and concludes with St. DCCV.

(St. LXIX.) The cord or girdle, thus worn by ladies, seems to have been tolerably strong, not merely from the use to which Brunhild put hers here, but also from the manner in which Florimel's is applied by Sir Satyrane.—"Faerie Queene," III, vii., 36.

The golden ribband, which that virgin woreAbout her slender waste, he took in hand,And with it bownd the beast, that lowd did roreFor great despight of that unwonted band.

(St. LXXII.)

Ἰλίῳ αἰπεινᾷ Πάρις οὐ γάμον, ἀλλά τιν' ἄτανἀγάγετ' εὐναίαν ἐς Θαλάμους Ἑλέναν.Eurip. Androm. 103.

Ἰλίῳ αἰπεινᾷ Πάρις οὐ γάμον, ἀλλά τιν' ἄτανἀγάγετ' εὐναίαν ἐς Θαλάμους Ἑλέναν.

Eurip. Androm. 103.

(St. LXXXI.) If this and the following stanza are, as Lachmann thinks, an addition, they no doubt were added to supply a palpable defect in the narrative. If it were not for them, the company would be spoken of as rising from table (St. LXXXIV) when it is nowhere mentioned that they had sat down.

I must venture to remark that Lachmann's note to the next stanza is not very satisfactory. Though the knights and ladies may usually have eaten apart, it seems to have been allowable for the mistress of the house at least to be present when the knights were feasting (St. XXVI, this Adventure, to St. XXIII, Twenty-seventh Adventure), and there is nothing unreasonable in supposing that the married sister of the host might have accompanied her husband. This seems more natural than to assume that the queens left their apartments and went to the hall (probably a detached building) just to show themselves before they retired to bed. I must own I do not see the difficulty aboutcomingandgoingnoticed by Lachmann. Everybody, who goes to a place, comes to it when he gets there. As the poem stands, everything is consistent. The queens cross the palace court and go to the hall for the good substantial reason of getting their suppers. They come backto their private apartments, or bowers, where they remain awhile with their immediate attendants, and during the short interval, that elapses before dismissing the latter and going to bed, Siegfried slips through his wife's fingers, and goes to Gunther's private apartments.

I should add that, at St. XXIV, Twenty-seventh Adventure, the young margravine and her damsels are brought back into the eating hall after the men have finished their repast, but that depends on the correctness of the readingdie schœnen(see noteto St. XXXI, Twenty-seventh Adventure) and on the consequent expulsion of the latter stanza. If we retain the latter stanza, the young margravine is sent forze hove, like Kriemhild at St. XXXI, Tenth Adventure. But we can scarcely apply to young married women and their near female connections, also married, passages like these, that relate to young spinsters. In the passages quoted in the note to St. XXIV, Twenty-seventh Adventure, men and women are mentioned as eating apart, but it is stated to be an old custom, and is noted as an ancient peculiarity.

(St. LXXXV, Tenth Adventure.) It appears from this description that the wearer of the cloak must have had the power of being visible or invisible as he chose. He might have on the mantle, and yet be visible. Siegfried does not here leave his wife in the ordinary way, and then put on the cloak. He seems to disappear miraculously. This differs from the account given in stanzas XLIII, Seventh Adventure, and LXXXIV, of the same, where Siegfried puts on the cloak before he becomes invisible, and remains so till he puts it off, but agrees with St. XXI, Nineteenth Adventure, where it is distinctly stated that Siegfried wore the cloak at all times. I should however add that, in the original, there is what appears to my ignorance a difficulty, though, as the commentators take no notice of it, I suppose there is really none. The original stands thus:—

Sî trûte sîne hende mit ir vil wîzen hant,Unz er vor ir augen, sine wesse wenne, verswant,

literally, "She fondled his hands with her very white hand, till he before her eyes, she knew not when, vanished." As to the interpreters, Braunfels simply modernizes the old dialect, renderingwennebywann; Simrock and Marbach are equally literal, except that they putwie, how, where Braunfels haswann; Beta, who here as elsewhere is less rigorously literal than his comrades, merely says, "then it happened that he suddenly vanished before her sight." I must confess I cannot understand how Kriemhild could not knowwhena thing happened that passed before her eyes, though she might well be puzzled how to account for it. It is remarkable that the Lassberg manuscript, which is said by Lachmann and other competent judges to contain a revised and remodelled text, omits altogether St. LXXXVI, Tenth Adventure, and alters the stanza before it, and that after it in such a way, that the supernatural seems to disappear, and Siegfried is merely represented as stealing away from the women, and coming secretly and mysteriously (vil tougen) to Gunther's chamber. This manuscript however mentions the tarnkappe at St. LXXVII, same Adventure. Did the reviser of this manuscript wish it to be inferred, that Siegfried, after leaving his wife, went and put on the tarnkappe?

(St. CX.) In the Volsunga Saga Brunhild is a Valkyrie, or Chooser of the Slain, a sort of Northern Bellona, endowed with supernatural strength. This superhuman prowess is connected with her virgin state, and by becoming a wife she is reduced to the ordinary weakness of woman. In the Nibelungenlied this circumstance comes upon us by surprise, for we are nowhere told that the strength of Brunhild differedfrom that of other women, except in degree, and no reason is given why matrimony should produce any greater change in Brunhild than in the rest of her sex. The passage is in fact derived from the Scandinavian form of the legend, and seems scarcely in harmony with the spirit of the German poem.

ELEVENTH ADVENTURE

(St. XIV.) Worms beyond the Rhine,Wormez über Rîn. The writer here as elsewhere speaks of Worms with reference to his own situation to the east of the Rhine, whereas Xanten, like Worms, is on the west side of that river.

(St. XVI.) Newsman's bread,botenbrôt, was the term for the present given to a messenger.

(St. XXXI.) Lachmann's Sixth Lay begins here and ends with St. XLIX, Fourteenth Adventure.

TWELFTH ADVENTURE

(St. XLVIII.) Gary, like a shrewd courtier, avoids praising Kriemhild's good looks to a rival beauty.

(St. LIV.) A difference of opinion exists in united Germany as to the interpretation of this passage, Lachmann, Simrock, Marbach, and Beta being on one side, and von der Hagen and Braunfels on the other. I readily vote with the majority. Rumolt's understrappers, as I conceive, are not the pots and pans, but the subaltern cooks, the scullions and other drudges of the royal kitchen.

THIRTEENTH ADVENTURE

(St. II.) I follow Lachmann's conjecture ofhetforhetenin the third line of this stanza.

(St. XXII.) Chaucer in like manner says of the carpenter's wife, "Canterbury Tales," v. 3255—

Full brighter was the shining of hire hewe,Than in the tower the noble yforged newe.

For the brilliant addition to the simile he is perhaps indebted to Dante's

Fresco smeraldo in l'ora che si fiacca.

The comparison of the brilliant color of a blooming northern beauty to gold, "red gold," as it is constantly called in old German and old English poetry, forms a curious contrast with the phrases of Catullus, "inaurata pallidior statua" "magis fulgore expalluit, auri," and that of Statius, "pallidus fossor redit erutoque concolor auro," not to mention the saying of Diogenes, that gold was pale through fear of those who had a design upon it.

(St. XXIII.) Lachmann interprets thegesindeor followers to be Gunther's, and rejects the stanza as spurious, and manufactured for the purpose of introducing Dankwart, who is represented as seeking out new quarters, without necessity, for people who were already quartered in the city. But are not the followers of Siegfried meant?

(St. XXVII.) A curious instance of awkwardness in the service of the highest tables.

(St. XXXII.) The original has in the first versein dem lande, in the country,i.e., just outside the city walls, close under the castle, from the windows of which the ladies might see the tournament. The minster was in a separate part of the city, just as in London St. Paul's isat a certain distance from the Tower. Here the horses are sent for, which seems to show that the castle and the minster could not have been contiguous, yet they could not have been very far apart, as Kriemhild was in the habit of going to the minster before daybreak. (St. III, Seventh Adventure.)

FOURTEENTH ADVENTURE

(St. IV.) The same simile is applied to Kriemhild herself at St. XX, Fifth Adventure.

(St. XXX.) In the dialogues that follow the queens are not particularly complimentary, but they at least use no weapons but their tongues. I do not know what authority the writer of "Murray's Handbook for Northern Germany" has for the following statement. "The combat between Chrimhelda and Brunhelda is supposed to have been fought on the south side of the Dom."

(St. XXIII.) Wind, a mere nothing; this phrase is not uncommon in the poem.

The prophets shall become wind.—Jer. v. 13.

(St. XL.) Brunhild had been asserting that Siegfried was Gunther's vassal, or, in feudal language, his man. Kriemhild sarcastically alludes to this with more bitterness than delicacy.

(St. XLI.) Brunhild seems as much annoyed by this usurpation of her trinkets as by the scandalous imputation mentioned in the preceding stanza.

(St. L.) I have followed Professor Lachmann's explanation of the first line of this stanza. He makes the Seventh Lay open here, and end with St. XXXI, Fifteenth Adventure, but whatever we may think of his general theory of the poem, his prefatory remarks here are well worth an attentive perusal. It is clear that some stanzas, probably a good many, have been lost. As the work stands at present, even if we interpret the first line of this stanza to mean that many a fair woman departed, Siegfried is left behind to hear his brother-in-law and his friends discuss the expediency of knocking him on the head. In the part that is lost there was probably an account of the breaking up of the assemblage at the church door, and of the immediate summoning of a council in some more convenient place. It was no doubt explained how Siegfried's denial, which at first seemed so satisfactory, was afterward made of no account, and possibly a good deal, of which we have now only a fragment in stanzas L—LI, passed between Brunhild and Hagan, her husband's principal adviser. Probably, too, as Lachmann has observed, the invulnerability of Siegfreid was considered.

FIFTEENTH ADVENTURE

(St. XVIII.) The stanza, which contains this example of ancient discipline, is rejected by Lachmann on account of theinnere reim, which, however, he thinks, suits perfectly with the "somewhat over-charged coloring" which the author has adopted. Pictures of domestic happiness in the same style of coloring are, I suppose, rarely to be met with in Germany in the present liberal and enlightened age.

(St. XXIV.)See noteto St. V, Third Adventure.

(St. XXXVI.) The Wask forest is the mountainous range called in French the Vosges, which, as well as Worms, is to the west of the Rhine; this stanza is therefore at variance with St. I, Seventeenth Adventure, where the hunters cross the Rhine to return to Worms. Lachmann gets over the difficulty by his theory of separate lays. Accordingto his arrangement St. XXXVI, this Adventure, is in the Seventh Lay, and St. I, Seventeenth Adventure, in the Eighth, and these two Lays are the work of different poets. Two points are certain; the first, that there were two traditions as to the place of Siegfried's death, one fixing it in the Waskenwald, the other in the Odenwald; the second, that Gunther and Hagan were generally believed to have attacked Walter of Spain in the Waskenwald. Now there appears to me nothing improbable in supposing, either that a minstrel with his head full of Walter's history and the connection of Gunther and Hagan with the Waskenwald, might have recitedWaskenwaldeforOtenwalde, or, on the other hand, that one, who was familiar with the tradition that Siegfried was killed in the Odenwald, might have foundan den Rînat St. XXXVII, Sixteenth Adventure, and altered it toüber Rîn. At any rate I cannot help thinking that either of these suppositions is less improbable than that a poet should first tell us how Gunther and Hagan plotted against Siegfried, how the latter accepted their treacherous invitation to the hunt, and how he went to take leave of his wife, and that then the provoking rogue should immediately close his poem without informing us what passed between Siegfried and his wife, whether the hunt took place, or whether the plot succeeded.

SIXTEENTH ADVENTURE

(St I.) Lachmann's Eighth Lay begins here and ends with St. I, Seventeenth Adventure.

(St. XXII.) Theschelchor shelk seems by the description in Braunfels's Glossary to have been a kind of tragelaphus, with hair down the breast.

(St. XXIII.)Des gejeides meister, I presume, means Siegfried himself, who at St. XXXIX is calledjegermeister.

(St. XXVII.) Tryst.

Ye shall be set at such a trystThat hart and hind shall come to your fist.Squire of Low Degree.—Ellis's "Specimens," v. 1, p. 341.

Ye shall be set at such a trystThat hart and hind shall come to your fist.

Squire of Low Degree.—Ellis's "Specimens," v. 1, p. 341.

Tryst is a post or station in hunting, according to Cowell as quoted in Tyrwhitt's Glossary to Chaucer, but Walter Scott uses it for a place of appointment generally.

(St. XXXVIII.) For the sweetness of "the panther's breath or rather body" I refer the reader to Gifford's note in his edition of Ben Jonson, v. 3, p. 257. It is worth while however to quote the following passage on panthers from Pliny's Natural History, 1. 8, c. 17, as it is not noticed by Gifford. "Ferunt odore earum mire sollicitari quadrupedes cunctas, sed capitis torvitate terreri; quamobrem, occultato eo, reliqua dulcedine invitatas corripiunt."

(St. XXXIX.) I scarcely know whether I have translated this stanza properly. The variegated work (expressed bygeströutin the original) seems to have been produced by different sorts of fur. Thegrâ unde buntof St. XVI, Third Adventure, seems to mean the same thing. Gold thread or wire, and something like gold lace appear to have been fashionable ornaments in the dress of both sexes. Precious stones, too, were in great request. But I own I have been much puzzled by the milliners' and tailors' work in the poem, and I dare say have made mistakes. I may observe that the women were both tailors and milliners. Kriemhild herself was an accomplished cutter (see St. XLIV, Sixth Adventure), and, if it had not been for her assistance, her brother and his companions would not have been fit to be seen at the splendid court of Brunhild. The men were expert cutters in their line, but their instrument was the broadsword.

(St. XL.) In this poem the edges of a sword are constantly spoken of in the plural. The warriors seem to have had only two-edged swords.

(St. LIV.) The fourth line of this stanza, which is admitted as genuine by Professor Lachmann, is one of those passages which are at variance not merely with his theory, but with that which attributes the two parts of the poem to two different authors. It refers to the slaughter toward the close of the second part, and would be impertinent and out of place in a poem that concluded with the death of one hero only.

(St. LVIII.) The poet saysthebroad linden, according to Lachmann, assuming that the story of Siegfried's death under a linden tree was generally known.

(St. LXII.)Intelletto veloce più che pardo.—"Petrarch, Sonn." 286.

(St. LXIV.) Johnson quotes from Ecclesiasticus, "I have no thank for all my good deed." So in St. Luke vi. 33—"If ye do good to them that do good to you, what thank have ye?"

SEVENTEENTH ADVENTURE

(St. II.) Lachmann's Ninth Lay begins here and ends with St. LXXI, Seventeenth Adventure. The Professor has no objection to considering this and the preceding Lay as works of the same author.

(St. IX.) The two last lines of this stanza and the two first of the next are rejected by Professor Lachmann, because, as he thinks, they contradict the last line of St. XI, where Kriemhild professes her ignorance of the murderer. But Kriemhild is not a witness on oath, but a woman in a frenzy of grief, who does not weigh her words, but one moment utters an obvious suspicion, as if it were an ascertained fact, and the next confesses that she has no positive proof, and cannot act upon what she feels to be true. There is no very great inconsistency in saying, "A. and B. are at the bottom of this: if I could only bring it home to them, I'd make them smart for it." But the neuter pronoun in the third line, referring tohoubetin the second, proves that the second line is not interpolated. Professor Lachmann, indeed, gets over the difficulty by altering the gender of the pronoun to the masculine.

(St. XI.) The last verse of this stanza seems a preparation for the display of Kriemhild's character in a new point of view. The softer parts of her character have been exhibited thus far; her revengeful and unforgiving spirit will gradually swallow up every other feeling, and at last close the poem with a general massacre. See, too, stanzas XXIII—XXXII—XLV.

(St. XXI.) I have translated the second line of this stanza according to Simrock's version, but it is impossible to make any satisfactory sense of it. Professor Lachmann has justly printed the stanza in italics.

(St. XLIII.) On this curious superstition, which is as much English and Scotch as German, see Nare's Glossary under the word "Wounds," and the notes to "Earl Richard" in the second volume of the "Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border." The whole passage is condemned as spurious by Lachmann, principally on account of the discrepancy in the mention of wounds in the plural, while only one wound was given by Hagan. There are, however, two similar discrepancies in the poem. Kriemhild is killed by Hildebrand apparently with a single blow, and immediately after is spoken of as hewn in pieces; and Rudeger is killed by a single blow at St. XXXVII, Thirty-seventh Adventure, while at St. L, same Adventure, he is described asverhouwen, and at St. XXXII, Thirty-eighth Adventure, as lying with severe death-wounds fallen in blood.

EIGHTEENTH ADVENTURE

(St. I.) Lachmann's Tenth Lay begins here and ends with St. XLV, Nineteenth Adventure.

(St. XXI.)Theyin the last line of this stanza seems to mean the Burgundians.

(St. XXVI.) Here they go home to Netherland; before, in this Adventure, the Nibelungers' land is spoken of as the country of Siegmund. This has not escaped the hawk's eye of Lachmann.

NINETEENTH ADVENTURE

(St. XVIII.) Themorning giftwas a present bestowed by the husband on the wife the morning after the wedding. It was often promised before marriage.

(St. XXI.) This passage, which states that Siegfried wore the cloud-cloak at all times, agrees with the description of its mode of operation at St. LXXXV, Tenth Adventure, but is inconsistent with stanzas XLIII-LXXXIV, Seventh Adventure, from which last it would seem to have been necessary for Siegfried to put on the cloak in order to become invisible, and to put it off when he wished to become visible again. The inconsistent passages probably arose from varying traditions as to the operation of this miraculous garment. There is another difficulty here. From Alberic's words it would seem that the possession of the treasure depended on the possession of the cloud-cloak. If he and his fellows had not lost the cloaktogether with Siegfried(by which last words he seems to refer not to the original loss of the cloak, when Siegfried first won it, but to its loss in consequence of that hero's death), the Burgundians should not have had the treasure, but we are nowhere told what became of the cloak after Siegfried's death, and Kriemhild claims the treasure as a gift from Siegfried, not as depending on the possession of the cloak.

TWENTIETH ADVENTURE

(St. I.) Lachmann's Eleventh Lay begins here, and ends with St. III, Twenty-first Adventure. "The historical relation of Etzel to Attila," says Professor W. Grimm ("Deutsche Heldensage," p. 67), "is quite clear." It is here strengthened by the "mention of his brother Blœdelin, who answers to the Bleda of Priscus and Jornandes, and is found in the Klage, in Biterolf, in the Vilkina Saga, and other later poems. Helche, otherwise Erka, Herche, Herriche, and Hariche, reminds us of the Kerka of Priscus." Priscus was secretary to Maximin, the ambassador of Theodosius the Younger at the court of Attila, and wrote a history, of which extracts are still extant. The following is his account of an interview with Kerka, the "frou Helche" of our poem.Ἐνταῦθα τῆς Ἀττήλα ἐνδιαίτουμενης γαμετῆς, διὰ τῶν πρὸς τῇ θύρᾳ βαρβάρων ἔτυχον εἰσόδου, καὶ αὐτὴν ἐπὶ στρώματος μαλακoῦ κειμένην κατέλαβον, τοῖς ἐκ τῆς ἐρέας πιλωτοῖς τοῦ ἐδάφους σκεπομένου, ὥστε ἐπ' αὐτῶν βαδίζειν. περιεῖπε δὲ αὐτὴν θεραπόντων πλῆθος κύκλῳ καὶ θεράπαιναι ἐπὶ τοῦ ἐδάφους ἀντικρὺ αὐτῆς καθήμεναι ὀθόνας χρώμασι διεποίκιλλον, ἐπιβληθησομένας πρὸς κόσμον ἐσθημάτων βαρβαρικῶν· προςελθῶν τοίνυν καὶ τὰ δῶρα μετὰ τὸν ἀσπασμὸν δοὺς ὑπεξήειν.Gibbon in the 34th chapter of his History has given almost a translation of Priscus. "The wife of Attila received their visit sitting, or rather lying, on a soft couch; the floor was covered with a carpet; the domestics formed a circle round the queen, and her damsels, seated on the ground, were employed in working the variegated embroidery which adorned the dress of the barbaric warriors." There is a fullaccount of Attila and the Huns with much relating to the Nibelungenlied in the late Hon. and Rev. William Herbert's Historical Treatise subjoined to his Poem on Attila.

(St. V.) The Margrave Rudeger is perhaps the most interesting character in the poem, but there is no one, with regard to whom the historical, the legendary, and the mythical are more unintelligibly jumbled. Whether he was an historical Austrian Margrave of the tenth century, a mere legendary hero, or "a divine being," as Lachmann is disposed to think him, is more than any plain Englishman can venture to decide. It seems that his native country was Arabia, but whether by that name is meant the region commonly so called, or a district in the centre of Spain, is as yet anything but a settled point. Wherever it was, he was driven from it by a king of Toledo, and took refuge with Etzel.

(St. XX.) I am uncertain whether I have given the true meaning of this stanza, which is rejected by Lachmann, and, indeed, can scarcely be reconciled with the rest. I have usedHunandHungarianindifferently. The Hungarians were of a different race from the Huns, but Mr. Hallam says of them, "The memory of Attila was renewed in the devastations of these savages, who, if they were not his compatriots, resembled them both in their countenances and customs."

(St. XXXI.) See Lachmann (St. 1113, L.) who conjecturesersiwetforerfülletorir sulet.

(St. XLVII.) This refers to something not related in this poem.

(St. LIX.) Here again is an allusion to something not mentioned in the poem, namely, to some service rendered by Rudeger to Hagan.

(St. LXIV.) The poet, who put this speech into the mouth of Gunther, could have had no notion of the real history and extensive power of Attila.

(St. CXX.) King Etzel appears to have been a truly liberal and enlightened monarch.

(St. CXLV.) In the last line of this stanza, the plural of the verb is authorized by three manuscripts, and, though they may be none of the best, their readings deserve attention, when they are commanded by necessity and common sense. The plural (inforihnen) in the preceding line requires the plural in this. The young ladies cried at leaving home, but were soon reconciled to their lot by the gayeties of King Etzel's court. If the reader is not satisfied with this, he can replacetheybyshe. Kriemhild will then be meant.

TWENTY-FIRST ADVENTURE

(St. III.) Vergen. Veringen in Suabia, on the Lauchart, three leagues from the junction of that river with the Danube.—Lachmann, St. 1231, L.

(St. VII.) This good bishop Pilgrin, who is an historical personage, died in the tenth century, and therefore could scarcely have been Attila's wife's uncle, if chronology is to pass for anything with popular poets. All that relates to him is rejected as spurious by Lachmann and W. Grimm. See the latter's "Deutsche Heldensage," p. 71.

(St. XIV.) Efferding. A town of Austria beyond the Ems near the Danube (von der Hagen, v. 5221).

(St. XXVI.) Botlung was the father of Etzel according to the poets. His real name was Munduic.

(St. XL.) Medilik, now Mölk. An abbey still renowned for the abundance and excellence of its wine stores. It supplied Buonaparte's army in 1809.

TWENTY-SECOND ADVENTURE

(St. XIII.) Lachmann rejects stanzas XIII, XVI, XVII (1288, 1291, 1292 of his edition). He thinks that, even if one were determined to defend the first, nobody could tolerate the frigidity and abject style of the two last. For my own part, I am more struck by the absurdity of Rudeger's caution to Kriemhild not to kiss all Etzel's men. I suppose he was afraid she would have no lips left after such reiterated osculation.

(St. XIX.) These German strangers or guests (Tiuschen gesten) are the Burgundians according to von der Hagen, but Thüringians according to Lachmann. The latter says, the expression does not occur elsewhere in the Lays of the Nibelungers. This restricted use of a term, which was afterward extended to a whole nation, resembles the restricted use of the word Hellen in Homer.

(St. XXIII.) The good margrave seems here to discharge the duties of a male duenna.

(St. XL.) Von der Hagen here notices the custom of tilting by the way in festal processions. Similar descriptions occur elsewhere in this poem, as for instance at the landing of Gunther and Brunhild (St. VII, Tenth Adventure). In this respect the Nibelungenlied differs from the "Orlando Innamorato" and "Furioso," as well as from the "Faerie Queene," in all of which poems tournaments are exhibited with far more pomp and ceremony, and as matters of long previous preparation.

(St. XLI.) Haimburg, a town of Hungary on the borders of Austria, was fortified, according to von der Hagen, by Duke Leopold, of Austria, out of the ransom of Richard Cœur de Lion.

(St. XLIV.) Etzel's castle, now Buda, so called from Attila's brother, Buda or Bleda.

TWENTY-THIRD ADVENTURE

(St. III.) Lachmann's Thirteenth Lay begins here and ends with St. LXXXIV, Twenty-fourth Adventure.

TWENTY-FOURTH ADVENTURE

(St. I.)See the noteto St. XLV, Eighth Adventure.

(St. LXIII.) This stanza seems out of its place here. It should come somewhere before the council of the Burgundian chiefs, for it is necessary to know when an entertainment is to take place in order to determine whether one can attend it, and when one ought with propriety to set out. Hagan, besides, must be considered to have had a knowledge of this, before he arranged the plan of setting out only a week after the departure of the ambassadors.

TWENTY-FIFTH ADVENTURE

(St. II.) Lachmann's Fourteenth Lay begins here and ends with St. LVI, Twenty-sixth Adventure.

(St. XVIII.) This is the only stanza in the second part where the term Nibelunger is applied to Siegfried's subjects as in the first part. In all succeeding passages it means the Burgundians.

(St. XIX.) Ostervranken, according to von der Hagen, is Austrasia, or the Eastern portion of the Empire of the Franks, afterward, though in a more restricted sense, the Circle of Franconia.

(St. XXIII.) Professor Lachmann observes that, if the fight withthe Bavarians be not alluded to, the prediction contained in this stanza is not fulfilled, "quite against the prophetic style of this lay;" but I venture to submit that this is no prediction at all, but a mere expression of the very natural opinion that, if any army should attempt to swim a large river in a state of flood, many may be swept away and drowned. Gernot makes a similar remark on the want of a boatman at St. LXIV.

(St. XXIX.) The raiment of these mermaids, which is styledwondrousfarther on, seems to have been the swan-raiment worn by the Valkyries or Choosers of the Slain, which enabled its wearers to assume the shape of swans, or at least to fly away. Hagan therefore had good ground to begin with laying hands on the wardrobe of these water-nymphs, though his reason for doing so is so obscurely alluded to in the poem that it may be doubted whether the poet was himself aware of the original force of the legend. In the traditions respecting Vælund, Wieland, or Wayland the Smith, that hero captures a wife by a similar stratagem. The swan-maiden in Wieland's case was one of the Valkyries, and indeed the two mermaids in the Nibelungenlied appear, from the part assigned to them in the poem, to be genuine Choosers of the Slain. These swan-maidens, as far as their volatile character is concerned, seem to have given a hint to the author of Peter Wilkins.

(St. XLVIII.) So in the old lay of Hildebrand (a fragment of which, written on the first and on the last leaf of a manuscript of the "Book of Wisdom" and other religious pieces, was discovered in the public library of Cassel by W. Grimm) that hero offers arm-rings to his son, who, not knowing him, had challenged him to fight. It was the custom to offer such rings on the point of a sword or spear, and to receive them in the same way. To prove this, W. Grimm quotes this passage among others. See Lachmann's treatise on the "Lay of Hildebrand" in the Transactions of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, 1833. The same word (bouc) is used both here and in the old lay.

(St. LXVII.) This stanza, which appears in only two manuscripts, seems incompatible with the rest of the narrative. It was probably introduced by a reciter from the description of a ferry-boat in some other poem.

TWENTY-SIXTH ADVENTURE

(St. V.)

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