[Footnote 90: Herkia, the Erka or Helche of the German tradition, who
here appears as a slave or servant, is, according to that tradition,
the queen of Etzel or Atli, who did not marry Kreimhilt (Gudrun) until
after her death. The falsification of the story, the pitiful
subordinate part acted by Thiodrek, the perfect silence of all the
other poems on this event, and the ordeal of the cauldron,
sufficiently show that the poem is a later composition. P.E. Muller
(II., p. 319) ascribes it to Sæmund himself.]
[Footnote 91: The iarknastein of the original was a milk-white opal.]
[Footnote 92: This punishment was known to the old Germans.]