_The Nibelungenlied_ is the German Iliad and dates from the
thirteenth to the sixteenth century. No less than
twenty-eight manuscripts of this great epic have come down
through the ages. From the time of the Reformation down to
the middle of the eighteenth century it seemed to be
forgotten. Then a Swiss writer, Bodmer, issued parts of it in
connection with a version of the _Klage_, a poem describing
the mourning at King Etzel's Court over the famous heroes who
fell to satisfy the vengeance of Kriemhild.
The real discoverer, who restored the epic to the world, was
Dr. J. H. Oberiet, who found a later version of the poem in
the Castle of Hohenems in the Tyrol, June 29, 1755.
C. H. Myller in 1782 published the first complete edition,
using part of Bodmer's version. It was not until the opening
of the nineteenth century and during the Romantic movement in
Germany that _The Nibelungenlied_ was seriously studied.
Partsch, a German critic, developed the theory that _The
Nibelungenlied_ was written about 1140 and that rhyme was
introduced by a later poet to take the place of the stronger
assonances in the original version.
The legend of Siegfried's death, resulting from the quarrel
of the two queens, and all the woes that followed, was the
common property of all the German and Scandinavian people.
From the banks of the Rhine to the northernmost parts of
Norway and Sweden and the Shetland Isles and Iceland this
legend of chivalry and revenge was sung around the
camp-fires. William Morris' _Sigurd the Volsung_ is derived
from a prose paraphrase of the Edda songs.
Many English versions of _The Nibelungenlied_ have been made
but most of them are harsh. Carlyle's summary of the epic in
his _Miscellanies_ is the most satisfactory for the general
reader. A good prose version of _The Nibelungenlied_ is by
Daniel Bussier Shumway, Professor of German Philology in the
University of Pennsylvania. It contains an admirable essay on
the history of the epic. (Boston, 1909.)
William Morris has made fine renderings in verse of portions
of _The Nibelungenlied_ but he has drawn much of his material
from the kindred Norse legends. Two translations into English
verse are those of W. N. Lettson, _The Fall of the
Nibelungen_ (London, 1874), and of Alice Harnton, _The Lay of
the Nibelungs_ (London, 1898).
A complete bibliography of works in English dealing with _The
Nibelungenlied_ may be found in F. E. Sandbach's _The
Nibelungenlied and Gudrun in England and America_ (London,
1904).
Other books dealing with _The Nibelungenlied_ are F. H.
Hedge, _Hours With the German Classics_ (Boston, 1886); G. T.
Dippold, _The Great Epics of Mediaeval Germany_ (Boston,
1882); G. H. Genung, _The Nibelungenlied_ in Warner's
_Library of the World's Best Literature_, Volume xviii (New
York, 1897).