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 about _coming_ and _going_ noticed 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 back to 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 reading _die schœnen_ (see note to 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 for _ze 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 orinvisible 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, rendering _wenne_ by
_wann_; Simrock and Marbach are equally literal, except that they put
_wie_, how, where Braunfels has _wann_; 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 know _when_ a 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 differed from 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 of _het_ for _heten_ in 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 the _gesinde_ or 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 verse _in 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
is at 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 the _innere 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 note to 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. According to 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 traditionsas 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 recited _Waskenwalde_
for _Otenwalde_, or, on the other hand, that one, who was familiar with
the tradition that Siegfried was killed in the Odenwald, might have
found _an den Rîn_ at St. XXXVII, Sixteenth Adventure, and altered it to
_über 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.) The _schelch_ or 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 called _jegermeister_.
(St. XXVII.)
Tryst. Ye shall be set at such a tryst
That 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 by _geströut_ in the original)
seems to have been produced by different sorts of fur. The _grâ unde
bunt_ of 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 says _the_ broad 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 to _houbet_ in 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 as _verhouwen_, 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.) _They_ in 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.) The _morning gift_ was 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 cloak _together 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 μαλακοῦ 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 full account 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 characterin 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 used _Hun_ and _Hungarian_
indifferently. 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 conjectures _ersiwet_ for
_erfüllet_ or _ir 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 (_in_ for _ihnen_) 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
replace _they_ by _she_. 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.