(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 note to 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 with the
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 styled _wondrous_
farther 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.)
On the other side Adam, soon as he heard
The fatal trespass done by Eve, amaz'd,
Astonied stood, and blank.
"Paradise Lost," ix. 888.
Upright men shall be astonied at this.--Job, xvii. 8.
(St. LIV.) Rudeger is an Austrian Axylus.--"Iliad," vi. 14.
ἀφνειὸς βιότοιο, φίλος δ'ἦν ἀνθρώποισιν,
πάντας γὰρ φιλέεσκεν, ὁδῷ ἐπὶ οἰκία ναίων.
The German poem is here certainly not inferior to the Greek. Similes are
as rare in the Nibelungenlied as they are abundant in the Iliad, but it
would be difficult to find one more just and elegant than this.
(St. LVII.) Lachmann's Fifteenth Lay begins here; it concludes with St.
XIV, Twenty-eighth Adventure.
TWENTY-SEVENTH ADVENTURE
(St. XXIV.) I quote some passages from Ellis's "Specimens" on the custom
of the two sexes eating apart:
The king was to his palace, tho the service was ydo,
Ylad with all his menye, and the queen to hers also,
For hii held the old usages, that men with men were
By hem selve, and women by hem selve also here.
Robert of Gloucester.--"Specimens," vol. i. p. 100.
The above metre, though very rough and uncouth, resembles that of the
Nibelungenlied. In the corresponding passage quoted by Ellis from
Geoffry of Monmouth, the custom is said to have come from Troy.
"_Antiquam consuetudinem Trojæ servantes Britones consueverant mares cum
maribus, mulieres cum mulieribus, festivos dies separatim celebrare._"
Ellis gives a similar account of Arthur's coronation from Robert de
Brunne's translation of Wace:
Sometime was custom of Troy,
When they made feast of joy,
Men thogether should go to meat
Ladies by themself should eat.
See the note to St. LXXXI, Tenth Adventure.
(St. XXXI.) There is a difficulty here from its being said that the
young margravine was desired to go to court, _i.e._, to the assembly in
the hall, when at St. XXIV the ladies (_die schönen_ in the original)
had already returned thither. Lachmann removes the difficulty by
condemning the stanzas XXXI, XXXII, XXXIV as spurious; he thinks it
impossible that anyone can collect from the third line of St. XXII that
the men went into a different hall from that which they had entered at
St. XIX; but it is not the third but the second line of St. XXII that
describes the separation of the men and women, and that too in the
following words,
_"Rittere unde vrouwen die giengen anderswâ_;"
now who can collect from this verse that the women went and the men
stayed? If words mean anything, both went away. As to the return of the
ladies at St. XXIV, that rests on a doubtful reading, _die schönen_, the
fair ones, whereas the best manuscript, that on which Professor
Lachmann's text is generally founded, reads _die künen_, the bold ones,
meaning the knights. I should add that the preliminary conversation from
St. XXV to St. XXXI is fitter to be held in the young lady's absence.
(St. XLIV.) These foreign champions are the Burgundians themselves
according to von der Hagen. This is far from satisfactory, but I can
offer nothing more so. Can it be possible that there was once a version
(now lost) of the story, in which the Nibelungers, properly so called,
accompanied the Burgundians into Hungary? This might account not merely
for these foreign champions, but for the term _Nibelunge_ being applied
to the Burgundians. But, in fact, everything relating to the Nibelungers
is obscure and confused to the last degree.
(St. L.) Nudung was the son, or, according to another account, the
brother of Gotelind.
(St. LXVI.) Lachmann transposes this and the two following stanzas to
after St. XVI, Twenty-eighth Adventure, where they form the beginning of
his Sixteenth Lay, which ends with St. XLIV, Twenty-ninth Adventure. The
speech which begins at the third line of this stanza is attributed to
the messenger by von der Hagen, and perhaps justly, as appears from the
last verse of the next stanza, from which it would seem that the king
heard the news afterward. On the other hand, Kriemhild here is addressed
in the singular, while in a similar passage (St. XCI, Fourth Adventure)
she is addressed by a messenger in the plural. She, however, would
scarcely have uttered before Etzel the words at the close of St. LXVIII,
Twenty-seventh Adventure.
TWENTY-EIGHTH ADVENTURE
(St. I.) Bern is Verona according to von der Hagen and Wackernagel and
the whole body of Commentators. Von der Hagen applies to Hildebrand the
words in the third line, _ez was im harte liet_; so does Marbach.
Braunfels and Beta apply them to Dietrich. But in that case would not
the author have said _dem was ez_?
(St. IV.) The Amelungs, or Amelungers, were the reputed descendants of
Amala, king of the Goths, the tenth ancestor of Theodoric king of Italy.
(St. V.) This famous hero, the redoubted Dietrich, is only a secondary
character in the Nibelungenlied, though in old German traditions
generally he bears the principal part. He was the son of a nocturnal
spirit, and his fiery breath made him more than a match for Siegfried
himself, as it melted the horny hide of his antagonist. He is
identified, I believe, by universal consent, with Theodoric the
Ostrogoth. I am afraid that it is too certain that he came to a bad end,
but whether he disappeared on being summoned by a dwarf, or was carried
off by the devil in the shape of a black horse, or, according to the
monastic legend reported by Gibbon, was deposited by foul fiends in the
volcano of Libari, is more than I can decide.
(St. XX.) Lachmann's Seventeenth Lay begins here and ends with St.
XXXII, Thirtieth Adventure.
(St. XXI.) Hagan's suspicions are natural enough, for Kriemhild appears
to have kissed nobody but Giselher, whereas, according to the etiquette
of this poem, she should not only have kissed her other two brothers,
but Hagan himself, not merely as her cousin, but as one of Gunther's
principal retainers.
(St. XXVI.) This stanza is rejected by Lachmann on account of the
interior rhyme _wære_ and _swære_ in the third and fourth lines, but
surely the outbreak of Hagan in the next stanza is the beginning of a
speech. It would have been more plausible, if St. VIII is to be
rejected, to reject St. XXI, Thirtieth Adventure, as well, for the first
line of St. XXVII would come in very well after the last of St. XXIV;
but then, on the other hand, no answer would be given to Kriemhild's
question, "Where have you that bestowed?"
(St. XXVII.) The two languages agree in taking the devil's name in vain
by using it as a ludicrous but forcible negative. The phrase is
authorized by Johnson.
(St. XXVIII.) Von der Hagen explains these two robberies by observing
that Hagan had despoiled Kriemhild of her own inheritance as well as of
the wondrous hoard. The poem itself, however, seems to explain the
matter somewhat differently. Hagan committed the first robbery when he
took the hoard (St. XXXV, Nineteenth Adventure); the second, when he
seized Siegfried's other treasures (St. CXXXII, Twentieth Adventure).
(St. XXXIV.) Lachmann places this and the following stanzas after St.
XIX, as part of his Sixteenth Lay.
TWENTY-NINTH ADVENTURE
(St. I.) Von der Hagen discovers here (v. 7055 of his Remarks) a trace
of the tradition (which, however, is not noticed in this poem) that
Hagan had lost an eye. This appears visionary to me. At St. XVII,
Thirty-second Adventure, the same words are applied to Dankwart, who
certainly had two eyes in his head. Twice in this poem a personal
description of Hagan occurs (St. XXV, Seventh Adventure, and XVII,
Twenty-eighth Adventure) and in neither case is a hint given that he was
a _dux luscus_. The author or authors of the Nibelungenlied, therefore,
must have followed a different tradition.
(St. XXVIII.) It is Folker's long broadsword that the poet, with a grim
kind of merriment, calls his fiddlestick. We shall soon see the minstrel
κῶμον ἀναυλότατον προχορεύειν.
(St. XL.) Walter of Spain, _Waltharius manu fortis_, is the hero here
alluded to. See note to St. XXI; Thirty-ninth Adventure.
(St. XLVII.) This stanza, and those that follow, come, according to
Lachmann's arrangement, after St. XXXIII, Twenty-eighth Adventure, and
form part of his Seventeenth Lay.
(St. XLVIII.) This allusion to the future is of such a nature as to be
irreconcilable with the notion of separate lays. The like may be said of
many other passages.
(St. LV.) _Morat_ or _morass_, as far as I can make out from a rather
confused note of von der Hagen's, was a sort of caudle, flavored with
mulberry or cherry juice. Ziemann's recipe is to take old and good wine,
and to mix it with mulberry syrup, rose julep, cinnamon water, and an
_ad libitum_ infusion of simples. All this together composes the sweet
drink in question.
THIRTIETH ADVENTURE
(St. XVIII.) So in the Ballad of the Lochmaben Harper in the "Minstrelsy
of the Scottish Border,"
And aye he harped, and aye he carped,
Till à the nobles were fast asleep.
(St. XIX.) "As now," says von der Hagen, "at the entrance of many old
buildings, particularly churches, a tower stands, containing the stairs
which lead directly to the upper story."
(St. XXI.) This stanza, which is only found in the Lassberg and two
other manuscripts, seems to have been inserted, like several others, in
order to soften the ferocious character attributed to Kriemhild in the
latter part of the poem.
THIRTY-FIRST ADVENTURE
(St. I.) The whole of this Thirty-first Adventure is supposed by
Lachmann to be an addition to the foregoing. His reasons are anything
but conclusive.
(St. X.) According to von der Hagen the shields were high enough for the
bearer to lean upon them, and pointed below, so that they might be
firmly fixed in the ground. They thus, I presume, in some degree
protected the owners, even while the latter were resting.
(St. XII.) The dust was raised by the horses, as the Huns seem to have
ridden from the palace.
(St. XXIII.) "The kings" here, as mostly elsewhere, are the three
Burgundian brothers.
(St. LXIII.) Kriemhild here deals with Blœdel as Juno does in the
Iliad with Sleep, and in the Æneid with Œolus.
(St. LXXII.) Something seems defective here, for it is not explained
what bad object Kriemhild had in view in sending for her son, though it
so happened that mischief came of it. Von der Hagen and Vollmer mention
the account in the Vilkina Saga, according to which Kriemhild, in order
to set the Huns and Burgundians by the ears, told her son to strike
Hagan in the face, and Hagan returned the compliment by cutting off the
lad's head and throwing it into his mother's lap, but this is
incompatible with the manner in which the fighting begins in our poem,
though this particular stanza seems to refer to something of that sort.
The reviser of the Lassberg manuscript seems to have observed the
difficulty; at least the last line of the stanza is different in that
manuscript. Possibly this stanza may have crept in from a now lost
recension, which more nearly resembled the Vilkina Saga. The like may be
said of St. IV, Thirty-second Adventure, which contains the celebrated
contradiction about the age of Dankwart.
THIRTY-SECOND ADVENTURE
(St. IV.) This stanza is completely at variance with the earlier parts
of the poem, in which Dankwart is represented as Siegfried's companion
in arms. It is therefore a most efficient ally of those critics who
attribute the poem to two or twenty different bards, and this has
perhaps rather blinded them to its defects. It is quite inconsistent
with the heroic character displayed by Dankwart in this very portion of
the poem, and, as an answer to Blœdel's speech, is a consummate piece
of stupidity. Blœdel had not accused Dankwart of having murdered
Siegfried or offended Kriemhild, but of being the brother of Hagan, who
had done both. Dankwart should either have attempted to show that Hagan,
not himself, was innocent, or that they were not brothers, or he should
have urged the hardship of making one brother suffer for the crimes of
another. Any of these answers would have been to the purpose; not so the
speech which is put into his mouth here. Blœdel, with equal
absurdity, after having already told him that he must die because his
brother Hagan had murdered Siegfried, now replies that he must die
because his _kinsmen_ Gunther and Hagan had done the deed. It appears
probable that here, as elsewhere, a passage has crept in from another
version of the legend, which agreed, more nearly than our poem, with the
Vilkina Saga. I quote the following passage from the summary of that
work in Vollmer's Preface to the "Nibelunge Nôt." "Hogni begged Attila
to give peace to young Giselher, as he was guiltless of Sigurd's death.
Giselher himself said that he was then only five winters old, and slept
in his mother's bed; still he did not wish to live alone after the death
of his brothers." In the Vilkina Saga Hogni, who answers to the Hagan of
our poem, is represented as the _brother_ of the other three kings. It
may appear visionary to speculate on the contents of a poem which may
never have existed, but certainly in any version of the legend, which
represented Hagan as the _brother_ of Gunther and Giselher, Giselher
might naturally have made the speech here put into the mouth of
Dankwart, and have been told in reply that he must die for the crime
that his _brothers_ Gunther and Hagan had committed. The idea of a
recension more nearly allied to the Vilkina Saga than that which we
possess is no notion of mine. It was started years ago by no less a
person than Professor W. Grimm, though not with reference to this
passage of the poem. See his "Deutsche Heldensage," p. 182.
(St. VII.) This mention of Nudung's bride, together with what follows in
the next stanza, is quite unintelligible, if we suppose an independent
lay to begin at St. I.
THIRTY-THIRD ADVENTURE
(St. XXII.) Lachmann seems here with reason to read _Volkern_ for
_Giselheren_, but have not the two stanzas, XXII and XXIII, changed
places?
(St. XXX.) With this stanza (St. 1916, L.) ends Lachmann's Eighteenth
Lay. I must own that it appears to me quite impossible that any writer
could end a separate poem in this manner. Similar objections may be made
to the conclusion of most of these _Lieder_.
(St. XXXI.)
with huge two-handed sway
Brandish'd aloft the horrid edge came down
Wide wasting.
"Paradise Lost," b. 6.
(St. XLV.) There certainly seems some confusion here. The only people
who had injured Gunther in Hungary were the Huns who had massacred the
yeomen, and these were not present in the hall. If, on the other hand,
he suspected that the Huns in the hall were privy to it, why allow Etzel
and Kriemhild to depart without so much as an observation? Why, as
Lachmann has observed, does not Dietrich think it necessary even to make
a request in their behalf? It is easy to remove these objections by
declaring everything spurious between St. XXX and St. XII, Thirty-fourth
Adventure, but unfortunately, though St. XXIV, Twenty-eighth Adventure,
which brings Etzel and Kriemhild into the hall, is not admitted into
Lachmann's Lays, it is clear from stanzas XII-XIV, Thirty-third
Adventure (1898-1900 L.), which form part of his Eighteenth Lay, that
both Etzel and Kriemhild were present in the hall when the fighting
began, and indeed Lachmann admits that the plan of his Eighteenth Lay
requires that they should quit it. The composer however of the lay, who
surely ought to know his own plan best, seems to have been of a
different opinion, for, after having set the Huns and Burgundians by the
ears in the hall, and put Dankwart and Volker to keep the door, he has
left us to guess the final result of these serious preliminary
arrangements. The 7,000 Huns massacred here are no doubt the same as the
7,000 who accompanied Kriemhild to church at St. XX, Thirty-first
Adventure, and the same perhaps as the men of Kriemhild mentioned at St.
XX, Thirtieth Adventure. These last had _attempted_ mischief, and
Gunther may here take the will for the deed.
(St. LVIII.) The meaning of this stanza is anything but clear. From the
original, and the two readings _von_ and _vor_, it would seem doubtful
whether Hagan laments that he sat at a distance from Folker or that he
took precedence of him.
THIRTY-FOURTH ADVENTURE
(St. XI.) I must confess I cannot see any inconsistency between the
first line of this stanza and the third of the preceding one; but there
is certainly a discrepancy between the second line, in which both Hagan
and Folker are mentioned as scoffing at Etzel, and the two stanzas
immediately following, which confine the invectives to Hagan.
(St. XII.) Lachmann's Nineteenth Lay begins here and ends with St. V,
Thirty-sixth Adventure. Scarcely any of the whole twenty begin and end
so unappropriated as this.
(St. XIX, XX, XXI.) I have arranged these stanzas as Simrock and Beta
have done. Braunfels places them XX, XIX, XXI.
THIRTY-FIFTH ADVENTURE
(St. XX.) I have here, without intending it, stumbled on an interior
ryhme, _sounded confounded_. Still I can assure Professor Lachmann that
the stanza is genuine.
THIRTY-SIXTH ADVENTURE
(St. VI.) Here begins Lachmann's Twentieth Lay.
(St. IX.) Here they are described as coming _ûz dem hûse_, which seems
to contradict Kriemhild's exhortation at St. XX, not to let the
Burgundians come _für den sal_. Perhaps they here merely come out of the
hall into a vestibule at the top of the staircase, so as to speak with
Etzel and Kriemhild, but not into the open air. So at St. V,
Thirty-ninth Adventure, Gunther and Hagan are said to be outside the
house, but at St. XXV, same Adventure, Hagan rushes down from the
staircase to attack Dietrich. From St. XXVI, Thirty-sixth Adventure, the
staircase seems to have been of no great length.
THIRTY-SEVENTH ADVENTURE
(St. XVII.) Compare stanzas CXV, CXVI, Twentieth Adventure.
(St. LIX.) It is odd, that the hall, which must have been the principal
eating-hall in the castle, is here called Kriemhild's. Von der Hagen
thinks Kriemhild had appropriated it by having attempted to set it on
fire, but arson is an odd kind of title. He supposes, too, it may be the
hall mentioned at St. IV, Twenty-ninth Adventure; yet it seems strange
that Etzel should have received his guests anywhere but in his own hall.
(St. XCI.) This stanza, as Professor Lachmann justly observes, cannot
belong to Hagan, but is appropriate to Giselher, who is mentioned
immediately after. Still there is an awkwardness here.
THIRTY-EIGHTH ADVENTURE
(St. II.) The king himself has come to the feast, has made one of the
party, that is, has been slaughtered with the rest. See Lachmann's note
(St. 2173 L.).