Part 29

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 of _ferrandine_. The Dictionary of the French Academy mentions a silk stuff as _formerly_ going 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 wore About her slender waste, he took in hand, And with it bownd the beast, that lowd did rore For great despight of that unwonted band.

(St. LXXII.)

Ἰλίῳ αἰπεινᾷ Πάρις οὐ γάμον, ἀλλά τιν' ἄταν ἀγάγετ' 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 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.