Part 30

(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.

(St. XIV.) Efferding. A town of Austria beyond the Ems near the Danube (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.