The Nibelungenlied Part 154

(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 pa.s.sage, 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 s.h.i.+ning of hire hewe, Than in the tower the n.o.ble 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. x.x.xII.) 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. x.x.x.) 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 a.s.serting that Siegfried was Gunther's va.s.sal, 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. x.x.xI, 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 a.s.semblage 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, pa.s.sed between Brunhild and Hagan, her husband's princ.i.p.al 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. x.x.xVI.) 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. x.x.xVI, 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 Rin_ at St. x.x.xVII, Sixteenth Adventure, and altered it to _uber Rin_. 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 pa.s.sed 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. x.x.xIX 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. x.x.xVIII.) 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 pa.s.sage 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. x.x.xIX.) I scarcely know whether I have translated this stanza properly. The variegated work (expressed by _gestrout_ in the original) seems to have been produced by different sorts of fur. The _gra 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 fas.h.i.+onable ornaments in the dress of both s.e.xes. 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 a.s.sistance, 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 pa.s.sages 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, a.s.suming that the story of Siegfried's death under a linden tree was generally known.

(St. LXII.) _Intelletto veloce piu 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 p.r.o.noun 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 p.r.o.noun 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 ma.s.sacre. See, too, stanzas XXIII--x.x.xII--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 superst.i.tion, 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 pa.s.sage is condemned as spurious by Lachmann, princ.i.p.ally 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. x.x.xVII, Thirty-seventh Adventure, while at St. L, same Adventure, he is described as _verhouwen_, and at St. x.x.xII, Thirty-eighth Adventure, as lying with severe death-wounds fallen in blood.

EIGHTEENTH ADVENTURE