[ XXVIII. POEMS OF THE DIETRICH-SAGA]
More than a dozen late-medieval epics, mostly anonymous and not precisely datable, have to do with the exploits of heroes who are the same as those that appear in the Nibelungen Lay or in some way related to them. Some of the poems are written in the Nibelungen meter, or a close approximation to it, others in short rimed couplets, still others in a peculiar stanza of twelve lines. The most of them relate to Dietrich of Bern, the doughtiest and most eminent of all the saga-heroes. Of the selections below No. 3 is given in Simrock’s translation, Das kleine Heldenbuch, 3rd edition, 1874.
1
From ‘Laurin’: Dietrich and his men encounter the dwarf-king.[1]
Sie ritten auf einander los
Und trafen sich mit hartem Stoss,
Der eine hoch, der andre klein,
Denn Laurin hatte kurze Bein’.
Fehl ging des Herrn Witeges Schuss,
Doch traf der Zwerg, ihm zum Verdruss,