But it was too late to mend the matter. With devilish intent Brunhild plotted vengeance. Siegfried, the author of her mortification, must die the death. The foes of Siegfried persuaded his wife, unaware of their design, to embroider in his vesture a silken cross over the one spot where the hero was vulnerable. Then the crafty Hagen, who had been suborned by Brunhild to the baleful deed, bided his time. One day, Gunther, Hagen, and Siegfried, heated in running, stayed by a brook to drink. Hagen saw his chance.
... Then, as to drink, Sir Siegfried down kneeling there he found,
He pierced him through the crosslet, that sudden from the wound
Forth the life-blood spurted, e'en o'er his murderer's weed.
Nevermore will warrior dare so foul a deed....
... With blood were all bedabbled the flowerets of the field.
Some time with death he struggled as though he scorned to yield
E'en to the foe whose weapon strikes down the loftiest head.
At last prone in the meadow lay mighty Siegfried dead.
Brunhild glories in the fall of Siegfried and exults over the mourning widow. Kriemhild, sitting apart, nurses schemes of vengeance. Her brothers affect to patch up the breach in order that they may obtain the hoard of the Nibelungs. But this treasure, after it has been brought to Worms, is sunk, for precaution's sake, by Hagen, in the Rhine. Although in time Kriemhild becomes the wife of King Etzel (Atli, Attila) of Hunland, still she does not forget the injury done her by her kin. After thirteen years she inveigles her brothers and their retainers, called now Nibelungs because of their possession of the hoard, to Etzel's court, where, after a desperate and dastardly encounter, in which their hall is reduced to ashes, they are all destroyed save Gunther and Hagen. Immediately, thereafter, Gunther's head is cut off at her orders; and she herself, with Siegfried's sword Balmung, severs the head of the hated Hagen from his body. With these warriors the secret of the hidden hoard passes. Kriemhild, having wreaked her vengeance, falls by the hand of one of her husband's knights, Hildebrand, who, with Dietrich of Bern, had played a prominent part among the associates of King Etzel.
"I cannot say you now what hath befallen since;
The women all were weeping, and the Ritters and the prince,
Also the noble squires, their dear friends lying dead:
Here hath the story ending; this is the Nibelungen's Need."[373]
FOOTNOTES:
[369] For the Sagas, see § 300; and for translations, etc., see § 282 of the Commentary.
[370] The extracts in verse are from William Morris' Sigurd the Volsung.
[371] For Records of German Mythology, see § 301, below; for literature and translations, see §§ 283 and 301 of the Commentary.