Thirteen years elapsed, and the widow married Etzel, king of the Huns. After a time, she invited Brunhild and Hagan to a visit. Hagan, in this visit, killed Etzel’s young son, and Kriemhild was like a fury. A battle ensued, in which Günther and Hagan were made prisoners, and Kriemhild cut off both their heads with her own hand. Hildebrand, horrified at this act of blood, slew Kriemhild; and so the poem ends.—Authors unknown (but the story pieced together by the minnesingers).
*** The Völsunga Saga is the Icelandic version of the Nibelungen Lied. This saga has been translated into English by William Morris.
The Nibelungen Lied has been ascribed to Heinrich von Ofterdingen, a minnesinger; but it certainly existed before that epoch, if not as a complete whole, in separate lays, and all that Heinrich von Ofterdingen could have done was to collect the floating lays, connect them, and form them into a complete story.
F. A. Wolf, in 1795, wrote a learned book to prove that Homer did for the Iliad and Odyssey what Ofterdingen did for the Nibelungen Lied.
Richard Wagner composed a series of operas founded on the Nibelungen Lied.
Nibelungen Nôt, the second part of the Nibelungen Lied, containing the marriage of Kriemhild with Etzel, the visit of the Burgundians to the court of the Hun, and the death of Günther, Hagan, Kriemhild, and others. This part contains eighty-three four-line stanzas more than the first part. The number of lines in the two parts is 9836; so that the poem is almost as long as Milton’s Paradise Lost.
Nibelungers, whoever possessed the Nibelungen hoard. When it was in Norway, the Norwegians were so called: when Siegfried [Sege.freed] got the possession of it, the Netherlanders were so called; and when the hoard was removed to Burgundy, the Burgundians were the Nibelungers.
Nic. Frog, the Dutch as a nation; as the English are called John Bull.—Dr. Arbuthnot, History of John Bull (1712).
Nica´nor, “the Protospathaire,” a Greek general.—Sir W. Scott, Count Robert of Paris (time, Rufus).
Nice (Sir Courtley), the chief character and title of a drama by Croune (1685).