Footnote 172:[ (return) ] Or Herrat.
Then Erka desired to see her dear friend, Master Hildebrand, and spake to him too of the true friendship which was now about to be severed, in remembrance whereof she gave him a ring of gold. And then sending for Attila she spake to him of her coming death. "Thus wilt thou become a widower", said she, "but so thou wilt not long remain. Choose, therefore, a good and loving wife, for if thou choosest a wicked woman she may work much harm to thee and many others beside. Good King Attila! take no wife out of Nibelungen-land, nor from the race of Aldrian, for if thou dost, thou wilt sorely repent of it, and harm unspeakable will be wrought to thee and the children whom she may bear thee". Soon after she had spoken these words, she gave up the ghost; and great was the lamentation in all Hun-land when they heard that the good Queen Erka was no more in life.
The warning given by the dying queen was, like most such warnings, unheeded. After three years of widowerhood, Attila sent one of his nephews into Nibelungen-land [173] to ask for the hand of Chriemhild, [174] daughter of Aldrian, loveliest and wisest of the women of her time; but maddened by secret grief for the loss of her first husband, Siegfried, [175] who had been slain by her brothers, Hagen [176] and King Gunther. The suit prospered; with strange blindness of heart, King Gunther gave his consent to the union of the sister who was his deadliest enemy with the mightiest king in Europe. For seven years Chriemhild waited for her revenge; then came that invitation to the Nibelungs to visit the court of Attila, which, in the infatuation of their souls, King Gunther and his brethren accepted, taking with them a chosen band of a thousand warriors. The scheme of vengeance prepared by Chriemhild, the quarrel which she provoked at the banquet, the terrible slaughter suffered and inflicted by the Nibelungs in the palace garden, their desperate rush into the palace-hall, the stand made therein by their ever-dwindling band on the pavement which was slippery with the gore of heroes--all this has been sung by a hundred minstrels, and need not here be repeated. We have only to do with the share Theodoric and his friends took in the fatal combat. Long the Amalungs stood utterly aloof from the fray, grieving sorely that so many of their friends on both sides were falling by one another's hands. For to the Nibelungs, as well as to Attila and the Huns, were they bound by the ties of guest-friendship, and in happier days Theodoric had ridden with Gunther and with Hagen, to test the mettle of their knights against the chivalry of Britain. So Theodoric and his men stood on the battlement of his palace, which looked down on the garden of Attila, and watched from afar the ghastly conflict. But at length they saw the good Margrave Rudiger, the ally of the Amals on so many a hard-fought battle-field, fall by the hand of his own daughter's husband, the young prince, Giselher; and then could Theodoric bear it no longer, but cried, saying: "Now is my best friend, Margrave Rudiger, dead. Take your weapons, comrades, and let us avenge his fall". He descended into the street. He forced his way into the palace-hall. Terrible was the clang of the strong sword Ecke-sax on the helmets of the Nibelungs. Many of them fell before him, but alas! many of his faithful Amals fell there also, far from their home. At length, in all that stately palace-hall, there remained but four men still able to deal blows, and these were Theodoric and Master Hildebrand of the Amalungs, Hagen and Giselher of their foes. And Hagen stood up to fight with Theodoric, and Giselher with Hildebrand. Then, as King Attila came from his tower to watch the combat, Hagen shouted to him: "It were a knightly deed to let young Giselher go unhurt, for he is innocent of the death of Siegfried the Swift". "Yea, truly", said Giselher; "Chriemhild, my sister, knows that I was a little child of five years old in my mother's bed when her husband was killed. I am innocent of this blood-feud, yet care I not to live now that my brethren are slain". Therewith he closed in fight with Master Hildebrand, and soon received his death-wound from the old hero.
Footnote 173:[ (return) ] Burgundy.
Footnote 174:[ (return) ] In the "Wilkina-Saga", Grimhild.
Footnote 175:[ (return) ] In the "Wilkina-Saga", Sigurd.
Footnote 176:[ (return) ] In the "Nibelungen-lied", Hagen is only a kinsman; in the "Wilkina-Saga", a brother of Gunther and Chriemhild.
Now there remained but one terrible encounter, that between Hagen and Theodoric. Hagen said: "It seems that here our friendship must come to an end, great as it has ever been. Let us each fight bravely for his life, and knight-like, call on no man for aid". Theodoric answered: "Truly, I will let none meddle in this encounter, but will fight it with warlike skill and knightliness". They fought long and hard, and exchanged grievous blows, and both were weary and both were wounded. Then Theodoric waxed exceeding wroth with himself for not overcoming his foe, and said: "Truly, this is a shame for me to stand here all the day and not to be able to vanquish the elfin's son". "Why should the elfin's son be worse than the son of the devil himself?" answered Hagen. [177] At that Theodoric was seized with such fury that fiery breath issued from his mouth. Hagen's coat of mail was heated red-hot by this breath of fire, and he was forced to cry out: "I give myself up. Anything to end this torture and doff my red-hot armour. If I were a fish, and not a man, I should be broiled in this burning panoply". Then Theodoric sat down and began to unbrace his adversary's armour; and while he was doing this, Queen Chriemhild came into the hall with a blazing torch, which she thrust into the mouth of one after another of the prostrate warriors, her brothers, to see if they were already dead, and to slay them if they were still living. Beholding this, Theodoric said to Attila: "See how that devil, Chriemhild, thy wife, torments her brethren, the noble heroes. See how many brave men, Huns and Amalungs and Nibelungs, have yielded up their life for her sake. And in like fashion would she bring thee and me to death, if she had the power". "Truly, she is a devil", answered Attila. "Do thou slay her; and it had been a good deed if thou hadst done it seven nights ago. Then would many a noble knight be still living who now is dead". And with that Theodoric sprang up and clove Chriemhild in twain.
Footnote 177:[ (return) ] The myth of Hagen's being begotten by an elfin apparition while King Aldrian was absent from his realm is mentioned in the "Wilkina-Saga" (Cap. 150), but there has been no previous allusion to the alleged demonic origin of Theodoric.
Theodoric bore the sore-wounded Hagen to his palace and bound up his wounds; but they were mortal, and in a few days Hagen died, having bequeathed to the woman who nursed him the secret of the great Nibelung hoard, for the sake of which he had slain Siegfried the Swift.