[248] From hehlen, to conceal.
[249] Horny Siegfred; for when he slew the dragon, he bathed himself in his blood, and became horny and invulnerable everywhere except in one spot between his shoulders, where a linden leaf stuck. In the Nibelungen Lied, (st. 100), Hagene says,
Yet still more know I of him—this to me is certaín,
A terrible Lind-dragon the hero's hand hath slain;
He in the blood him bathed, and horny grew his skin;
Hence woundeth him no weapon, full oft it hath been seen.
[250] MM. Grimm thought at one time that this name was properly Engel, and that it was connected with the chances of Alp, Alf, to Engel (see above, p. [67]). They query at what time the dim Engelein first came into use, and when the angels were first represented under the form of children—a practice evidently derived from the idea of the Elves. In Otfried and other writers of the ninth and tenth centuries, they say, the angels are depicted as young men; but in the latter half of the thirteenth, a popular preacher named Berthold, says: Ir schet wol daz si allesamt sint juncliche gemälet; als ein kint daz dá vünf jâr all ist swâ man sie mâlet.
[251] Elberich, (the Albrich of the Nibelungen Lied,) as we have said (above p. 40), is Oberon. From the usual change of l into u (as al, au, col, cou, etc.), in the French language, Elberich or Albrich (derived from Alp, Alf) becomes Auberich; and ich not being a French termination, the diminutive on was substituted, and so it became Auberon, or Oberon; a much more likely origin than the usual one from L'aube du jour. For this derivation of Oberon we are indebted to Dr. Grimm.
[252] Probably Saida, i.e. Sidon.
[253] i. e. Mount Tabor.
[254] This may have suggested the well-known circumstance in Huon de Bordeaux.
[255] So Oberon in Huon de Bordeaux.
[256] Str. 1564, seq.