'Tis more than I can tell you what afterward befell,
Save that there was weeping for friends belov'd so well;
Knights and squires, dames and damsels, were seen lamenting all.
So here I end my story. This is The Nibelungers' Fall.
NOTES
According to Professor Lachmann, this poem has no title in most of the manuscripts. In the two that have a superscription, it is styled the Book of Kriemhild. Its ordinary name, The Nibelungenlied, is derived from the Lassberg manuscript which ends with the words, der Nibelunge liet, the lay of the Nibelungs, while the better manuscripts for liet read nôt, calamity. The word Nibelung is a patronymic from nebel, mist or darkness, and means, child of mist or darkness. Who these Nibelungs were is involved in appropriate obscurity. In the first part of the poem, they are Siegfried's Norwegian dependents, formerly subjects of King Nibelung; in the second, they are the Burgundians, possibly as being then the possessors of the wondrous treasure. In F.H. von der Hagen's Remarks on the poem, there is a long rambling note on this word, a note, however, which is worth reading. The commentator travels from the Nephilim, or giants of scripture, down to Neville, the great Earl of Warwick, and his coal-black head of hair. I have followed Mr. Birch in using the form Nibelunger, as more convenient for the verse, and more suitable to our language, and also to mark the difference between the name of an individual, and that of a tribe. For the same reasons I have ventured to employ the form Amelunger.
FIRST ADVENTURE
([St. VI.]) The famous city of Worms derived its name, according to one tradition, from the Lindwurm, or dragon slain by Siegfried under the linden tree; according to another, from the multitude of dragons that infested the neighborhood. The Rose-garden of Kriemhild (which, though celebrated in other poems, is not noticed in this) was in the vicinity. The progress of civilization, elegance, cleanliness and classic refinement has converted the Rose-garden into a tobacco ground.
([St. XIII.]) Lachmann's First Lay begins here, and ends with St. LXXXVIII, Second Adventure.
([St. XVII.]) Liebe, here, is not Love, but Joy, Pleasure. See Lachmann's Treatise on the Original Form of the Poem, p. 91.
SECOND ADVENTURE