literally, "She fondled his hands with her very white hand, till he before her eyes, she knew not when, vanished." As to the interpreters, Braunfels simply modernizes the old dialect, rendering wenne by wann; Simrock and Marbach are equally literal, except that they put wie, how, where Braunfels has wann; Beta, who here as elsewhere is less rigorously literal than his comrades, merely says, "then it happened that he suddenly vanished before her sight." I must confess I cannot understand how Kriemhild could not know when a thing happened that passed before her eyes, though she might well be puzzled how to account for it. It is remarkable that the Lassberg manuscript, which is said by Lachmann and other competent judges to contain a revised and remodelled text, omits altogether St. LXXXVI, Tenth Adventure, and alters the stanza before it, and that after it in such a way, that the supernatural seems to disappear, and Siegfried is merely represented as stealing away from the women, and coming secretly and mysteriously (vil tougen) to Gunther's chamber. This manuscript however mentions the tarnkappe at St. LXXVII, same Adventure. Did the reviser of this manuscript wish it to be inferred, that Siegfried, after leaving his wife, went and put on the tarnkappe?
([St. CX.]) In the Volsunga Saga Brunhild is a Valkyrie, or Chooser of the Slain, a sort of Northern Bellona, endowed with supernatural strength. This superhuman prowess is connected with her virgin state, and by becoming a wife she is reduced to the ordinary weakness of woman. In the Nibelungenlied this circumstance comes upon us by surprise, for we are nowhere told that the strength of Brunhild differed from that of other women, except in degree, and no reason is given why matrimony should produce any greater change in Brunhild than in the rest of her sex. The passage is in fact derived from the Scandinavian form of the legend, and seems scarcely in harmony with the spirit of the German poem.
ELEVENTH ADVENTURE
([St. XIV.]) Worms beyond the Rhine, Wormez über Rîn. The writer here as elsewhere speaks of Worms with reference to his own situation to the east of the Rhine, whereas Xanten, like Worms, is on the west side of that river.
([St. XVI.]) Newsman's bread, botenbrôt, was the term for the present given to a messenger.
([St. XXXI.]) Lachmann's Sixth Lay begins here and ends with St. XLIX, Fourteenth Adventure.
TWELFTH ADVENTURE
([St. XLVIII.]) Gary, like a shrewd courtier, avoids praising Kriemhild's good looks to a rival beauty.
([St. LIV.]) A difference of opinion exists in united Germany as to the interpretation of this passage, Lachmann, Simrock, Marbach, and Beta being on one side, and von der Hagen and Braunfels on the other. I readily vote with the majority. Rumolt's understrappers, as I conceive, are not the pots and pans, but the subaltern cooks, the scullions and other drudges of the royal kitchen.
THIRTEENTH ADVENTURE